4 conversations about how to listen, acknowledge, and build
This activity helps participants notice the impact of different listening and response styles, especially how we unconsciously block or build on each other’s ideas. Use this when you want to shift communication habits, build awareness of default patterns, and/or teach communication skills.
You can help a group move from either-or conflicts to both-and strategies and solutions. You can engage everyone in sharper strategic thinking, mutual understanding, and collaborative action by surfacing the advantage of being both more integrated and more autonomous. Attending to paradox will reveal opportunities for profound leaps in performance by addressing questions such as: What mix of integrative control and autonomous freedom will advance our purpose? Where do our needs for global fidelity and consistency meet the needs for local customization and creative adaptability? This makes it possible to avoid bipolar swings in strategy that are frequently experienced by many organizations.
Following a similar structure of the Persona method, give your design personality by creating a design persona. This can be through visual design, copy, and interactions.
To be used when it is time to focus on product experience.
This technique helps to create a historical timeline for your organization with the collective work of your group members.
This activity can be a stand alone workshop or part of a planning workshop.
This jolt demonstrates how the natural human tendency of becoming heavily attached to a starting value can influence our decision making.
The participants work with two different versions of the same questionnaire. One version asks a series of questions that provide low anchor values, while the other version provides high anchor values. The debriefing discussion examines how anchoring affects our decision making.
In the Understanding Chain game, a group shifts from a content focus to an audience focus, and draws out a meaningful, linear structure for communication.
In pairs, each person gives a "magical" gift to their partner that relates to what their partner has shared with them.
Take 5-10 minutes time to wake up group's body & brain!
At the end of a meeting, participants have to go back to their boss, organization, community or family. There they'll asked a question like "what did you do?". This prepares them to that question, informs them about what others will say - and who maybe the source of this message and it give them as well as you feedback on the session. It also reinforces commitment.
Roses, buds, and thorns is a quick and simple team exercise that can be performed at the start of a group meeting. The idea is to evaluate a project, team task, or even your day by having each team member come up with a Rose (positive highlight), Thorn (struggle or challenge), and Bud (opportunity for improvement). The goal of this activity is to open up discussion among team members and acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of others. This can allow you to put measures in place to do more of what's going well, and fix what needs fixing. As well, this activity inspires creativity and debate within teams. Discussing Buds can encourage new, creative ideas to come to the fore. Finally, the activity allows you to gain insight from all members of the team as communication and honesty are important for every group!
