Help people to share their individual way of navigating an activity - such as doing their work, or attending an event - by combining the revealing power of metaphor with a series of simple interactions.
When people are hesitant to engage with each other, for example at the beginning of an event, you can help them to actively feel heard, and create a space where discovering and sharing rarely-noticed personal talents and insights becomes straightforward.
Once participants feel heard and have begun to share, they will be more inclined to trust, to work together, and to take interpersonal risks. And each person will have created an enduring personal image to carry with them and to share with others.
I've been using this for years as a Clean Language introduction, and recently submitted it as a candidate Liberating Structure because I'd love to see loads of other people trying it out.
Works in person or online, with six to 600+ people.
Distribute participants in space (or if online, on a whiteboard) to quickly capture some aspects of the group: where are participants from? How familiar are they with the topic? What are their backgrounds?
A fun energizer where one player must try and eliminate the rest of the team by winking - all without being caught.
This is a fun icebreaker or energizer where participants are asked “What's in the bag?” It's a simple way to engage people and have fun getting to know each other, it gets participants to step into the space together. Each team gets points for any items that are called out that they have with them.
A physical-participation disentanglement puzzle that helps a group learn how to work together (self-organize) and can be used to illustrate the difference between self-organization and command-control management or simply as a get-to-know-you icebreaker. Standing in a circle, group members reach across to connect hands with different people. The group then tries to unravel the “human knot” by unthreading their bodies without letting go of each other people’s hands.
As a management-awareness game to illustrate required change in behavior and leadership on a management level (e.g., illustrate the change from ‘task-oriented’ management towards ‘goal/value-oriented’ management).
A step-by-step process to help teams align on their plans and set focus for an upcoming period - in this case, setting Objectives (Rocks) and Key Metrics for quarterly planning.
A quick, physical improv game that asks participants to embody an object as quickly as they can!
Die Gruppe spielt "Stille Post" und erfährt die Notwendigkeit aktiven Zuhörens.
Get groups to work together on a practical challenge and then debrief the learning points to direct attention to patterns on their teamwork.
How do we look back, what is still unclear?
