Blog
Facilitation: 10 tips on how to make the space safer
During a recent webinar on facilitation trends, I asked a group of practitioners for their tips on making space safer. Here are our top ten..
A creative activity to give you fresh impetus with a problem or project
If you are stuck with a problem or want to generate new ideas for a project, here’s a great activity to prompt fresh thinking..
Why you are losing out by irrational risk-aversion
We all love behavioural economics, right? Take for instance risk-aversion. The key insight in several of the books I’ve been perusing is that we tend to be risk-averse for gains..
Your problem with group brainstorming isn’t creativity…
How many of us have been part of a bad brainstorm?
But what if it’s not about the group but about how ‘bursty’ it is? And how can improvisation create burstiness? Creativity comes in bursts. Well, that’s according to the Adam Grant podcast ‘WorkLife’, in which he visited Trevor Noah and ‘The Daily Show’…
Facilitation trends for the 2020s
Demand for facilitation is rising. There’s clear value in a range of applications, from meetings, through to group sessions and entire conferences.
As leaders in organisations grow aware of this, it creates opportunities for facilitators to aid more constructive conversations and reach better (and often faster) outcomes..
What do you want to celebrate? Please, not mistakes!
There may be some good arguments for celebrating mistakes, but the fact that they lead on occasion to good outcomes is not one of them..
Embracing Uncertainty
Much of what happens in work is unpredictable. An improvisational attitude invites you to trade the illusion of control for the reality of influence..
Three tips to increase beautiful layering in meetings, workshops and conferences
Layering is the idea of having more than one thing going on at one time in a meeting, workshop or conference. For example, displaying posters on the wall is an example of a layer beyond people simply talking to each other. Each extra layer added to a meeting, workshop or conference also provides an opportunity for the layers to be combined in new activities.
Why you don’t have to pretend to be a wardrobe
We are seeing a lot more articles about the use of improvisation in organisations. Much of the action is on the West Coast of the USA, especially centred on Silicon Valley. Although we are seeing more applied improvisation coming from the UK.
How our Small Stories add up to a Big Story
The biggest story is our view of the world. We might favour one political party (with their Big Story) because we like the sum of its policies (the Small Stories). Others, might accept the policies without further ado merely because they like the party.
The Power of ‘I’
There is a power in telling a story in the first person. It’s only you who can share this story from this perspective, which gives the appearance of authenticity and means the story cannot easily be challenged. You also know enough about yourself to guarantee plenty of supporting detail.
Transports of Delight
My colleague was inspired to invent a new introductory game for our London improvisation group session the other night. She saw a new electric scooter hire service and fancied giving it a try. So, at the beginning of the workshop, she asked everyone to describe to a partner how they had got to the session that evening and what way they would have liked to have arrived.
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