Hi, I joined the Facilitator club a couple of weeks ago on the advice of @Tarynlee Kearney . (And what great advice that was!) My field of expertise is creative thinking. I help people and teams to understand what creativity is, how it works and how to get more of it. The main take aways from my work are: better collaboration, improved problem solving and much better ideation! (With knock-on effects on culture 😉) I live in a small town in The Netherlands and am busy building my business and finding my way. I've been in training and facilitation for over 20 years but I'm not specifically trained. I'm also a keynote speaker dedicated to making the world a better place by activating the inherent creativity of as many people as I can reach!

How do you choose the best activity for opening your workshop? Today, I was supposed to be writing a new chapter for my book about "Ice Melters," but I had this idea that I couldn't let go of until I visualized it. Over 50 people registered for an upcoming workshop and shared their biggest challenges with "breaking" the ice in groups, and there was one recurring message: 🥶 Decision paralysis! How to find something meaningful and fun that genuinely gets everyone warmed up and ready to engage. I have already created a step-by-step framework on how to find and adapt any activity to work for your meeting, workshop or training, but I felt there were too many steps. That's why I created this Matrix that will help you find an activity based on 3 crucial details: 1. Familiarity: How well do your participants know each other? Are they strangers or teams/friends? 2. Playfulness: How open is this group to engage in fun, less conventional activities? Are they more serious or silly? 3. Are you gathering in person or virtually? If you have the answers to these questions, you should be able to quickly pick an activity from this image. Then, in the next steps, you should align it to fit your session's purpose and theme. Lastly, it should be adapted to work with additional restrictions, like group size, space available in the room, accessibility needs, etc. I am curious if this is useful for you. What do you consider when you pick an icebreaker (or "Ice Melter") activity?

I was speaking with a colleague with ADHD recently who was telling me about how she often struggles to stay focussed as a workshop participant. She went on to tell me about one workshop where the facilitator gave everyone a small toy to fidget with throughout the session. She said this was incredibly helpful for her, and she was able to focus much more intently. I thought this was really interesting, and I guess it relates to the theory of Lego Serious Play i.e. engaging our hands engages more of our brain. I wanted to see if anyone had had any experience of this they wanted to share?

Finally, my newsletter is going live, next Tuesday! If you subscribe, on July 16th, 2024, you'll get the first email of my newsletter - The Silent Innovator. 🎉 In it, you’ll find content on innovation, UX Research and Design, Workshops, and Facilitation. Sometimes, I might share my personal stories as well! I’ll mostly share content on the innovation techniques (workshops, sprints, etc.) and methodologies (design thinking, lean, etc.) and try to show you how you can apply them in your everyday work or even life. Little more than a month ago, I started my journey as a solo Product Strategist, Workshopper, UX Researcher & Designer. Unfortunately, all the things I wanted to work on were not achievable while working a full-time job - writing a newsletter is one of them. So, follow me to learn with me, to see the ups and downs, dos and don'ts. Hopefully, you’ll find value in my content. 🙌 You can subscribe by hitting the link under my name!

Hi all, I am a new member here but have been reading from the side lines for a while now and love how supportive this community is! I am planning a future visions workshop for senior executives to help them envision the future, 5-10 years down, for their lines of business. This’ll be my first time facilitating a workshop with such senior folks so I’m looking for any advice/suggestions on: 1. Recommendation on Workshop Flow/Agenda/ Structure 2. Recommendation on exercises and 3. Tips/Tricks on leading a senior/executive audience  My initial thoughts on high level structure is as follows: - Future Market and Consumer Trend Presentation - Workshop: exercise to envision where they'd want their business lines to be in 5 and 10 years - Workshop: taking that vision and developing actionable steps today/ or maybe identifying problems to tackle Thank you in advance!