Serious Play Forum

[Sofie Willox]

Hi there,
when doing the skills building (the tower, de metaphor exercises with building instruction and exercise on story making) with a group bigger than 5 persons, I sometimes get stuck with timing. It demands time to let everyone share their stories and allow reflection time. Doing the 3 exercises (of which I think they are a must to get in flow en feeling comfortable) I don’t want to cut of participants while sharing. Participants are getting warmed up, start talking in a passionated way and they keep on going, especially on exercise 2 and 3. Tower is not an issue. It is a true challenge to end skills building in less than 1 hour. Suggestion to better master timing and without cutting of their thinking process? Cheers!

[Rodrigo Borgia]

Hi!
I would recommend to give as much as 2 minutes per participant during warm up.
In my perception, the power of the methodology arises on the exercices after the warm up, not during it…..
Have fun,
Rodrigo

[Alan McShane]

Hi Sofie,
A couple of suggestions:
1) Limit the number of bricks for the tower building. give them the bottom and the top and tell them to choose only ten more. This will focus the building and might help to focus the stories too.
2) Give specific instructions (for example “tells us what you have built and what it says about you”) and stick to that brief. There will be time for complicated stories later. Also as mentioned by Rodrigo, state upfront some time guidlines if needed. If they are known to all you can assertively / politelty police them
3) I assume that Step 2 for you is Copy a model. If so, I keep this really simple, getting them to copy a simple 6 or 7 brick model (I usually pre-assemble it in the middle of the table). That means that copying is fairly quick.
4) I assume that Step 3 is modify the previous model (metaphorical jump for those who haven’t gone there yet). I make this an easy jump but always adapt it to be content relevant (even if only starting to open the subject). For example if the subject later is Team Life … this could be modify to represent the ideal or worst team member … This gives us an opportunity to already start addressing some of the “meat” as skills finishes and bigger questions loom.

Hope this helps and feel free to reach out to me if needed.

Alan.

[Sofie Willox]

thanks for the suggestions

[Author]

Posts