Are you looking for some new original methods that can help you achieve a result worn by your team or organization in a process of brainstorming and quick thinking? Well, the workshop ‘Interactive team conversations’ seems the perfect solution! Maybe you’re already familiar with methods such as World Café, Open Space and Appreciative Inquiry? But what do you think about Affinity Mapping, Empathy Mapping or Sailboat… A selection of new methods that all have the same in common: they are accessible, immediately useful, they have a ‘fun’ factor, they keep the energy within the group and they help you make the right choices. The workshop ‘interactive teamconversations’ is a playground for people who value change, innovation, interaction and teamwork.
With interactive teamconversations participants go into dialogue using creative interactive working methods. There is a wide range of possible topics and participants will bear the responsibility for the outcome. The use of innovative working methods ensures that everyday and sometimes difficult challenges get solved. With the ultimate goal a team that is aligned.
With this training we target anyone who wants to work interactively during team meetings, training sessions, or brainstorming sessions. The target audience can include both line managers and internal trainers, but also training managers, HR managers, HR business partners, internal coaches, communication managers, purchasing managers,…
During the workshop, participants learn techniques that help them to engage in qualitative conversations with their team in a quick, creative and fun way. We outline a number of interactive techniques.
Affinity Mapping
During a brainstorming session within your organization a lot of interesting ideas are suggested, but you are looking for a way to select the most common ideas. An affinity map or relationship diagram can help to give meaning to the large amount of information by exploring the underlying thinking patterns (logic) and if necessary to break through the old thinking patterns. It is a method which creates order in a jumble of ideas, making it possible to get a better overview of all the generated information and making it easier to come to an appropriate choice/solution.
Sailboat
You are very busy and often do not have the time to detect the blind spots in your services. Sailboat is a mapping technique where you can find out what it is that bothers your customers (and by extension your employees, stakeholders, …) and what it is they are dissatisfied about. What is wrong with a particular service or product? You make clear what stands in the way of the realization of your product, service or goal and then try to figure out how this can be improved.
The method results into insights and aha-experiences, but is not a problem-solving methodology. You want to reveal adverse conditions in order to steer your product, service or goal in the right direction.
Empathy Mapping
Who exactly is your customer? And what are his/her needs and desires? With an Empathy Map you can – together with stakeholders or your own internal team – take the perspective of your customers (internal or external) or business partner and strategically analyse what he/she needs. In short, you develop a clear profile of your customer or user. You identify how you can improve what he/she sees, hears, thinks, feels and how he/she will be challenged. Moreover, it sharpens the empathic skills of your employees.
Brain writing
You want an opinion/idea from everybody of the group, even the more introvert colleagues. Brain writing allows the creation of ideas before they could be criticized. You go quickly in depth, you share and build further on an idea with the whole team.
… but also other interesting approaches like the WWW-matrix, How Know Wow, Roti, Future research, vernissage, the teamwork wheel… are elaborated during the workshop!
Interactive team methods aim to improve the team and group functioning and lead to a quick and jointly supported result. By also taking into account the ‘fun’ aspect it facilitates to endure heavier themes and then gives the necessary energy to carry out the decisions.
The techniques complement each other so they can be easily linked together. The rules can be easily adapted to the specific objectives of the participants.
The interactive team methods are perfectly complementary with the methods of our workshop “Large group learning” in which we work with Appreciative Inquiry, Solution Focus, World Cafe, Open Space and Future Search. The latter methods take half a day to three days and are therefore less useful for daily meetings.
Interactive team methods are accessible and can be used at times when you only have one hour to make important decisions with a small group of employees. The techniques allow to generate a lot of ideas (diverging) in order to reach the best decisions afterwards (converge).
In the workshop “Interactive teamconversations” we focus on the following themes:
- What are these conversation techniques exactly?
- What do these conversation techniques have in common?
- Experience the power of these methods!
- Reflection on the methods being used
- Use of case studies
- What applications are there?
- Feedback about ways to facilitate and group dynamics
More information about the open workshop?
When? We have regular Dutch and French workshops for English workshops we organise this in house.
More info and registration? Through this link.