by John Brooker | May 20, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Tools
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 130 Need a simple tool to build a team…? Use iMA “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius The plug on our bathroom sink has broken. It’s one of those fiddly ones; you press a lever and it lifts the plug to empty the water. Something has gone wrong inside so I can’t fix it. Not a problem for the rest of the family but difficult if you need to shave, unless you waste water running the tap. So one day I was washing a dirty golf ball in the sink when I dropped the ball. Eureka! The sink started to fill because the ball fits the plughole perfectly. I have now expanded the uses for a golf ball, get a hole in one every time and have a simple solution to a problem, which leads me to the topic of this article. One important way to enhance innovation is to have a team that works well together. Those of you who lead teams will know that there are many instruments available to profile your team members, help people understand each other and improve performance. Some of these tools are expensive, some are quite complicated, and some are administered by qualified psychologists. Some are all three. Recently, I became accredited to facilitate workshops using a behavioural tool known as IMA (Identify your style; Modify your style; Adapt your style for different people). This tool doesn’t pretend to be a psychometric tool. It doesn’t set out to explain what is going on in your head or the head of...
by John Brooker | Apr 22, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Tools
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 102 People often face new situations. You can facilitate them to perform better with a simple model…. Enhance The Physical and Social Environment “Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.” Jean Paul Richter (1763 – 1825) German Writer Do you want to improve someone’s performance in a new situation? I have worked with a number of new groups this year in workshops. Whenever I work with them I use a simple model called the “New Situation Model” to help people settle in with each other and encourage communication. I developed this model with my colleague, Caroline Harvey, based on our experience and using research. Explaining the Model A brief explanation of each stage (Note there is no proscribed order), is that we have found that a typical person (but not everyone) in a new situation wants to: Adopt the correct state Know who others are and how they relate Understand the situation Have a constructive outlook Influence the situation Contribute well Have an opportunity to voice their opinion Enhance the environment in which they find themselves, both physical and social Each of these steps is what I term a “facilitator”. The more facilitators you can address, the better the result. Whilst we use it in workshops, you might also use the model as a checklist when you: Plan for new people joining your group Plan for forming a project team Are in a new situation yourself (it may enable you to develop or suggest a constructive course of action) So Imagine that you have a new person...
