The Agile methodology has revolutionised the way teams approach project management by emphasizing the importance of flexibility. This 2022 report states that after adopting Agile, companies have experienced a 60% growth in revenue and profit. Agile teams are reported to be 25% more productive, and 88% of workers believe Agile improves their quality of life.

But is it hard to adopt? When I first studied Agile, my main concern was that it would be complicated. After all, the Agile manifesto comes from Agile software development. Would Agile be like learning a new language? No, thank goodness.

Agile empowers teams to self-organise and collaborate on solutions between themselves and with customers. Agile encourages learning, growth and continuous improvement to deliver value. Teaching the principles is straight-forward, but putting them into practice is the challenge.

This is where Agile games and activities come out to play!

Playfulness and gamification are no longer seen as frivolous but as powerful tools to enhance positivity, learning and application, and team collaboration. Positive emotions like excitement, curiosity, and enjoyment have been linked to increased attention and improved learning outcomes. Games are a wonderful way to learn and integrate Agile principles.

In this article, you’ll find 25 Agile games and activities that teach Agile principles and support the Agile manifesto. Many of the games will teach three or more of the principles and are often designed with real-life scenarios in mind. You’ll find activities grouped into the five key stages of the Agile process alongside facilitation tips and advice for engaging team members in the process.

What are Agile Games & Activities?  

Agile games are interactive activities designed to enhance a team’s understanding and application of Agile principles, practices, and values. An experiential approach allows participants to learn Agile concepts that they can use in their day-to-day work.

Agile games reinforce key principles, such as the importance of collaboration, iterative development, and continuous improvement. By incorporating Agile games into coaching and facilitation sessions, teams can gain a deeper understanding of the methodologies and strengthen their Agile mindset.

Many of the agile team building games and activities here are specifically designed with Agile concepts in mind, or have been selected from the SessionLab library as they facilitate Agile learning. They’re a great way to teach Agile concepts or to use in your Agile projects.

You’ll find clear instructions on how to implement and integrate Agile principles and how the learning objectives align with the scenario. To maximise the benefits, it’s best to allow time for feedback and a meaningful debrief.

Taking this space to bridge learning about the agile production process and how the techniques can be practically implemented can ensure your team is fully prepared for your next project.

When you’re ready to run an Agile kickoff or retrospective, it can be helpful to create an agenda that you and your team can follow.

SessionLab makes it easy to build a complete workshop agenda in minutes. Start by dragging and dropping blocks, add activity timings and adjust your session flow to create an effective session.

Agile games for improving team self–organisation

Self-motivated and self-organising teams are the foundation of any successful Agile project. In this section, I’ve grouped together introductory activities that set teams in good stead to self-organise. They teach the Agile principles and facilitate team interaction.

You’ll also find games that introduce Kanban and Scrum, two processes designed for organising workflows.

Scrum comes from rugby-lingo where teams huddle together to move the ball forward. In the context of projects, the team comes together to move the product forward. Cross-functional teams work in sprints and gather in a daily stand-up meeting to discuss progress, plan work and address any obstacles. Scrum emphasizes flexibility and continuous improvement, enabling teams to deliver value throughout the project.

Kanban was developed by Toyota in the 1950s and adopted by Agile teams to better manage workflow collaboration. It uses a visual board with columns representing different stages of work, such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.”

Work items are represented as cards, and move across the board as they progress through the workflow. Kanban focuses on limiting work in progress (WIP) to improve flow and ensures that teams can complete tasks efficiently.

There are many other Agile frameworks to explore though for a solid foundation, playing agile games such as those below are a great way to get started.

Kanban Pizza

Step into the busy kitchen of an Italian pizzeria to learn the principles of Agile and Lean in the most delicious way possible! This educational cooking experience introduces the concept of Kanban and can help teams transition from their current process to a more efficient system. By comparing the workflow with and without using the Kanban process, the team can see the benefits of using a visual workflow.

Create pizza parlour names for each team and show an example of a pizza slice you’d like them to produce. Don’t tell them how long they have, but set a timer for 8 minutes. The challenge is to make as many as possible without waste. When you shout, “Stop!”’ quality assess and score each team on their pizza-making skills.

Next, you’ll introduce Kanban principles: 

• Visualize the Workflow
• Limit your Work in Progress (WIP)
• Manage the Flow
• Implement Feedback Loops
• Make Process Policies Explicit
• Improve Collaboration

Teams will work for a second round, this time tell them they have 8 minutes to make pizzas. Before they start, they’ll have five minutes of planning using the Kanban principles. Teams reflect individually and share in the group to discuss behaviours, feelings and workflows.

Using Post-its or a digital whiteboard, they should see the impact of visualizing workflows. Limiting the work in progress and managing flow improves team organization and efficiency! By making the Kanban process as easy as pizza pie, it won’t feel intimidating!

Presto Manifesto

Success can be measured in different ways. Is it simply about meeting deadlines and staying within budget? Or should customer satisfaction be a key factor as well? This exercise introduces participants to the Agile manifesto and encourages teams to find their own path to success.

Participants are divided into groups and asked to draw upon their project experiences to identify critical elements of successful projects. Each team member signs off on the criteria that they agree with and the lists are compared for patterns. 

And hey Presto! Regardless of their Agile experience, teams recognize the importance of customer collaboration, communication, and team dynamics. These criteria align with the fundamental principles of the Agile manifesto, highlighting its intuitive and practical approach!

Daily Scrum Meeting

Even without a comprehensive Agile strategy, a simple morning meeting like the daily scrum can help team members align and remove bottlenecks for better project organisation. 

The daily scrum is a concise, 15-minute exercise that revolves around three fundamental questions: What did I complete yesterday? What will I do today? And what obstacles, if any, are impeding my progress? 

For remote teams like ours at SessionLab, a daily scrum can be invaluable. We have an asynchronous daily stand-up on our Slack channel to allow us to stay connected, aligned and support each other. This practice serves as an efficient high-level to-do list, ensuring clarity and team cohesion. It not only saves time but also provides a platform for quick updates across the entire team.

Personal Kanban

Teams are often faced with the challenge of juggling multiple projects at once. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and try to tackle everything, but this is not the most effective approach. 

The personal kanban gives teams the autonomy to self-organize and prioritize their own projects. By focusing on a smaller number of tasks at a time, team members can dedicate their attention and effort to a manageable workload. This method not only enhances productivity but also leads to higher-quality outcomes. 

Visualising a backlog and accepting it as a normal part of a time-boxed project helps relieve the pressure of trying to address everything. A Kanban board provides a structured system for managing priorities, bringing order and balance that lead to successful results!

Agile Clock 

To facilitate the understanding of the Agile principles it is helpful to visualize them and be able to explain them briefly in a few words.

Each team is given a copy of the Agile manifesto and the goal is to distill each principle into three words or less. Words should be written on stickers and hung within the circle on a flip chart. The clock is created with each number corresponding to one of the twelve principles. 

You can also incorporate the corresponding icon from the Bikablo set (or draw your own if you’re feeling creative). Adding a fun visual element to your clock helps give a quick reference point for each principle. 

So any time you’re stuck or unsure in your Agile practice, take a quick glance at your trusty Agile Clock.

Agile games to improve team collaboration

When teams are aligned and transparent they are far more likely to succeed in their projects. With effective communication and collaboration, groups of any size are able to overcome bottlenecks and avoid siloing.

In this section, you’ll find games and activities that improve team collaboration. These games are immersive and will give participants a taste of what an Agile project could look like.

While playing, teams will organically learn other Agile principles, such as welcoming changing requirements and promoting sustainable development. Use these activities whenever trying to bring a new team up to speed or simply improve how team members work together in an Agile production process.

The Marshmallow Challenge with Debriefing 

Discover the power of collaboration in this well-known exercise developed by technologist, designer and facilitator Tom Wujec. The Marshmallow Challenge is a key activity for demonstrating the Agile framework and has been played by hundreds of teams around the world. 

The goal is to build the tallest freestanding structure using spaghetti, tape, string and a marshmallow in 18 minutes. Afterwards, facilitate a debriefing. This challenge builds teamwork and encourages self-reflection and improvement.

The discoveries in the debrief highlight how teams can improve their planning processes, and how prototyping and testing play a part in forming the right solution. Teams will improve their collaborative skills, such as active listening, valuing others’ ideas and co-operating. 

LEGO Challenge

Finding the equilibrium of cooperation and problem-solving can be challenging. In this game, teams come together to construct a LEGO masterpiece, but there’s a twist: each person is assigned a secret mission! 🕵️ 

One individual may be responsible for ensuring that adjacent bricks have different colors, while another person aims to build the entire structure using only blue bricks! To add an extra layer of challenge, participants are not allowed to communicate verbally during the 20-minute game.

Reflection is crucial to any Agile game. Following the LEGO Challenge, participants can identify their blind spots by asking:

• What transpired during the task?
• How effectively did they function as a group? 
• How did the experience impact their emotions? 
• What valuable insights did they gain about themselves and group dynamics? 

Go further by identifying parallels between the game and how your team communicates and collaborates.

Ball Point Game

The Ballpoint game, invented by Boris Gloger, is a well-known Agile game that can help a scrum team improve collaboration and deliver effective solutions. Teams pass as many balls as possible through the group in 2 minutes following specific rules. The game is played in five iterations, recording estimates and actual scores.

Teams reflect on how they self-organize and communicate, and perhaps how their estimates become more accurate as they change their process. The lesson is that all processes have a natural velocity, and changing the process is often more effective than working harder or faster.

There are many parallels with Agile, and the game poses several questions: 

• what happened? 
• which iteration felt best? 
• were there improvements achieved by working harder or faster? 
• were there any bottlenecks, and how were they identified? 
• how well did the team self-organize?

Demonstrate the value of Agile and have fun while doing it!

Penny Game

This activity teaches us the importance of iteration and how to self-organize to deliver value. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be a coin collector to join in!

Through play, teams will discover that size of the batches has a direct impact on delivery. With larger batches, there’s more pressure to get the batch to the next person. With smaller batches, the pressure is lower but more constant. It’s all about finding the right balance.

But it’s not all about speed. The Penny Game also teaches us the importance of customer feedback and iteration. By delivering the product in batches, we have the opportunity to make changes and improvements along the way. 

Open Space Technology

When working on complex challenges, the traditional set-up of meetings can stifle collaboration and creativity. 

Open Space Technology (OST) gives Agile teams the opportunity to choose which challenges they need to solve and how. It encourages autonomy and ownership by creating a space for workshop agendas and solutions to emerge. Participants discuss relevant issues, follow their passions, and take action together. 

The “Law of Two Feet” principle guides engagement. If a participant is not learning or contributing in one session, move to a more relevant one. This exercise provides structure while allowing for emergent ideas. OST encourages active participation and leads Agile teams toward relevant outcomes.

Agile games designed to improve prioritisation

Agile values adaptability and flexibility to respond to changing requirements, customer feedback and market conditions. Through the processes of prioritisation, timeboxing and iterative development, every team member can deliver high-quality results and navigate any changes to a project. Sounds ideal, right?

Prioritization helps teams focus on what matters most. By effectively allocating time and resources teams can focus on high-importance items. Agile teams can quickly deliver valuable increments of work and meet customer needs.

Timeboxing is a short block of time allocated to getting things done, usually lasting 2-4 weeks. Within that block, teams can make course corrections and incorporate new insights at the end.

Through feedback and continuous improvement, teams can refine their processes, enhance efficiency and deliver higher-quality results. In this section, you’ll discover games that uncover the power of processes and prioritisation in Agile!

Ecocycle Planning

A pre-project discussion ensures that only projects that align with both business and solution requirements are started. But what about ongoing projects? Ecocycle Planning enables teams to collaborate, organize and prioritize each project.

The primary objective is to identify areas that require additional attention and resources, as well as areas that impede progress and hinder the overall performance of the company.

What I find appealing about the exercise is its emphasis on transparency throughout the entire organization. Everyone gains a holistic view of both the larger organizational landscape and its individual projects.

This visibility enables teams to see both the broader context and the specific details of ongoing projects. The result is a shared understanding that facilitates better decision-making!

Paper Plane Game

Timeboxing is a process of providing a clear time frame for task completion. It helps users estimate future work based on past performance and helps stakeholders know when to expect results.

The power of timeboxing is demonstrated in the Paper Plane Game. The goal is to build quality paper planes that fly 30 meters in 3 minutes. Each iteration lasts 9 minutes: 3 for planning, 3 minutes to build and test, and 3 minutes to review. Only planes that fly 30 metres count as successful constructions.

Teams then propose improvements during retrospectives. The game encourages reflection and prompts discussions on design decisions and waste reduction for better performance!

Impact and Effort Matrix

Agile is all about keeping things simple while making informed decisions. This exercise covers both concepts and helps an agile team prioritorize possible actions.

The matrix design invites participants to map possible actions based on the effort required and the potential impact. By categorizing ideas along these lines, teams are obliged to balance and evaluate actions before committing to them.

Facilitate the exercise by giving the group an objective. This can be as simple as asking: “What do we need to do to reach our goal?” Everyone generates ideas individually on sticky notes before presenting their ideas back to the group. Ideas are discussed and placed within the two-by-four matrix organised by impact and effort. 

The Impact and Effort Matrix allows teams to effectively prioritize and achieve successful outcomes!

Estimation Game – Cup of Tea

Even the simple task of estimating the time it takes to make a cup of tea leads to varying results. This playful estimation exercise highlights the importance of not making assumptions when estimating. 

For example, assuming that everyone has access to the necessary tools to make a cup of tea – hot water, a kettle, a cup, a spoon, sugar, and tea bags. When it comes to estimating time for tasks in a team setting, it’s important to have these conversations and not assume everyone has the same information or tools at hand!

Estimation Game can be applied to many areas of business, from estimating the time it takes to write a blog post 😶‍🌫, to estimating the time it takes to develop a new feature (such as SessionLab’s new sharable agenda!) It is important to take into consideration all of the variables to improve accuracy and better manage time and resources!

The White Elephant Sizing Game

Estimating timelines, resources and effort is crucial for project success. This exercise focuses on sizing user stories. Shuffle story cards and have team members take turns picking, reading, and assigning them to size columns (XS-XL). They provide reasoning based on expertise, past experiences or observations. 

Iterative adjustments allow moving cards between columns, providing a reason to support the decision. The game ends when all cards are on the board and team members signal that they agree.

The obvious elephant in the room is the lack of a reference point. But once the cards start being assigned, the team can see the bigger picture. Encourage everyone to share their expertise and observations. In real-life scenarios, prioritisation enhances estimation skills and helps everyone understand what’s most important.

Agile Games for building effective solutions

Iteration and delivering value are two core principles that play a pivotal role in any project.

Agile promotes short iterations, known as sprints, which allow teams to adapt and respond quickly. The iterative approach allows groups to gather user feedback, validate their assumptions and pivot if needed –  all while maintaining a shorter time-to-market.

Delivering value refers to meeting customer needs and effectively improving user experience. The emphasis on delivering value fosters a sense of purpose with Agile teams to take ownership of their work and make a positive impact

In this section, you’ll uncover fun activities and games that will help teams understand and apply the Agile principles of iteration and delivering value through experiential learning. Some of the activities weave in techniques used in Design Thinking to create a user journey and work on iterative development. Let’s dive in!

Resort Brochure

Dreaming of far-flung destinations or campervan escapades by a lake? Let’s turn those daydreams into a Resort Brochure! This fun game uses the Scrum process to work on a mini-simulation that can help teams improve their incremental building skills.

First, decide on a wishlist for your ultimate resort. Capture initial user stories on index cards and prioritize them. Each story is broken down into a task list, for example, they may need to find a picture of a sandy beach or choose a resort name. 

By using a progress board, teams can simulate a scrum scenario on a smaller scale before tackling bigger processes. Each participant has a sense of control and visibility into all the work that is going on.

After the rounds of iteration, the team holds a retrospective where they list what they did well and what they can improve for the next iteration. Try it out for a fun and engaging way to apply Agile processes while creating a resort brochure for the ultimate holiday of their dreams!

Design Sprint for any team

Design sprints are a fantastic way to iterate and deliver value through ideating, prototyping and testing new concepts! Inspired by Google’s design sprint process, this seven-step workshop provides structure and tools to help teams work creatively and quickly.

First, teams create a visual representation of the challenge, write a brief, set a goal and add sprint questions. Next, target five experts and note down their insights and perspectives. 

In the sketching stage, individuals come up with solutions to the challenge and pick one to sketch in more detail. Translate this final design into a storyboard and prototype the solution.

Finally, test the prototype, collate the feedback and wrap up the sprint with your team. This process encourages rapid prototyping and testing that will improve your team’s creativity and agility.

Four Step Sketch

The 4-Step Sketch folds in elements of design thinking to help teams improve their iteration process.

The first step invites participants to take notes and look at write-ups and drawings from previous activities. Next, they turn their own ideas into sketches. These sketches don’t have to be perfect, they just need to capture the essence of the idea.

The part of this exercise that demonstrates how teams can iterate, is when participants draw their idea eight different times, spending one minute on each square. The goal is to keep sketching and moving forward, asking themselves what could be a possible solution.

Finally, participants move on to a solution sketch, where they sketch a potential concept onto a storyboard. They must ensure that their sketch is self-explanatory and clear, using an explanation next to the sketch.

Remember, this isn’t a drawing competition. The goal is to collaborate, share ideas, and create clear and concise solutions. The value of the 4 Step Sketch is that it helps teams improve their iteration process and generate innovative ideas!

User Day-Parting

What I love about Agile and Design Thinking is their human-centred approach. In this exercise you’ll create an imaginary user, also known as a persona, mapping out their average day and identifying challenges they experience. 

Once the teams have mapped out the user’s day, they should identify the biggest pain points that the user encountered. The teams should then brainstorm ideas for products or services that could help overcome challenges and increase efficiency and happiness.

Finally, you’ll present your ideas for feedback and reflection. Teams will create innovative solutions that are focused on the user’s needs and challenges. It’s a great way to develop a user-centred approach to product and service innovation!

Chocolate Bar Game

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “A chocolate bar game? Is this really helpful for my practice?” This scrum simulation game can teach teams a lot about product ownership, feedback and customer value. 

The challenge is to create the most attractive chocolate bar for your customers within a certain set of constraints. In the role of product owner, participants practice listening to customers and taking their feedback into consideration. 

The game also teaches the importance of iteration. You may not get the perfect chocolate bar on your first try, but by taking feedback and making improvements, you can create a product that truly satisfies your customers.

The game concludes with a debrief. Participants discuss how they made design decisions, how useful the feedback was, and how they measured the value of the chocolate bar. You might end up with a delicious new product idea!

Agile games for reflection and continuous improvement

A lot of workshops or processes end with a reflection. But in Agile, we ensure that we regularly review throughout the process. The Agile principle of reflection is often referred to as “Inspect and Adapt.” It emphasizes the importance of regular evaluations of the team’s work, processes, and interactions to identify areas of improvement and make necessary adjustments. 

Read on for games and team building activities that create a safe environment for teams to openly discuss their challenges, successes, and potential improvements!

Pre-Mortem

What if you could identify and prevent risks before they derail your project? This exercise is a reflection technique that taps into your team’s collective experience to proactively mitigate risks.

Begin by laying out project goals and ask, “What will go wrong?” 🤷 This simple question uncovers potential risks and pitfalls, so you can intervene early!

Encourage open discussion as team members voice their concerns. Create a list of identified risks, ensuring that all perspectives are heard. Then, prioritize the risks and define actionable steps to address them. Pre-Mortem is a proactive approach that minimizes the likelihood of failure and paves the way for project success!

Start, Stop, Continue

Regular review and adaptation are key components of success. This method is a simple way to demonstrate how to regularly assess and develop next steps.

Ask the group to consider the current situation or goal and individually brainstorm in these three categories:

1. Start: What are the things that we need to start doing? This category is all about identifying new actions or behaviors that will help the team move forward and achieve their goals.

2. Stop: What are the things that we can or should stop doing? Here, the team recognize and address behaviors that are hindering progress or causing problems.

3. Continue: What are we doing now that works and should continue? This category is about acknowledging and reinforcing the positive behaviors and actions that are contributing to success.

Once everyone has completed their brainstorming, the group shares their results and works together to prioritize and implement the suggested actions. By regularly incorporating Start, Stop, and Continue into their processes, Agile teams can continuously improve and adapt to achieve better outcomes!

Alignment & Autonomy

Groups reflect honestly and openly on previous projects using Peter Smith’s model of alignment and autonomy. Alignment refers to shared goals, clear communication and a common understanding of the project’s objectives. Autonomy is the degree of freedom and empowerment given to the team to make decisions and execute their work.

Start by asking the team to identify the actions for a successful project. These actions may include improving communication channels, clarifying project objectives, fostering a culture of trust or empowering team members to make decisions. Improving autonomy and alignment can hugely increase company productivity, and better navigate change:

As Peter Smith says “Self-organising systems are adaptive, in that they do not just passively respond to events, the way a rock might roll around in an earthquake. They actively try to turn whatever has happened to their advantage” 

Let’s make sure your team doesn’t roll around. Empowering people to find the best possible solution, is a huge part of Agile. This exercise demonstrates both the value of regular reflection and the power of self-organisation!

Actions for Retrospectives

This activity uncovers ways your next project, meeting or conference can be a success by allowing teams to generate ideas for future improvements.

Players write their thoughts about puzzles, risks, appreciations and wishes and cluster related ones together. As a team, they discuss the novelty, feasibility and impact of the ideas and analyze how they can be applied to the next event. The process is a brilliant way to create practical and efficient actions!

Break free from boring retrospective analysis strategies and create a more productive and enjoyable experience for your team!

Challenging Team Agility Using White Elephant Principles

We all know that good enough is never really good enough, this exercise helps teams kick things up a notch! This reflection activity is designed to challenge your team’s agility and inspire them to continuously improve. It’s ideal for retrospectives or any time you want to reinvigorate how your team works together.

To start, print out a set of Agile principle cards and create a poster for the team to arrange them on. Each team member will take turns doing one of the following actions:

1. Pick up a card and place it somewhere on the poster, indicating an area where the team needs improvement. Provide a one-sentence explanation of why.

2. Move a card that has already been placed on the poster. Again, provide a one-sentence explanation for the move.

3. Pass, indicating that you are satisfied with the current placement of the cards and believe it accurately represents the team.

In the beginning, teams may have a tendency to play it safe, but set the expectation that the more they put into this exercise, the more they’ll get out of it. Real growth comes from new challenges and understanding different perspectives!

It’s totally okay to disagree. The purpose is to learn and encourage different opinions. If you’re using this activity as part of a retrospective, consider following up with a round of lean coffee to discuss the principles that emerged. Together, you can come up with experiments that will help conquer any stale vibes and challenge team agility!

Share your Agile games & facilitation tips 

I hope you’ve found some inspiring ways to weave Agile principles into your team projects and create a more Agile team. Try bringing these activities to your next sprint to help your scrum team get off to a good start and improve their collaboration and project management skills.

Do you have any favourite Agile games and activities you use in your workshops? Why not add them to the SessionLab library and share them in the comments?

And before I go here are some facilitation tips from me to you: 

1. Make it fun: Agile games are meant to be playful and engaging, so don’t be afraid to get creative! Use props, role-playing, and other interactive elements to make the experience enjoyable for every team member.

2. Focus on learning: While it’s important to have fun, don’t forget that the ultimate goal is to learn and improve. Make sure each game has clear learning objectives and debrief afterwards to discuss key takeaways.

3. Keep it brief: Agile games are meant to be short and sweet, so don’t drag them out for too long. Aim for 15-30 minutes per game to keep participants engaged and focused. This is especially important when working with remote teams!

4. Stay positive: Remember, the goal is to foster a collaborative and positive environment. Encourage open communication, active listening and constructive feedback throughout the game.

Do you have any tips of your own? I’d love to hear them in the comments!
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As the necessary skills in business are constantly evolving, staying ahead of learning and development is a must for companies today. Having a great learning and development strategy is not only important for the companies themselves but for employees too.

People are not only working to make a living, and value investing in their personal growth and overall job satisfaction. Whether it’s improving soft skills in developing team emotional intelligence, or cultivating practical skills to adapt to different ways of working, they are all areas that benefit from ongoing development.

87% of people acknowledge the need for training and developing new skills throughout their careers. This article keeps all of these topics in mind, whilst giving an overall “How to” process to create an L&D plan, whatever the subject matter!

What is a learning and development strategy?

I love learning. I’d be the first to put my hand up when there’s an interesting and informative course on offer. As part of the millennial cohort who are consistently seeking self-improvement on some level, I’m not the only one.

It’s not just millennials, of course. We’ve all had to become flexible and open to learning new skills to stay relevant in the forever-changing job market. Many people are working beyond their planned retirement age or changing careers completely. We’re no longer leaving school, joining a company, and staying put for 20 years!

Before working at SessionLab, I don’t recall ever working for a company that had an actual L&D strategy in place! I’m very happy we have one, and it really does illustrate how a company invests in its people and has a progressive outlook. So what is one?

Simply put, a learning and development strategy is a blueprint that outlines how an organization identifies, tracks, and implements employee training and development opportunities.

An effective learning and development (L&D) strategy are vital to the long-term growth and success of a company. Done right, it will confidently equip individuals to do their job and work together to drive the company forward.

There are different methods of documenting an L&D journey, but most successful strategies should have the following processes in common: 

• Identify company goals and the skills necessary to achieve them. 
• Invite each individual to determine their own key strengths, the goals they’d like to achieve, and areas in need of development to reach those ambitions. 
• Align the organization and team members in prioritizing the skills and tools where improvement is needed.
• Create a plan and action it using the best learning methods and tools.
• Together, track progress in an ongoing manner. 
• Finish by reflecting, celebrating, and creating goals for future development!

These processes are the backbone, but are flexible to mold around the learner’s needs. A strategy can cover different tasks too, from onboarding an employee to upskilling someone into a leadership role. An organisation would also do well to define an overall L&D strategy to open up learning opportunities to employees, and invest in them as individuals.

Why Are learning and development strategies important?

These days, having processes in place to improve learning and development is not an option, it’s a must. Companies that invest in employees’ development will benefit from attracting and retaining talent, saving both time and money in the HR process.

The 2022 LinkedIn survey showed that

“Companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees for an average of 5.4 years, nearly twice as long as companies that struggle with it, where the average retention span is 2.9 years“

LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2022

The same report also mentions that 79% of L&D professionals agree that it’s less expensive to reskill a current employee than to hire a new one.

The key reasons in 2022 for development are focused around leadership and management training, and re-skilling and upskilling employees. Investing in development can almost guarantee an improvement of processes, which in turn will make a company much more productive. 

Career development is a major incentive for employees, and the top three motivations for wanting to learn are:

• Staying relevant in their field.
• Having a personalized learning path that includes their interests and career aspirations.
• Internal progression and promotion, or bringing them closer to their career goals.

Having a strong strategy in place that is revisited on a regular basis ensures that the learning and development goals are tracked, recorded, and achieved. Without it, employees may lack core skills, be unable to grow, and feel demotivated.

The key elements to creating a learning and development strategy

A company strategy clearly states a set of practices and procedures that demonstrate expectations, the opportunities available to employees, and how together we can achieve the company’s goals through personal development. Its primary purpose is to align business, employees, and anyone involved with people management.

In this section, we’ll cover the key elements needed to create and document the strategy before implementing it. We’ll cover how you can:

• Document the strategy
• Choose a tracking system that will work with your plan.
• Align company goals with individual strengths and areas of development
• Design personal development goals.
• Prioritize learning objectives
• Decide what the metrics or measurements of success will be.
• Assign responsibilities for implementing the strategy
• Decide on timelines and schedule regular check-ins

Collaborate & design your learning and development strategy

Firstly, gather the relevant people who will collaborate on the strategy. This will definitely include senior management, any stakeholders who have a business interest, and possibly an internal or external consultant with detailed knowledge of L&D processes and practices.

The team responsible for designing the strategy should have the authority to decide on budgets, and project scope, and be responsible for allocating resources. They should decide on a timescale to create the strategy, and perhaps form a series of workshops to collaborate in the creation of the strategy.

In these meetings, the team should decide on a way to document and track the strategy in a formalized way that will work with their plan. The development plan should contain clear goals and objectives along with benchmarks and KPIs to align with the key objectives. A company’s L&D strategy should of course work in tandem with the overarching business strategy, and outline methods of prioritization for learning to align with this.

A strategy will contain the resources available to the L&D team to implement the plan. It should include the reasoning behind the strategy, how it will be actioned and tracked, and what outcomes we aim to achieve. It will also contain the training materials, and resources, which can be a mix of internal in-house training and external accredited courses, depending on the objectives and overall budget.

Responsibilities for actioning the strategy across the teams should be agreed upon, along with a timeline for this to take place. Regular feedback and check-ins should be scheduled to see what’s working and what needs to be improved upon.

Documenting learning & development

At SessionLab we use Notion to document all of our internal processes. This includes everything from our company values to roles and competencies, and personal development opportunities, all of which are transparent to all employees. Between a team member and their manager, we have separate private documents to record notes from our regular 1-1s and where we set out our growth development plans for the future.

Openly documenting these practices within the company encourages people to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and be comfortable asking for support in developing their skills. For the most effective results, having a document to record development with an end target in sight will be far more likely to obtain the results than an undocumented process. 

Create a learning document for learners and managers to document and refer back to throughout the process. This serves as a single source of truth and can be as simple as a shared Google Doc, to a full LMS package. 

Align company goals with individual strengths and areas of development.

Start by establishing company goals, roles and responsibilities, and the skills necessary to succeed. Create a document or template and include prompts to help individuals recognize where their strengths lie, what their needs are, and their areas of improvement. The template might ask:

• What are the company goals?
• How does your role contribute to that?
• What are your career goals?
• What do you do well in your current role?
• What support do you need?
• Which skills would you like to develop?

People with leadership roles within the company should also be encouraged to identify their team’s strengths and areas of development to spot opportunities for improvement in a way that works best for their team. It’s important for a leader to refer back to the objectives in the strategy so they can develop the team in a way that serves both company and individual goals, ensuring growth happens in the right way.

A team member’s strengths can play an important part in training other team members too. For example, someone who is talented at data analysis could mentor another team member, encouraging peer-to-peer learning.

A company might also use assessments such as online or written examinations to record an employee’s specific competencies. The results can help to plan and develop clear goals and objectives. These can then be assessed after training to determine if the training was valuable. The strategy and tracking of development should always be kept in mind and referred back to regularly to ensure that the learnings are the right ones with the desired outcomes.

Design personal development goals.

An individual L&D strategy can be personalized to help an employee reach their full potential by providing access and support to educational opportunities. Be that formalized or smaller goal-orientated learnings. Remember, there isn’t a one-size fits all approach to learning. A recent graduate will have different learning needs than a senior manager.

A personal strategy helps tremendously with accountability! Especially if this is co-developed between the learner and the manager, as both parties will take ownership of their responsibilities, learning tasks, and tracking. People work easier with a defined plan that outlines what needs to be done, and how we can get there together. For example, an onboarding checklist can be a learning strategy or teaching a new skill such as how to write and send the company newsletter. 

I recently completed my Agile PM certification, which is more formalized learning. The course had a guided strategy and checklist that kept me accountable and on track. Initially, I had studied a PRINCE2 course and I found the methodology outdated as well as irrelevant to my personal career path, so I switched. The Agile path aligns with my future career plans and interests, and I can apply the learnings immediately in my role at SessionLab! 

Prioritize learning objectives.

Choose which learning objectives take priority and set those as a target. This may be immediately apparent from assessments and reviews, but it also might be a case of many areas of improvement being identified. Some people, myself included, want to learn more about several areas! So, “How do we decide which should take priority?”

We can revisit the company goals, and the responsibilities of the employee’s role and perhaps group areas of similarity together. As an example, the marketing team’s strategy may be to improve their social presence and community engagement. A member of the marketing team may identify a gap in their own skills to want to improve their writing style for social media posts. They might also wish to find ways to interact with people in the community. Both social media channels and a community are similar in that they both require clear communication with customers. 

Applying a learning plan that includes attending workshops, and creating a style guide will contribute to the company’s marketing strategy and put the skills to immediate use!

Choose one or two key areas of focus and work on those before moving on to another area. Our Product Manager at SessionLab made an interesting reference to self-help books when implementing changes and learnings.

People often read one self-help book after another without applying any of the advice and seeing no results. If we read one useful resource and follow up with the actions rather than diving into the next book, we are far more likely to change habits and therefore see positive changes.

Sandijs Liepiņš, Product Manager at SessionLab

Implementing a learning & development strategy

Now that you and your team have your strategy document in place, it’s time to start to implement those actions and track your development. In this section we’ll cover:

• The responsibilities of the learner, the team leader, and the organization
• Choosing effective tools and techniques
• Using in-house workshops
• Tracking progress and feedback
• Reflect, celebrate and improve!

Own your responsibilities

Every learner needs support. However, a learner should ultimately be responsible for their own development. The employee/learner can chart their own path and explore ways to develop the skills they have decided on with their mentor. Being responsible for completing tasks and their own agenda will make sure that they are actioning their newly learned skills. 

The support system includes a manager, mentor, or coach. The person in this role is responsible for providing feedback, guiding the learning process, and mentoring the employee. They open doors to educational opportunities and can provide real-life situations and case studies to support development.

As well as feedback and direction, the employee can see this person as their accountability partner. It’s often easier, more productive, and enjoyable to have a buddy help them reach their development targets. The coach is the support system that assures the learner of their capacity to reach their goals. 

The company is responsible for the overall strategy and for resource and budgeting considerations. These must be part of an effective learning and development strategy. For example, will employees benefit more from internal training and workshops, or would providing access to quality further education classes and courses be a better route?

Choose effective and flexible learning tools and techniques

Traditional L&D strategies might’ve been a week-long classroom set-up, with little to no follow-up sessions, and no application of the skills learned afterward. Nowadays, change is on the horizon, and we might be lucky enough to belong to an organization that follows a continuous development path with applied practical scenarios. But there’s still work to do to make this a reality in many companies! How can we do that?

The approach taken should be bespoke to the individual and their needs. It might be a blended route of in-person workshops alongside online asynchronous work that fits around the person’s schedule. Peer-to-peer learning, case studies, and working practically with on-the-job coaching can allow the learner to become competent in an effective and efficient way. 

The benefit of a flexible learning plan allows us to try different styles of learning, and be agile to adjust.

When to choose formal training courses

Formal training courses are recognized certifications and courses. Usually, these are qualifications that will be in place for a specific role. For example, CIPD (The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development), is the regulatory body for HR professionals, and obtaining their certification gives the benchmark for best practices.

Formalized learning, doesn’t have to be at a university or an in-person training workshop. The Agile PM course I studied is entirely a self-led journey using a pre-recorded video and handbook to study before sitting the exam online.

How might your company encourage more collaborative learning? 

This brilliant video on 2022 L&D trends focused on collaborative learning, encouraging a curiosity towards learning with a more holistic approach. Instead of a top–down structure to development, teams can learn from one another through peer-to-peer training. Video can help facilitate collaborative learning in remote contexts too. 

At SessionLab, we often use Loom to record a process that will also be useful to other team members to watch in their own time. It means we don’t have to repeat the demonstration multiple times and have a library of recorded training to refer back to. 

Learnings can be documented using tools like Notion to develop an ever-growing collaborative handbook of best practices, techniques, and resources. Think of it as a company’s open-source “learning library” that all employees are invited to contribute to.

Design effective in-house workshops

Companies very often use in-house workshops to train groups and align everyone on practices within the business. This might vary from a workshop designed to set team values, or a learning process relevant to a specific process such as design sprints. A great way to keep your lessons and workshop exercises on an agenda is by using SessionLab! Once you’ve created a great workshop, it’s saved to your account and the training can be repeated over and over with new teams.

Finding exercises for your workshops depends entirely on the subject matter, but if you’re looking for an exercise specific to L&D within your company, you could try Engineering your Team OS from Hyper Island. If you are working on growing awareness of diversity, inclusion, and equity with your HR team, this article outlines the importance of inclusion. 

Developing soft skills such as emotional intelligence is considered a key goal for companies too. Investment in your team’s self-awareness can improve morale, well-being, and direction. Having these foundations will enable the individual to recognize their strengths and areas in need of improvement. If emotional intelligence is a growth area for your team, you can explore some activities, or run your own self-awareness workshop! 

Tracking an individual’s progress

Individual development plans can benefit from regular check-ins. This can be done through weekly or monthly 1-1s with a manager or mentor, and the purpose is to give feedback, keep each other up to date, resolve any issues, and help the participants grow and develop. It is a space that is dedicated to discussing any issues or celebrating achievements that might not be brought up during a busy work schedule. 

An individual might journal or track their own progress in the strategy document. This activity can bolster the 1-1 meetings, and help remember points that the employee might wish to bring up. Using questions to prompt the participant’s development can help with clarification. Prompts to identify areas of growth might be:

• Based on recent feedback, are there areas you’d like to develop further?
• What steps can you take toward these goals?
• What parts of your job do you enjoy most? What’s inspiring and makes you feel energized?
• Which parts of your job do you least enjoy? What task would you like to stop doing if possible?
• Where do you see yourself this time next year?

For more ideas on talking points for one-to-ones, there is a handy resource by Small Improvements, a website with tools specific to learning and development. 

Reflect, celebrate, and improve!

It’s good practice to reflect on your strategy, seeing what has worked and what hasn’t. That’s why tracking progress early and often is important. It’s useful to analyze data such as:

• Department KPIs. How have the learning and development goals contributed to these?
• Company goals. have they been achieved? What approaches were successful? Which were not?
• Employee growth and how people thrive. Kim Scott describes employees as ‘Rockstars and Superstars’, and companies need both types of people to excel. Superstar growth in terms of L&D strategy can be measured through promotions and progression. Rockstars’ success is measured through satisfaction and the ability to thrive in their current role. 

Reviewing the success of the company’s L&D strategy can be done in a formalized end-of-year retrospective. Development is an ongoing process of growth as we learn, change, and develop new skills. With the information from our L&D retrospectives, we should take the time to celebrate successes and then use the feedback to improve our strategy each time.  This can be done by identifying: 

• What has worked, and what will continue? 
• What didn’t work
• What are our key lessons this year?
• What are our focus areas for next year?
• Any parting thoughts?

Conclusion

Creating and implementing an L&D strategy is an ongoing process, and something that should be just as important as the daily running of a company, and the bigger projects taking place. 

Having a strong strategy that is revisited regularly and ensures that employees are enabled to do their best work will result in success all around.

What are your thoughts on creating and implementing an L&D strategy? Are there any tools or techniques you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments!

Bored out of your mind, and struggling to focus, the host is bleating on… and on. The concepts are too hard to follow, the words becoming a meaningless, tiresome cloud. Next time you struggle to sleep, it’ll be this guy’s waffling drivel that’ll send you to the land of nod.

Together, we’ll discover how to put the “Pow!” back into PowerPoint.

In this article we’ll explore: 

• Why visual presentations are important
• What to consider when planning presentations
• How to design an engaging visual presentation
• How to choose an engaging format
• Which tools are best for designing presentations
• Tips on how to deliver your workshop presentation

Why Are Visual Presentations Important?

The purpose is to share brilliant ideas with an audience. This might be a piece of work or an educational concept in a workshop; the aim is to communicate with people, make them feel something, and take action. We all want our audience to leave an event feeling motivated and inspired, and that the workshop was of value.

The importance of visuals is often overlooked, either due to a lack of confidence in working with visual design, lack of time or both. For a workshop facilitator, using visual aids could actually save time, better represent our ideas and concepts to a group, and help you present more confidently. “How?”, you ask.

When it comes to saving time, a picture is really worth a thousand words. There is no need to type up your presentations or make wordy bullet points on every slide when a simple image can share the message for you. 

Visual presentations put across an immediate message. Images are emotive and can deliver a story much faster than words, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. An image that can share an idea, can be more memorable than trying to remember very specific terminology. 

Creating visuals becomes part of a wider conversation in inclusive communication. Images are universally understood, and the eyes can “read” a picture with less effort than reading and comprehending several paragraphs. Imagine describing the color blue as a phrase. It is much easier to present it as it exists. 

Graphics are easy to share, and 65% of us are Visual learners. For anyone who has missed out on the meeting, a visual booklet can do the job of sharing the subject with them, and the added benefit of being able to view it in their own time. The power of social media also plays a huge part in the spreading of information and well-designed infographic slides can take your presentations and workshops outside of the room, with the potential to make a global impact. Sharability goes further with visual elements.

For me, a visual presentation is a lifesaver! Using slides has saved me a lot of time and made me feel more confident whilst presenting too. I don’t fumble around with notes, as the visuals can act as a prompt to remind me of where I’m at in my talk.

When presenting online, I find the value of visuals and slides even more important. It takes the attention away from my actions, and onto the graphics themselves. The participants can hear what I’m saying, but their eyes focus on the visual information which helps in retaining information and ideas beyond the workshop.    

What to consider when creating a visual presentation

I’m naturally quite a visual person, and I’ve often wondered if I could make a visual presentation without planning first what it is that I want to say. As an experiment, I gave it a go and it was a huge struggle. So, if you think that designing visuals is something that only designers can do and that they find it easy… it doesn’t and they don’t. 

As a starting point: get out a pen and paper and write down everything you want to say. This ensures you have all of the ideas and information out in black and white. I find that by leaving space between the writing and structuring, coming back at it with fresh eyes is a perfect way to work without feeling rushed. I rarely add to what I’ve written, it’s mostly about removing.

Recently I had written a LOT of information for an event. A day later, I took a second view to edit. A lot of writing is quite self-indulgent, so it helps to consider the audience. I cut up sections of the paper, keeping only what was the most necessary information, and collated it together. The rest of the sentences didn’t make the cut. You can try the editing exercise here. 

Less is More- an exercise in editing #presentation #presentation skills #writing #workshop #meeting design 

This exercise is ideal for editing written content in a hands-on way. A simple and effective exercise for editing workshop content or presentation text for talks. Use it when you have to write for a specific audience and want them to stay focused on the most important information.

As an expert in your field, it’s likely you’ll have a lot of content, and editing is so valuable to ensure your audience has relevant details. Don’t bore their socks off 😉

So now that you have an idea of your core content, you can move along the process, considering these factors before jumping into the design stages:

• Audience
• Purpose
• Structure

Audience

 Let’s start by asking, “who is your audience?“

• if you are being commissioned to present a topic to a pre-determined group, then you’ll need to cater to their understanding of the topic. You’ll want to ensure that the information will be relevant and meets or goes beyond their expectations.
• if the topic is of your own choice, and the angle you’ve chosen to take, who do you want to take part? Finding them, and attracting them to the workshop will be part of your marketing efforts, as well as how you plan your structure and content.

We wouldn’t plan a workshop for ten-year-olds in the same way we might for adults. Consider what tone of voice you might use, the style in which we present how we use slides, and the content itself. You won’t be able to do this for each and every individual, but how you determine and empathize with your listeners can be done by creating a persona, or several personas. 

Create an overarching idea of who might be present, then consider how to engage them and meet their needs by asking yourself the following in more depth:

Why are they there?

Let’s look at their reason for attending your event. Have they come to learn from you in particular? If you are a specialist in your field and the workshop is an area of great interest to people, you’ll most likely have a deep understanding, and along with that, expectations to be filled. 

Have they come to gain a better understanding of the topic? Are they there to challenge themselves and their existing views, or perhaps yours?

How much do they know already?

Are your participants already proficient in the topic you’re delivering? You’d hopefully know this in advance of your workshop so you can adapt your material, and create a pitch in line with the group’s knowledge. If their experience level is unknown, an opener to your discussion might be to ask about their subject knowledge, ideas and expectations. That way you can tailor your language and approach.

It helps to be well versed in your workshop, to select sections you can skip out in favor of diving deeper into more advanced information. Improvisation isn’t usually a skill you’d immediately connect with presenting, but with practice, learning how to improvise can become an empowering tool to have.

For beginners, you’ll most likely take an introductory approach. This doesn’t mean it has to be dry or boring. Make it more interesting and engaging by weaving in an interactive exercise, or team debate within your presentation design. That way, the participants can gather more hands-on experience to support their understanding. This can of course use visual handouts, such as a workbook, or include a well-designed visual exercise on an interactive whiteboard.

What is their background and communication style?

Your presentation style, language, and cultural references should be considered in the writing and designing process. I recently attended a workshop on how we can create better inclusion for diverse audiences by considering the language we use. It really made me think about how we often lean towards using English as a “default” language, and how words often hold different weights and contexts in other languages.

Remote workshops and presentations mean we may have a very diverse audience than if we were presenting in-person, in one location. Online could mean 140 people in different time zones across different countries with different backgrounds. Being aware of differences makes it easier to use inclusive, easy-to-understand language in your presentation so that no one feels alienated. Speaking with clear articulation will make a big difference in how you are understood. 

You might have the best workshop on the planet, but if you don’t communicate in the style of your group, the impact will be lost. Do they want a short and snappy talk with a clear outcome at the end? Some audiences appreciate a motivational and inspirational talk that is led through emotional storytelling. Knowing their communication preferences can win over or lose your audience.

Purpose

Before you begin designing your presentation, it’s important to consider what your purpose is. This is your mission statement, your project brief and your raison d’être. Here is where you want to ask yourself, what is it that you want your audience to think, feel or do? Are we creating an emotional impact or an educational goal?

Be as clear as possible with your core message, making it as specific as possible, so that you can keep this in mind throughout the process of writing, editing, designing and delivering presentations. This will keep your focus sharp, and avoid any unnecessary derailments taking your viewers away from what it is you hope to achieve.

Common purposes are to: inspire, inform, persuade or entertain.

• I want to inspire the audience to help reduce food poverty by leading a cookery workshop using supermarket waste.
• I want to inform the group about the future of rural tourism, so they might consider how they could adapt their own farming businesses to host visitors. 
• I want to persuade my team to reduce our use of plastic in the fashion industry, by presenting a viable alternative made from mushrooms.
• I want to entertain by pretending to be a Martian visiting Earth for the first time. My purpose is to help the participants understand their product from a new perspective!

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home  #creative thinking #idea generation #remote-friendly #brainstorming #energizer #team 

Use Craig Raine’s poem A Martian Sends a Postcard Home to spur creative thinking and encourage perspective shifting in a group. After a warm-up, you can then use this martian perspective to describe your product or service and gain new insights and ideas.

I recently designed a workshop called Design Thinking for Beginners and ran a SessionLab show and tell session aimed at facilitators who would like to run the workshop for teams new to design thinking. If you missed it, you can watch it back here. My purpose was to inform the attendees of the challenges newbies have with design thinking, and how they can make it a fun and digestible process.

I chose to relate each stage of design thinking to an everyday project of choosing or baking a birthday cake. My presentation was broken down into manageable chunks. Describing design thinking could be a laborious task, but keeping the text definition simple, with plenty of white space highlighted the point in one sentence. 

For the workshop itself, I incorporated interactive exercises throughout the process to lock in the understanding of design thinking and how we generate ideas. For the ideate stage of design thinking- I created a game show style exercise called the Ideas Vault where I chose to create a fun layout like a 90s computer game. The design process worked by gathering inspiration using a mix of pre-made Canva templates and adding my own twist. I talk more about Canva and design tools here.

Structure

The way you choose to structure a visual presentation will depend wholly on the purpose. The way you communicate your key message should be crafted in a way for the audience to follow along easily and act on those all-important takeaways at the end.

A solid structure will also make sure your points are clear so that you stay calm and on track when presenting. The structure of your topic, when written down and broken into manageable chunks will help hugely when it comes to creating the visual elements later. (we’ll get to that in the next section!)

Some common ways to structure your presentation could be

• Problem > Solution > Impact. Which you might use if your purpose is to inspire the audience to take action on a topic, by showing them a viable solution.
• You may start with an informative session and create a workshop as we mentioned before, to lead people through a learning process.
• A creative structure might be through storytelling, which might inspire and entertain. Once upon a time, this event happened, followed by the outcome and moral of the story.
• In any case, your presentation could follow the classic layout of: introduction, main body & conclusion, and you’d have a good foundation for your content.

Introduction

You have the first few seconds to grab people’s attention. First impressions are just as important as they’re made out to be! The introduction is the most important part, where the group will connect with you and decide if they want to listen to you or not. What would be a great hook for the audience to immediately buy into your presentation from the start?

Some people introduce themselves at the beginning- but you don’t have to. If you’re beginning with a story, this can be a very effective way to warm up your participants and make sure they’re really listening to you. Then you can introduce yourself when you know they have your attention, and they value what you have to say.

A quote or a provocative question or fact can get people thinking. You may use a thought-provoking image, which could be a prop, a video or a photo that introduces your presentation from the get-go. If you are offering a solution, go straight to the problem in your introduction.

Main body of presentation

Now that you’ve got your audience’s attention, and they have gathered an understanding and are intrigued to learn more, we can delve into the juice of your subject.

The main body involves presenting the data, and the important pieces of information. If you are offering a solution to the problem you introduced, expressing this with a visual, we place the subject right in front of them, and they don’t have to work so hard and use their imagination.

The main body doesn’t have to be a one-sided conversation. Listen! You might ask the group to interact, asking for their perspective. A talk or workshop can be a dialogue between the presenter and the group.

Conclusion

Your conclusion should be as snappy and engaging as your introduction. It may even loop back to the provocative question, or challenging problem. You’ll want to consider the impact on the attendees and most importantly, what you want them to do next! What action do you want them to take beyond the workshop?

What are the key takeaways? Highlight them as  Problem  > Solution  > Impact.

An effective class should tie up the opening question and objective, but still leave space for further exploration and discussion. Like a great film! They should not be saying, “I’m glad that’s over”. If it’s been designed with the audience in mind, they should feel something- energized or excited.

How to design an engaging visual presentation

Intro

Now that you’ve written the content and designed the structure, here are our top tips to get you creating impactful visuals to complement what you present verbally. We’ll cover:

• How to design your slides and what information to include
• How typography impacts accessibility and design 
• Making smart color choices for both emotional connection and accessibility

Designing your slides

When approaching a blank canvas, it can be hard to know where to start. Some people start with deciding how many slides they’ll use- the question, “How many slides are too many slides?” crops up regularly in these types of articles. Expert presenters say not to go over 20 visual slides, but this will of course depend on the length and complexity of your subject. Another tip is not to spend more than a minute on each slide to keep it snappy and people engaged.

If I am creating a presentation from scratch, I’ll start with the first slide, and keep it very simple before moving on to the next one. Always asking “what is this slide saying?” The first slide will be the title of my discussion, which will be visible to everyone joining the room. It sets the tone for what the topic will be about. If we were creating one around the topic of designing workshop slides, it might look like this:

I think the most important thing to remember is that each slide should have its own purpose, and not be overloaded with text. Where possible, use an image rather than words and think about how we might convey this message visually. Always start by defining the message and asking what the key takeaway for participants is. You can always further explain verbally.

When choosing an image, consider the audience and their context- a local photograph they can relate to, or a familiar face will often have more to say than a generic stock image.

Text will likely be used on your slides, and how much text is too much? If you begin planning your content by writing it all out and keeping only the most important parts, designing your slides will be a lot easier. I’d always recommend editing continuously throughout the process to create a meaningful message. If you can say something in 3 bullet points rather than 10, please do! Your audience will have a much easier time retaining the information.

Typography

“Good design is invisible”

Unless the subject of your presentation is about typography, it’s probably not the best time to be cracking out your most recently found, favorite font that’s “a bit different” or unusual. Stick to standard, trusted and most legible fonts that audiences can read and are familiar with. Otherwise, they’ll distract from the content. And content is King. 

“Good design is invisible”, a true and very useful phrase from Dieter Rams, who considers functionality in design as honest, long-lasting and with as little design as possible. This is a good theory to take throughout the design process. When looking for the right font, consider the tone you are using throughout your delivery too, and the overall message you are giving.

Good typography is your best friend for a presentation. When creating visuals for screens, as mentioned before, we are not typing out our speech word-for-word. Any text that is visually presented will have a very definite purpose as to why it is being displayed. This might be a quote, some data or the title of a book along with some further information in short form. Presentation slides are not a book.

Legibility is the most important thing when it comes to designing your visuals. Sans serif fonts are typically the best option for reading on a screen. Help your audience understand what you are communicating as quickly and easily as possible by ensuring the font sizes are easy to read. 

Create contrast and visual interest by choosing two fonts, one for headers and one for any body text. The contrast should still be harmonious, and not jarring to the eyes. Font hierarchy can help the audience differentiate between key points and more specific information. By choosing different weights and sizes, you can ensure your message is clearly heard and understood. 

• Minimum font size for main copy and bullets: 18 points
• Preferred font size for main copy and bullets: 24 points
• Preferred font size for headers or titles: 36 to 44 points

Personally, I like to choose font sizes slightly larger than recommended for body text. When we have a text-heavy page, I prefer to give the text plenty of surrounding white space and edit the copy as much as possible. From a design perspective, it helps legibility; and from a content perspective, it doubly ensures only the relevant text is presented on screen. I would definitely edit again at this stage. In this example for screens, the body text is 28pt and written in Open Sans, and the “Ideate” heading is 44pt in Agrandir wide.

Before creating any printed material for presentations, consider if it will truly be used and the environmental impact. I’d usually opt for sharing a digital version for people to refer back to after the workshop. It’s good practice to create a black and white version so that if it is printed out, the printing costs will be lower. There are of course digital accessibility issues, and some people might prefer a printed version. If so, select a serif font for any long text in a workbook or feedback form, with a minimum font size of 10-12pt.

Key points:

• Use Contrast
• Legibility
• Brand
• Tone

Colors

Deciding on the color scheme for a presentation is one of my favorite parts! Of course, you may have been given a branded color scheme to use, but if you have free reign in color choice and you enjoy the creative process, it can be a lot of fun.

For my show and tell on Design Thinking, I used the analogy of baking a cake and I felt that they conjure up an image of pastels. I used a gradient on the background so that I could use an array of colors without it being overbearing. I selected five key pastel colors for each stage of design thinking and to evoke a playful feel throughout. I was careful not to allow the colors to take over, so you’ll primarily see black and white use of color at the forefront for legibility.

Here are the key elements of how to choose a color scheme to complement your content:

Contrast

The first, and most important point when choosing colors, is to use contrast. Make sure your text and graphics stand out from the background and are easily seen. Contrast is the difference in opposing colors so that they don’t blend in together A light background should use dark text and perhaps one or two bold accent colors to highlight key points. A dark background should use light fonts.

If you’re unsure of how easy a slide is to read, there are an array of online tools that can check the contrast for you by following the web accessibility guidelines. On Contrast Checker, you can enter the HEX code of the background and foreground colors, and you’ll get an idea of legibility. The sliders in the tool can be used if you need to improve the contrast and amend the color choices. There are also resources to guide you in how to select the color with an online eyedropper tool in case you’re not familiar with the HEX color codes.

Another contrast checker tool also shows the background and foreground with text examples and gives a rating to the accessibility of the text. This website has a whole host of tools, and can even pick a suitable palette for you.

Branding

If you’re working with a client, they may already have their own brand packaging and presentation template, including their colors. You may feel that this removes your choice of colors as it has been decided already, for example, they may use an in-house color language to refer to particular data on a graph. But the opposite may be true and might mean further considerations for visuals. It is important to know how to choose because when you create graphics or diagrams because you may have to select colors so that explanatory text can be seen on top of a shape or part of a graph.

When working with a client, it is important to share any documentation with their design team, and the best way to do this is by providing editable files. Working with a designer can massively lift the load on creating your presentation visuals. If there is no design team, but you are given design assets to work with, sharing both your visuals and your presentation agenda for collaboration and sign-off is a must. Create your agenda in SessionLab, and attach your visual presentation for ease of sharability. 

Emotion

Studies have shown that color has an effect on expressing or feeling emotions. It will help to consider the tone that you are using throughout your presentation, the message you are delivering, and how you might want your audience to feel.

Warm colors, in the middle of the color spectrum, that aren’t too bold or too light create a warm and comfortable feeling. Bright reds and oranges can feel energetic and powerful. Or even create a sense of danger. In contrast, cooler colors such as greens, blues and purples can feel calm or evoke a sense of sadness.

We have an exercise that can help identify emotions and grow a better emotional vocabulary, the feelings wheel. It includes a visual attachment displaying the emotions in a range of colors- this may help select a tone for your color scheme. 

How to choose an engaging presentation format

Intro

We are almost there! The content is edited and your visual slides are ready, the next stage is to consider the format in which you’ll deliver your workshop or meeting. This is when you can consider any additional tools that you can use to your advantage when presenting. This might be video, photography or visual data. Or even props. Consider which other visual aids may help people to better understand the process or story you are conveying.

What presentation method will keep them engaged? How will you inspire and capture their imagination?

I’d recommend simplicity, and not try to include every form of media. Consider the purpose and message and select which format delivers it most effectively. Used with intention, video can be great. But animated graphics or flashy text is unnecessary and will add to the cognitive load of your audience, especially if they have any visual impairments.   

Video

Video can be very effective, so long as it’s kept brief. If it’s longer than a minute, you may lose the attention of the audience, and the momentum of your presentation. A film clip should be creative and add another dimension, not an infomercial or promo piece, it’s a tool to say something that you cannot put across otherwise.

Films can have great benefits of showing a story. In a TED Talk about the intelligence of crows, the scientist showed a clip of the crow bending a hook to create a tool and fish a piece of food out of a tube. It put across his point better than anything he could’ve said.

I use recordings in situations like this, to demonstrate a case study. It’s often more powerful to have the original storyteller sharing their experience than me giving a second-hand account of the tale. Bringing in other voices in this way can add further diversity to your workshop.

Still images

JPEGs are compressed files and are used for photo formats. When a photo is taken, it is a RAW file that is editable. Once it’s compressed to a JPEG, it retains around a tenth of the information, meaning it is a smaller and less detailed file. JPEGS are used in photography, but not in vector graphics (drawings, typography, graphs, etc), as the detail lost can create pixelation if you aim to blow the image up to a larger size.

PNGs retain detail and are editable. They are still compressed files, but the pixels aren’t lost. Any graphics you create should be saved as a PNG, as you’ll be able to keep the image sharp, regardless of the size.

The photography you choose must be relatable. I’m definitely not against stock imagery per se, it’s amazing to have access to a library of searchable images to strengthen what you are saying. But, often you’ll see the same images repeated in different workshops and presentations and they’ll start to lose their meaning, or become too familiar. There are great free resources like Unsplash and if you spend time looking for a more unique way to put your point across, there are lots to choose from.

I’ve also had an Adobe Express subscription which gives access to photography and graphics and templates which you to customize in editing with little design skills. Ideally, being able to take your own photographs, or work with a professional photographer to capture exactly what you want is going to give your audience a far more unique experience. This is often a luxury.

As facilitators, a way around this could be to create our own library of photos that we capture at each presentation. When I’ve run crafting workshops, it feels quite natural to take photographs of the work we are creating. And those who are camera-shy, they’re more open to photographs of their hands in action. Over time, we’ll have a whole collection of resources.

If you enjoy photography, having a good camera as part of your kit might intrigue people, invite people to take photos of each other and the workshop process. This could be an exercise that you do to open or close your talk. Or in some cases, especially if it’s a visual presentation, and not too distracting, invite people to take their own photos and share after with a #hashtag (promo and photos in one!) And of course, get everyone’s signature attesting they are OK with photos.

Visual data & symbols

Visualizing data makes it more interesting, engaging and memorable than cold hard figures. For the majority of audiences, it’s easier to understand in a visual format than in a list of forgettable numbers. By creating charts, graphs or maps, we are able to see patterns and understand the context of the statistics. A pie chart displaying percentages in corresponding colors tells our brain quickly which section has the largest number.

Even when we analyze word-driven data, a visual representation is easier to see straight away. When I’ve worked with community groups in the design thinking process, we’ve often used Google surveys to capture written evidence. This type of qualitative data can be a challenge to sift through, so for an initial overview, a tool like word cloud can show how many times a particular word or phrase appears and turns it into an image. The more times a word appears, the larger it is on the image.

The use of icons and emojis (sparingly! And in context 😉) can add another element of visual understanding to presentations. Illustrations and hand-dawn symbols might better express your point than a photograph too. An opportunity to work with a live scribe or graphic facilitator whilst presenting could add an interesting dimension to a talk. If it involves audience participation, having someone on hand to capture the conversation visually can keep engagement and attention going!

The best tools for designing your presentation

Canva

Canva has become a much more powerful tool than it was. You can even edit your workshop recordings with it now! It’s perfect for anyone with little design knowledge as it has great templates for presentations, lots of which are free. It has social media templates too, which are perfect for advertising your upcoming workshop.

Adobe Creative Suite

I do love Creative Suite, and it still is a great package of tools for designers. Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are the industry standard for design tools and have all the capabilities you’d need as a graphic designer. If that package is beyond your scope, Adobe Express is a great option for pre-made templates and stock imagery. Like Canva, it also works well as an app on a smartphone.

Keynote 

Keynote comes as standard with MacBook and has had a whole new upgrade including being able to use the camera on your Mac or an external camera to show yourself directly on the slides. Super handy for an online event! You can also show the screen of a connected iPad or iPhone and it now has co-hosting capabilities. 

SessionLab

Of course! SessionLab is where you can keep all of your presentation notes, and break down the agenda into blocks, so if you decide to switch up parts of your presentation- you can drag and drop to a different section of your talk. It is a much easier process, as it will also keep any other attachments or exercises in that block neatly collated in one place. It’s easy to share with any co-hosts or clients before the presentation day arrives!

How to deliver a workshop presentation with visuals

Practice

Some people memorize their speech word for word, which can work well if you’re a dab hand at amateur dramatics. 

On the other hand, that might feel too stressful or rigid. Bill Murray is famously known to read a script once and throw it away! For you, it may be better to consider the key points you’d like to make, and really know your subject matter so whatever arises, you’ve got it covered. Your visuals might act as a prompt for you too, the main message will be communicated visually, and you can feel free to go into more depth.

The best way to ensure that you nailed the slide design for your session is to practice. It’s important to practice noting your timing, that you’ve covered all the important points, and that each slide transitions smoothly from one to the next. You want the presentation to be as seamless as possible. The best way to practice is in front of someone and gather feedback.

Before our design thinking for beginners show and tell, I rehearsed in front of my fellow team members, instructing them to wear their “facilitator’s hats” whilst listening, so they could hear from a facilitator’s perspective and give constructive feedback.

Afterward, you can continue to add and edit, removing some sections, and making room for more key discussions to be had in-depth. If it is an informal presentation that you will run more than once, it could develop over time. If it is a one-off very important meeting, it’s vital to get as much preparation practice as possible.

Expect nerves

If I get nervous, I purposely talk slightly slower than I usually would naturally, and it calms the nerves down. There’s also no harm in mentioning that you’re nervous, it’s an honest approach and can create an authentic connection.

We’re all human. And no one would expect you to not be nervous. Nerves, to an extent, can be a good thing. They bring a bit of energy and focus to your talk, and a little adrenaline. If you know your subject matter inside out, all you really need to do is breathe, and talk. 

Speaking with one of our community members, Yvonne Chin Irving on the subject of nerves, she suggested diaphragmatic breathing, or more a more fun term, “balloon breathing”:

Belly breathe. Slowly. Imagine your tummy has a balloon that fills up when you breathe. Exhale all the air. Notice your tummy as it flattens. Next, breathe in slowly and fill your “balloon” with breath 🎈. Do this a few times to help calm yourself down. You can start this on the way to your session, do it in the car or while you’re setting up for your session. (It really works)

Yvonne Chin Irving

We’d love it if you joined the conversation in our SessionLab community!

Tech check

Having a technical rehearsal beforehand can help avoid blips. Ensure the right people have screen-sharing abilities, and that screens in the in-person space work. Iron out any microphone issues or problems with echo prior to the big presentation! On the day itself a technical disaster could strike, so here are some practical tips to circumnavigate these and stay professional:

• Create different formats for your presentation. If it’s a Keynote or Powerpoint, have a PDF version available in case of any tech issues you’ll still have a high-quality version available.
• If including video, have backup screen-shots as images to demonstrate your points in case the video doesn’t run.
• Be analog ready. Know your presentation without the use of slides- or print them out so that if there is a complete technical breakdown, you can confidently present. This might include creating printed handouts for people to refer to when you direct them to do so. Or, if they have their own smartphones, send them the link to your visuals or any important videos to watch back after your talk, to avoid distractions as you speak.

Accessibility

Ensuring your audience has the best experience, requires being aware of accessibility needs. Is access to the building easy for anyone with physical disabilities? Are the seats comfortable, and allow for ease of viewing for people of different heights? 

We’ve discussed the best way to use typography for ease of reading for anyone with visual impairments, and when setting up your screen, it is a good idea to see how it will look in the actual event environment. Additionally, you may share larger-print handouts on yellow paper for anyone with dyslexia. This is another reason why knowing your audience in the planning stage will make sure your presentation is enjoyable and accessible for everyone.   

Agenda planning

SessionLab is an agenda planning tool that makes presenting a lot smoother! You are able to allocate time to each section of content to keep yourself on track throughout. In your preparation stage, you can attach all of your materials to your SessionLab agenda, knowing exactly when you’ll use each of them. It’s so neatly organized and easy to edit and shift blocks if you decide to change the order of content for a future session.

In conclusion

I hope you have found this guide valuable, and that it inspires lots of ideas when planning your next presentation! There are a wealth of resources dotted around this article, and I’ll include a few more here that I highly recommend:

Lean Presentation Design A whole website by Maurizo la Cava dedicated to presentation strategy

Ted Talk: How to Write Less, but say more is an excellent talk by Jim VandeHai about short and effective communication.

Five Things to Know About Your Audience Before You Present if You Want to Be Successful useful tips on how to empathize with your group for a more successful presentation.

Let us know below in the comments if you have any questions, or any tips of your own to add to the conversation!

Design thinking is a great methodology for bringing human-centered thinking to your team. But how can we make it easier for newbies to grasp the five stages of the design thinking process and see how they can apply them in their day-to-day work? 

In our design thinking for beginners guide, we explore how you can introduce design thinking by asking a group to solve the simple challenge of baking a cake. You’ll find a complete workshop template alongside tips to help you engage a group new to design thinking. 

What if I told you that Design Thinking really is a piece of cake?

Have you ever started a workshop where the participants are a little overwhelmed at what the buzzword “design thinking” means? 

“Are we designing how we think?”, one person asks. In a way, yes! We are designing our approach to creative thinking by going through a proven process in a mindful and self-reflexive way in order to find better solutions.

“Do I have to be a designer to study this, and have any prior background knowledge?” another person asks. No, the great thing about design thinking is its accessibility! 

Whether brand new to the idea or a design professional, this way of thinking and collaborating, can often give us innovative, surprising and ground-breaking solutions to the challenges we face every day. 

In this guide, we’ll explore how to introduce design thinking to beginners with a workshop that uses the analogy of baking a cake. We’ll walk you through the key stages of the template and offer some tips to help you along the way.

• How to run the design thinking for beginners workshop
• How baking a cake can explain design thinking
• Step 1: Empathize
• Step 2: Define
• Step 3: Ideate
• Step 4: Prototype
• Step 5: Test
• Tips for teaching design thinking

How to run the design thinking for beginners workshop

When introducing design thinking to a group, the best place to start is by answering the question, what is design thinking? Our cake design process seeks to provide the answer in an engaging, experiential format. 

In the simplest definition, design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. It is often used to solve complex problems which don’t have a straightforward outcome while keeping people at the center of the discussion. 

Design thinking consists of five key stages which we’ll explore in this workshop: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. These five stages of design thinking form an effective process for problem-solving that is useful for any team wanting to create better solutions and products. 

When introducing design thinking to beginners, it can be helpful to start with a simple, small-scale problem. This approach helps participants recognize each stage of the process, and also understand what tools and exercises are used at each point.

In this workshop, we’ll ask the group to approach the problem of baking a cake. Analogies are a useful tool to empathize with our group and I’ve found using this cake-making approach successful with many groups. By learning the design thinking process in parallel with designing a cake, the steps are fun, relatable and easy to digest. Through this process, participants will start to develop their design thinking muscles and learn how to take on bigger projects in future. 

In the following sections, you’ll see how the Introduction to Design Thinking workshop explores each stage of the design process through the analogy of baking a cake. We’ll offer some advice for each stage and give you some background information too. First, let’s explore the problem at the heart of this workshop design, which is baking a cake!

How baking a cake can explain design thinking

Let’s say we are creating a cake for our friend, and we can’t decide what kind of cake to bake or to buy. The cake will be eaten by several people with different tastes and so the challenge is,  “how do we ensure that everyone enjoys the birthday cake?”

We ask the group to consider different types of cake to demonstrate the scale of our problem: a cupcake, a birthday cake and a wedding cake. For example, a cupcake is designed to be eaten by one person, a low-cost treat that doesn’t warrant a special occasion. Someone might eat a cupcake every other day.

A birthday cake is designed and baked for several people. It is relatively affordable, perhaps a mid-range cost if it’s for a milestone birthday, or a low-cost supermarket purchase for a low-key, informal celebration.

A wedding cake will be seen and eaten by many guests. It is proudly displayed, and the act of the happy couple cutting into it is celebrated by close family and friends. Designed for a very special occasion, the cake will often be custom-made.

By using a simple, engaging problem like finding the right cake, the group can follow the entire design thinking process easily and have fun while doing so. 

It’s worth noting that before you approach the five stages of design thinking, it’s always helpful to consider the scale of the problem and as a group, accept the project. 

Starting with these simple examples of different cakes is a great way to achieve this. It’s also an effective way to engage participants and get them thinking about user needs, budgets, resources and other vital elements of the design thinking process. 

Step 1: Empathize

The first part of the design thinking process is Empathize. The simplest way to introduce the Empathize stage is often by reminding everyone that design thinking is human-centered and that we are always seeking to understand our end user’s needs. 

Dynamic groups who are used to problem-solving may come up with an idea straight away, and decide that they are definitely going to run with that as their solution. Someone might say, “Let’s bake a chocolate sponge cake, everyone likes chocolate,” and a few other people nod and murmur in agreement. This statement, “everyone likes chocolate,” could be identified as a common assumption, and as a facilitator, you could see this as an opportunity to demonstrate that by assuming, we aren’t empathizing with our end-user. 

You could develop an exercise in which participants look for evidence to support their statement, and evidence against it, thus coming to the conclusion that “not everyone likes chocolate.” This gives our workshop participants an understanding of why it is so important to work in an empathetic manner throughout our journey. 

We can then establish a variety of methods in how we might Empathize with our users:

• By Engaging with them, we can understand our user’s needs. Honest and open conversations can give us insights into our user’s preferences and needs. For example, we might conduct a simple interview or survey to find out their likes and dislikes when it comes to desserts.
• By observing them and getting involved in their daily interactions, we might find out more about their habits. Perhaps we ask them to keep a food diary, and this may help us see what tastes they have, and if there are any foods or flavors they tend to avoid.
• By Watching and Listening to them. For example, we may combine a conversation with an interaction, and ask our users to make their favorite recipe whilst talking us through the process. Here we might notice that they say one thing, but do another, or they might explain why they use a particular mix of seasoning. 

For our cake design, these insights could help us discover our user’s flavor preferences, any hobbies that might relate to the visual design of the cake; and who else might be eating the cake at the party. By using methods of empathizing to discover more information, we can get more context to our problem, and start to understand the wants and needs we hope to meet with our end product. 

This workshop has been constructed with the simplest solutions in mind, and for the empathize phase, we team people up as pairs and set them the task of interviewing one another about their birthday plans. This includes open questions that could help us uncover information to aid the design of our cakes. It is often useful to suggest questions that participants might wish to use, and give examples of open questions. If there is time, you can create an exercise to develop questions from closed statements and assumptions, into open questions that don’t lead the person.

When designing a workshop, or series of workshops for participants- you might suggest that their empathize stage involves designing a cake for someone outside of the workshop group. In which case you could finish the lesson here and return back later to process a few days later, giving participants a chance to engage outside of the workshop space. The great thing about these exercises is that you have the freedom to expand them to work with your audience and how best suits their needs.

Step 2: Define

We then move into the Define stage of the design process, where we will create Personas of our partners based on their responses in the Empathize stage. When running similar workshops, I’ve found that contextualizing the data into human characters has helped the participants relate to the user’s needs. I use examples of Personas, explaining that they could be based on one person, and therefore be very real, or if they use the data from several people, they can create a fictional character with whom they will empathize and keep in mind throughout the design journey. 

Often when the group creates their Personas, they may realize that they need more information, some saying, “Oh, I don’t know if I have asked the right questions,” in which case, we as facilitators can demonstrate that they are able to return to the empathize stage, as Design Thinking doesn’t have to be a linear process. In pairs, they can continue to fill in any blanks with their partner when creating Personas in order to get a more rounded view of their end-user.

We finish our Define process, by presenting our personas to the group, and together voting on two personas we will choose to design cakes for. We then create two teams, ensuring that the chosen Persona profiles are on opposite teams and are designed for one another.

Step 3: Ideate

In the Ideate phase we’ve chosen two exercises, one expansive and one focused. The first is a rapid-fire ideas generation session, it can be a very energetic and fast-paced assignment. It’s important to encourage all ideas, no matter how big or small, and we will set an “anything is possible” mindset. We focus on quantity, not quality and even half-baked ideas can be contributed to the discussion. 

If we designed our workshop to run over a longer period, the group may wish to explore ideas further, by discovering recipes and cake designs. As a facilitator, you could mention that this form of research could identify with our Empathize stage, as well as our Ideate stage.

Before we move into our second exercise, it’s often useful to discuss and explain who our Stakeholders are. We have already mentioned that the people eating the cake would be called our end users. When considering the term “Stakeholder” this could mean anyone who is involved in the cake-making or consuming process.

There might be one person sourcing the ingredients, another baking the cake and another delivering it to our Persona. So there would be a manufacturer, a delivery and logistics person, and a supplier, who may be a supermarket chain or a local small shop. If our Persona character was a strong supporter of local business, that may play a part in where the cake ingredients were sourced. This might also be balanced with our budget and our time.

Our second exercise is called the Ideas Vault, this exercise is designed to relieve our participants of any decision-overwhelm when it comes to choosing which ideas to take forward in our prototype phase. As creative and exciting as our rapid-fire exercises are, they can leave our group with too many options, feeling swamped with potential solutions. Through the idea vault process, we are narrowing our ideas down by asking a series of questions that relate to the feasibility of the design, and if it truly meets our Persona’s needs. 

We might also wish to consider if the idea excites us, as innovative ideas should light a spark within us to have the drive and momentum to carry it through to the next stage of the process. This exercise sits in the Ideate phase, but could equally be called a Defining process, as we are refining our project further, proving again the nonlinear nature of Design Thinking and the freedom to adapt it for our requirements. We’ll finish this exercise with a selection of ideas to bring through and prototype.

Step 4: Prototype

It’s very useful for participants to understand exactly what is meant by a prototype, and that it is not a near-finished product. A prototype is used to test at an early stage, gather feedback and simulate a user experience. A prototype is a visual, interactive mock-up of an idea and can be two-dimensional, for example, a drawing or a diagram, or they might take a three-dimensional form. In our presentation at the beginning of the workshop, we outline some ways in which we might prototype our cake;

• Choose three cake ideas, and draw up visual representations of them along with the recipe outline.
• Bake two small cupcake versions to taste-test with our end-user.
• Create 3D versions of our cake design with card and paper, and layout the ingredients around each prototype.

As we are going for the simplest options in our workshop, we have suggested that the teams draw visual representations, adding possible recipe ingredients and flavors which they will then present to the end-user for testing. A way in which this cake design process could be elaborated is in the context of creating the workshop alongside a school’s Home Economics class, or other groups who regularly have access to kitchens and cooking equipment. Their process could move at a slower pace over a semester, linking baking with Design Thinking and they might create small cupcake prototypes as groups.

Step 5: Test

In the final stage of the Design Thinking process, we are capturing honest responses and feedback, by inviting our end-user to a glimpse into what the final outcome might look like. By presenting our cake prototypes, our personas can imagine the delicious possibilities of their celebration dessert. We then can use our gathered insights that analyze the effectiveness of our chosen prototypes and then refine the idea accordingly.

Lastly in our workshop, we celebrate by selecting a final cake outcome. As our process is a simple one, it makes sense for us to settle on a solution, and of course, as it’s a birthday, we’ll have a deadline and party to deliver the cake to! For more complex problems, we might revisit previous stages, and create further prototypes using our deeper understanding.

Tips for teaching design thinking to beginners

By following the workshop template, you’ll find a heap of tips and tricks for teaching design thinking to a new group. Below, I’ve collected a few more tips you might find useful if you are using your own design or trying another approach entirely. 

• In the introduction, it’s very useful to frame the Design Thinking process as a mindset rather than a rigid set of instructions and rules.
• Create a space where everyone can have their voice heard, and where no question is a stupid question. 
• If teaching design thinking online, you may wish to consider which online tools you’ll use.
• Most people learn by using the process in relation to a specific problem, you don’t have to use the cake baking analogy. You could relate it to designing a book cover, choosing a holiday destination, or buying an office desk chair. Feel free to mix up ideas that will keep your workshop engaging!
• Allowing the journey to be flexible. You may not teach the steps in a linear manner. Perhaps there is already a product in the prototype phase, and you use the tools from the Empathize stage to find out more from your users as they test the product.
• The importance of Design Thinking being user-centered can never be mentioned enough!
• Reminding students of the benefits of the Design Thinking Process is important, especially if they become bogged down or want to skip a stage. 
• What they do after the workshop is the most important. It’s important that the group understand the mindset and that they can reflect on real-life scenarios they could apply Design Thinking to. A way in which you could continue their Design Thinking learning might be to check in a few days or a week after the workshop for further feedback.

In conclusion

As a facilitator, we should ensure that everyone comes away from the workshop feeling empowered, with more clarity on what Design Thinking means, and how they can apply the methods to real-life projects. 

We can ensure the success of the Workshop by asking the participants about any particular projects that could benefit from these techniques. That way, if there is an opportunity to develop and deepen the process, you might create a series of workshops that aim to tackle different issues and projects.

By keeping in mind what, why and how for each Design Thinking stage and contextualizing the topic into something relatable, we can give clarity on Design Thinking and deliver it as simply as a piece of cake. What kind of projects do you think this workshop could relate to?

If you plan to use this workshop agenda, do you see it as a stand-alone learning, or as a starting point for further exploration? Please add your ideas to the comments below!

In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of emotional intelligence for groups and explore 25 emotional intelligence activities to help build our skills, creating a more positive work environment.

Self-improvement efforts and exploring ways to become more emotionally intelligent are at an all-time high. I thought it was just me who geeked out on Daniel Goleman, but according to this article, 94% of Millennials were working on some form of self-improvement. Self-awareness, effective communication and empathy skills are all valuable character traits we can actually develop and improve.

Burnout, miscommunication, and workplace conflicts can impact employee happiness, even affecting turnover. This can be avoided by having better conversations and collaborating to constructively resolve issues as they arise. By understanding ourselves and others better, we become more resilient to challenges and feel more emotionally connected with our team. 

In this guide, we’ll primarily focus on developing skills in the context of a work environment, these relationship skills, and emotional intelligence activities can also be applied to our personal lives as well. Together we’ll look at:

• What is Emotional Intelligence?
• Why is Emotional Intelligence important in the workplace?
• How to Build Emotional Intelligence for Teams
• Activities to Improve Self-Awareness
• Activities for better Self-Management
• Exercises to build Empathy
• Exercises to improve our Communication Skills
• Emotional Intelligence games for better Group Dynamics

What is Emotional Intelligence?

So what is Emotional Intelligence? 

Like you, I was curious to research how we could understand our own emotional intelligence to build better relationships. Understanding our basic emotions helps social awareness, and objectively identify emotions before acting. I read Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, considered to be a key text on the topic. Goleman is seen as the founder of Emotional Intelligence, however, the term itself was defined by Salovey and Mayer as:

“the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action.”

Salovey & Mayer

Goleman goes a little further in his definition, and outlines the skills of emotional intelligence as being able:

• to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations
• to control impulse and delay gratification 
• to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; 
• to empathize 
• to hope 

The first three abilities: motivation, self-regulation and the self-imposed delay of gratification come under emotional self-management, which can aid us in achieving our goals, whether it be building a business, writing a blog post, or running a marathon.

My favorite definition is the simplest. The Cambridge dictionary defines emotional intelligence as: “the ability to understand the way people feel and react and to use this skill to make good judgments and to avoid or solve problems.” Emotional Intelligence is a set of skills that can, in most people, be improved.

Improvement in emotional intelligence could be by adapting the way you communicate, considering how your point will be heard. An example of this is understanding the difference between assertiveness and aggression when setting firm boundaries.

Why is Emotional Intelligence important in the workplace? 

Work is an emotional subject. It has the power to affect our mood positively or negatively and impacts our health and relationships. Organizations that expect emotions to be left at the office door can create an unhealthy separation between being human and being productive. Undervaluing empathic employees in this way means missing out on beneficial soft skills that produce higher productivity, connection, and trust within teams.

Recently, more businesses are championing qualities like openness and active communication, recognizing that these skills are an asset to business productivity. A great leader sees the value in aligning people to work towards a common goal. They approach this by cultivating an emotionally inclusive work environment, resulting in a less stressed and more productive team.

Caring for our teams isn’t a tick-box exercise of fruit bowls, desk yoga, and “Wellness Wednesdays” – although I wouldn’t say no to desk yoga. We take active involvement in improving communication by understanding our emotions and how they affect our actions.

Finding better ways to communicate with our colleagues will result in meaningful contributions to our team and a thriving workplace. Similarly, if we can recognize areas for growth and align with our personal motivations, we are more likely to fulfill our career goals. 

Goleman’s book was written in 1995, and points out that,

“Almost three out of four executives see EI as a “must-have” skill for the workplace in the future as the automatizing of routine tasks bumps up against the impossibility of creating effective AI for activities that require emotional skill”

Daniel Goleman

That future he speaks of is very much here, and developing emotional intelligence in the workplace is a necessity for a productive and healthy team. 

How to Build Emotional Intelligence for Teams

The context of the emotional intelligence group activities outlined in this article is to develop our emotional quotient to guide us in taking a personal commitment to work better as part of a team. We focus on specific areas of your team’s development, which are based on Goleman’s Five Categories of Emotional Intelligence to improve team cohesion:

• Self-awareness (knowing one’s emotions)
• Self-management (managing feelings, including how to stay motivated!)
• Empathy (identifying, understanding and empathizing with others)
• Communication (identifying blockers, listening, expressing feelings and thoughts proactively)
• Group Dynamics (team dynamics, organizational vision, roles and responsibilities, build team norms)

When choosing group activities focused on building a team’s emotional intelligence, it’s important to have a facilitator who understands them. The facilitator should also have the fundamental skills related to group cohesion and be able to spot any conflicts, or issues prior to running the activity. Not everyone will feel ready to contribute, which the facilitator and group must respect. 

It’s important to develop creative ways for the team to achieve their goals of understanding different emotions and developing emotional intelligence. If they are working on improving communication and emotional connection, you could select listening activities to help deliver their purpose. Identifying any risk levels in regard to self-disclosure is essential to creating a space of trust that means everyone can develop their own emotional intelligence.

Setting boundaries at the start of a workshop is vital to keep the conversation contained within that space. Emotional intelligence exercises explore deep aspects of people’s lives, especially in identifying and sharing so many emotions. Participants need to feel safe to share without judgment in a group setting. 

Activities to Improve Self-Awareness

So, why do we have emotions and how do we become more self-aware?

Here comes the science. The amygdala is the part of the brain responsible for identifying emotions based on our body’s physical sensations. Then it stores these as memories so that when our body experiences similar sensitivities in the future, the amygdala recognizes it as an emotion. It lives in a very primal part of our brain, vital for our evolutionary existence. 

Emotional intelligence starts by knowing and recognizing your own feelings. Emotions may not always feel positive, but they do serve a positive purpose. They are our mind and body’s way of communicating to try to push us to take positive, helpful action in response to something that has happened, is happening or could happen. Simply put, emotions are impulses to act.

The following emotional intelligence activities help teams identify and understand emotions, with greater context and nuance. There is also a workshop template with an Action Plan and Presentation specifically designed to improve self-awareness. These exercises will help people communicate their emotions, and practice self-awareness within their team, allowing for much better understanding and group cohesiveness.

• Weather Check-In
• Who You Are
• When I Feel
• The Feeling Wheel
• I used to think…But now I think…

Weather Check-In

Checking in with ourselves and communicating our feelings to our teams is the first step to becoming self-aware. The way we feel emotions differs from person to person and understanding this can not only help develop self-awareness but also build empathy for how others are feeling.

As an example, Gill Hasson asks in her book Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook, Little Exercises for an Intuitive Life.  “When someone says ‘I’m happy’ – what sort of ‘happy’ are you?” The word happy has a bouncy, uplifting feeling for some people. For others, happiness might mean feeling calm with zero stress, or a zen-like feeling.

The exercise, Weather Check-In uses the weather as a metaphor to describe our feelings. This way, our emotions become relatable, and people can be more honest about their feelings within a safe container. You may want to use this exercise at the beginning and end of a workshop to compare any changes.

Who You Are

Knowing ourselves is a multi-faceted process, and we have different ways to describe ourselves, varying from day-to-day, who we are with, and what we are doing. Our emotions and moods are changeable. Our personalities may differ or even mirror the people we are surrounded by. So, “Who Are You?” can have a spectrum of answers.

Who You Are is a creative approach to self-discovery where we create personal fanzines or narratives and collages that reflect our personality in response to the question “Who Are You?” The exercise starts with a paired meditation, taking it in turns, with one person asking “Who Are You?” and the partner giving a different response each time. Our variety of answers helps the participants to create a collage or mini-zine expressing their personal narratives. 

It’s okay that we have a spectrum of answers, this exercise helps us accept that we are multi-dimensional people. We can become more self-aware of how we act in different situations with different people and understand better why that might be.

When I Feel

When we can recognize our feelings, we can register what our responses to these emotions might typically be. As we identify that emotions are impulses to act, we can consider how our inner feelings cause us to react or to take certain actions, and if these are similar to how others act.

In this activity, everyone begins by checking in with their own emotions. The facilitator may tie this in with another exercise, such as a meditation, or emotional vocabulary task to help aid the participants in better identifying their inner state. One person shares how they are feeling, and then calls someone’s name. The second person shares what they do to express that feeling, or what actions they might take. 

The goal is to listen and become aware of how we are feeling. We can understand ourselves and see how we might act when we feel that way. Do other people react to feelings in the same way we might?

The Feeling Wheel

By developing our emotional vocabulary we can check in with ourselves and can better pinpoint the right words to express different feelings. American psychologist Robert Plutchik, mapped eight primary emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. These emotions were believed to be imperative to keeping our early ancestors alive.

Using the Feeling Wheel created by Plutchik, you can use this exercise to explore your own emotions with deeper nuance and improve your emotional intelligence. The visual guide allows us to group similar emotions together, and discuss the differences. In this activity, we check in with ourselves and share how we feel with each other using the wheel and adding any relevant context.

The simplicity of this exercise allows for easy modifications, for example, creating scenarios and characters to imagine what human emotions would be felt. A group may create a dictionary of different feelings going far beyond the five basic emotions. Variations of the emotions can be used, for example, the universal human needs used in nonviolent communication workshops.

I used to think…But now I think…

Part of improving our self-awareness is that we recognize that our feelings can be mutable. For example, we receive a short, bluntly worded email and this snippet of information causes us to feel anxious. Later, with more clarity, we’re given more context that the person was just in a rush, so we no longer feel anxious.

In this exercise, the participants are asked to complete two sentences: “I used to think…” and “Now I think…” This might be a private consideration, or the group could share their thoughts, collating them together on a whiteboard.

We identify that feelings and opinions can change with more knowledge and social context. By looking at the world through another’s eyes, our thoughts may change as a result of these learnings. The exercise works well as a reflective self-awareness activity after working to empathize and communicate with others.

Activities for better Self-Management

Once we have identified our own emotions, our next step is to recognize how we might react and if that is the most appropriate and useful action. Handling feelings is an important part of self-management, and by mastering this skill, we are able to pick ourselves up when life throws us a curveball.

You may be familiar with Parkinson’s Law? It’s the saying that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Procrastination has definitely crept up on me when I’ve sat down to complete a task. An important essay is due and suddenly it seems very important to clean my apartment first! Nowadays, I’m better equipped with self-motivation, my favorite technique being the Pomodoro technique, and using the Plan Your Pomodoro exercise.

The following collection of emotional intelligence activities encourages teams to build self-motivation and learn to better manage their own emotions. Self-motivation is essential in the workplace for achieving the goals and tasks we’ve set out to accomplish. By overcoming procrastination we can hone our ability to focus and get into the “flow” state that creates the right environment for us to work effectively. 

• Leadership Pizza
• Letter to Myself
• Everyday Hassles
• Object Meditation
• Plan Your Pomodoro

Leadership Pizza

A goal-setting exercise can work really well as a tool to improve our self-management and our motivation. Firstly, we can reflect on our current qualities by doing a self-assessment, and then identify areas of improvement, along with a timescale of when we want to see a difference.

Leadership Pizza is a tried and tested exercise that can be adapted and molded to suit leaders and team members anywhere within the company structure. Firstly, like a blank canvas, participants can identify skills, qualities, and characteristics they find important in being an effective part of the group. They can then assess their ability in that area, and create goals to become more emotionally intelligent members.

Letter to Myself

Writing is often a very cathartic process to understand our own emotions and consider perspectives that allow us to see things more clearly. From a goal-setting perspective, writing our ambitions down in detail can help cement the ideas and serve as a visual cue. Forbes has an article on the neuroscience behind this.

‘Manifestation’ is having its moment and whilst that might be a good place to start, goals without taking action rarely materialize. A Letter to Myself exercise works similarly, team members can focus on key actions they’d like their future selves to take, and their motivations behind these goals. The facilitator might suggest prompts such as:

• What will I achieve by X date?
• What will I do tomorrow, next week, next month?
• How do I feel now about my work/job/team? And how do I want my future self to feel?
• Don’t forget…
• I want to change… because

Goleman mentions in his book on Emotional Intelligence, “People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry, to what job to take.”

Everyday Hassles

We often have built-in responses to stressful situations that we repeatedly do and on occasions, regret. Our knee-jerk reactions can also cause friction with others and can create conflict with our team members. By identifying and challenging how we respond, we can adapt better to future situations.

Everyday Hassles is an activity that reframes our approach to inconvenient situations. Things that might crop up in everyday life, such as being stuck in a traffic jam, can cause us to feel negative about the disruption to our plan. By thinking of alternative, more positive solutions, the group can change their mindset towards everyday annoyances, seeing them as opportunities.

The key takeaway from the exercise is that teams can see how they can control their emotional reactions, take ownership over their responses and better manage stress.

Object Meditation

Meditation exercises are useful emotional intelligence tools to help us manage our own temperament. The great thing about meditation is that it can be done almost anywhere – with our eyes open or closed. The important part is to notice how we feel emotionally, mentally and physically. Like a car has its MOT, we can use meditation in a similar way for ourselves.

We make meditation accessible by checking in with how we are feeling and using an object as a vessel to visualize letting go of what doesn’t serve us right now. It’s useful to allow the team the option to fully let their emotions go, and leave their body, or that they can ‘collect’ them again from the object later on. It’s useful to recognize that although emotions can feel negative, we can choose to view them as potential impulses to act. 

Allow the participants to choose which emotions they wish to take into the workshop. Most will pick positive emotions, such as feeling energized or relaxed, but some might take a shard of anger or sadness to address that ‘negative’ emotion within the meeting. 

Plan Your Pomodoro

If you have the concentration of a goldfish, it might be worth exploring some self-management strategies like the Pomodoro technique. Francesco Cirillo developed this simple and effective method involving setting a timer for 25 minutes to focus on a task, and then taking a 5-minute break. Every 25 minutes is called a Pomodoro (Italian for tomato) because he used a tomato-shaped timer to measure his time slots. After 4 Pomodoros, we take a longer break.

This planning exercise is centered around this technique to plan our day ahead into smaller, more manageable chunks. The facilitator can explain the Pomodoro technique, and emphasize its successes. We start the task by creating a to-do list and breaking it down into Pomodoros which we share with the group. We can reflect on how optimistic we may have been with our to-do list and share any wins and struggles. 

Emotional intelligence skills help us become flexible enough to find different ways to arrive at our goals and having the sense to break a task into smaller, manageable pieces. By repeating this process, we become more responsible and have a better ability to focus on the task at hand. The results are deeper concentration and improved self-control.

Exercises to build Empathy

Empathy is the ability to recognize emotions in others, and the awareness of differences in the intensity of how people feel, process and act on emotions. Edward Diener, a psychologist, created a scale to record how intensely people experience and react to emotions. Just as we don’t all recognize color in the same way, we all experience and react to emotions differently. 

Interestingly, he found that we feel more content when we are able to pick up on subtle social signals that indicate what others feel and need. When we work together as an emotionally intelligent team and understand that every emotion has value and significance, we are happier and more fulfilled. Teams need to productively build trust and understanding to support and rely on others.

• Heard, Seen, Respected
• Strength Building Exercise
• I’ll Take that Fear
• Paired Walk
• Simple Ethnography

Heard, Seen, Respected

Building our empathic skills starts with listening, understanding and respecting people’s stories. We create empathy by putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and feeling how they might feel in a certain situation.

In this exercise, we can practice deep listening and empathy by working in pairs. One person is invited to tell a story of a time when they didn’t feel heard, seen or respected. The other person’s job is to listen deeply, and not try to fix or judge the situation. At the end of the storytelling, each person reflects on how they felt from their perspective, whether they were listening or speaking.

Active listening exercises help us build empathy, and create a safe space for conversation allowing people to feel heard and understood. We create an environment where we respect one another without judgment, and by relating to how they might feel.

Strength Building Exercise

An empathic environment is a space where people feel safe and confident to speak up and share. By building up others, we support their wins, celebrate their successes and create a positive place for our teams to thrive.

This strength-building exercise encourages a participant to share their experience of a time when they felt they had achieved something good. The rest of the team listens to the story and takes turns to share two or three strengths they must have used to achieve their goal. All strengths are noted down, and the storyteller may take this strength and share it aloud, for example, “I am determined”.

The outcome is that teams can share their appreciation of others by highlighting their strengths and building their self-esteem. It builds trust within groups and shows the power of good storytelling to build empathy and assurance.

I’ll Take that Fear

Vulnerability and trust go hand in hand and can be developed between teams and partners over time. It can be challenging to feel safe enough to be open with other people, but by showing support, and listening to others without judgment, we can encourage a safe space.

I’ll Take that Fear is an exercise that helps people share their fears and doubts, and reframe them, whilst being heard and supported by others. The group starts by taking a moment to think of a great friend, mentor or supporter they have in their lives, they then re-name themselves with their own name first, and then the name of the person they have in mind, for example, “Carrin-Lisa”.

When that person shares a fear or doubt, a second team member offers “I’ll take that fear”, and asks “What would Lisa say?” encouraging the person to reframe their doubt, by considering someone else’s perspective. It’s a great way to encourage teams to listen and to think of their doubts differently.

Paired Walk

When managing our emotions, heading outside for a solo walk can work wonders for letting off steam, or taking some time to step away from a situation. Being outside allows us to refresh and connect with nature. Meeting a friend and walking side-by-side can help us communicate and express our ideas and thoughts much more freely, with more casual eye contact than if we were sitting opposite each other in a café.

The paired walk is a simple and effective way to connect with another person, and its benefits are multiple: increasing trust, empathy and communication – all whilst energizing our bodies and refreshing our minds. This exercise involves pairing up, ideally with someone they don’t know as well, and taking a walk outside for an allotted amount of time.

You might suggest a topic for participants to discuss, such as gratitude, and share what they are grateful for. Or it’s often best to just let the conversation flow naturally allowing as little or as much detail, as an informal everyday conversation out in nature. Maybe you’ll take your next meeting outside? Or conduct a 1-1 that way?

Simple Ethnography

The best way I can describe Ethnography is to imagine yourself being Louis Theroux for the day. Ethnographers observe people, and immerse themselves within that group’s local setting- be it a community or workplace, perhaps recording the experience on film, and following up with interviews.  

This exercise, Simple Ethnography suggests that a small group of people, our ‘ethnographers’, immerse themselves in a local setting, where our people with local experience go about their usual business. It’s best to frame the context by asking what is the problem we hope to solve in this exercise. The ethnographers first observe and record what they experience, either in notebooks or if consent is given, on camera. 

Afterward, a reflective interview can happen, by asking the people what they might have been thinking or feeling as they engaged in certain activities or routines. The group can finish the exercise with an emotional intelligence assessment or a story of their findings. You might use this in a workplace setting to shadow how top performers go about their day and learn from the experience; or by working alongside front-line workers to better identify team members’ strengths.

Exercises to improve our Communication Skills

Improving our communication skills allows us to be better understood, and to better understand others. Communication and the way in which we connect are said to be the key to personal and career success. We all have different ways of feeling and expressing emotions, and the same goes with communication styles. 

At SessionLab, we are a 100% remote team, and we primarily work asynchronously on Slack, using written communication. This method of communication works so well because everyone can consider their response and reply in their own time. 

Identifying everyone’s preferred ways to communicate is vital to great teamwork. This might mean having important conversations face-to-face creating a space for eye contact and body language; and by running day-to-day tasks asynchronously. Consider how the tone of voice, body language, and environment contribute to how information is received. Effective communication starts with choosing the right format for conversations so that people can feel safe and communicate openly. 

This set of emotional intelligence activities is designed to boost communication skills and they will help your team have better conversations too!

• Back-Turned Feedback
• Roses, Buds and Thorns
• From Silence to Vibrance
• Open Questions
• Seven Words

Back-Turned Feedback

Speaking about someone behind their back damages trust, creating a loss of credibility and confidence. Plus, no one likes the town gossip! Feedback, both positive and negative, should be delivered constructively, and openly. Discussing both sides of the story helps make amends, and creates a flourishing space for the team to thrive.

In this exercise, teams do speak about someone behind their back, but that person is present in the room, and the things being discussed are positive and constructive. One person sits with their back to the room, and the others speak about them in the third person, noting their strengths and what they appreciate about them; and then what they would like more from this person.

This open method of giving feedback is essential to keep the team’s efforts on track and to learn to accept criticism. Everyone has the opportunity to be transparent about their strengths and weaknesses, and to feel supported by their fellow team members.

Roses, Buds and Thorns

Goleman notes that criticism is one of the most important tasks a manager has but is also one of the most ignored. An interactive method of delivering feedback is by giving people the space to reflect on their own performance and share with the team. They may already be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and may have a plan for where they might have gone off track.

Harry Levinson, a psychoanalyst suggests being very specific with critique, sharing what has been done well and where improvement can be made. Roses, Buds and Thorns is an exercise that gives each individual a structure for creating their own reflections. It is a simple way of sharing how tasks have gone using:

• Roses: our successes and strengths
• Buds: areas for development
• Thorns: challenges

From Silence to Vibrance

Sometimes groups aren’t as forthcoming with communicating their thoughts. It is important to be mindful that not everyone feels safe or encouraged to share their feelings. Keep in mind that there isn’t anything wrong with silence, not every pause needs to be filled with words, and we can reframe silence as reflectiveness and thoughtfulness.

This technique is useful for groups that are quieter or less assertive. The goal of the workshop is to build participation by allowing space for conversation. A facilitator’s role is to reframe any silence as reflection, or as a consideration of others.

By using storytelling as a tool to discuss similar situations of silence, the facilitator can encourage participants to open up, and what their positive outcomes may have been. When participants do speak, give positive praise and encouragement.

Open Questions

Asking open questions can be an easier way to gain a better understanding of someone, and to open up further conversation. Pairing this with active listening makes for stronger communication.

This exercise works to develop both our listening skills and ways to think about how we form and ask questions. It works well with 12 or fewer people, and the aim is for the group to find out something unknown from the volunteer using open questions that start with:

• What
• Why
• When
• How
• Where
• Who

Practicing open questions helps participants be more mindful of the questions they pose in everyday conversations and invites the other person to open up more. It also signals that they really are interested in what is being said.

Seven Words

Are you familiar with the phrase, It’s not what you say, but how you say it?

According to a study at UCLA, our words make up only 7% of the impact of what we say. Tone of voice makes up 38% of expressing our emotions and feelings, and gestures count for a huge 55%. This means that 93% of how a person is really feeling isn’t in the actual words themselves. 

‘Seven Words‘, explores the effect of tone of voice on what we say. A volunteer chooses a seven-word sentence about themselves. The first time they say the sentence, stress or emphasis is put on the first word. The rest of the group discuss the possible interpretation of the sentence. Next, the exercise is repeated by putting an emphasis on a different word, and the team discusses what the sentence might mean to them now. It can be modified to choose different sentence lengths and doesn’t have to be exactly seven words.

Recognizing the differences in context and meaning by the simple variation in intonation can make an interesting reflection. The goal of this exercise is to understand and reflect on how we speak. Meaning and emotion are carried across in our voices, and awareness of this will help develop emotional intelligence skills.

Emotional Intelligence Games for better Group Dynamics

In high-performing teams, most people will cultivate positive ways to deal with negative emotions. These groups value clear and open communication and react positively when presented with an opportunity to build their emotional intelligence skills. 

Those employees who take the opportunity to improve their E.I. might be your star players and future leaders. They make work a dream as they create strong relationships with others. If they encounter a hurdle at work, they have an already established network of people to go to for help and are appreciative of their team. They are also available to support when needed.

Some people may not be as aware of their emotions and are less able to get to grips with them, perhaps even bottling things up, or avoiding situations. These issues can be changed if they are open to exploring ways to improve emotional intelligence and seeing the potential benefits.

Noticing and working with differences can be part of creating the right team atmosphere to build a stronger group identity. These emotional intelligence activities help participants understand the role they each play in a group discussion and will help them better handle relationships, solve problems and collaborate more effectively.

• Map Participation Styles
• The Thing From The Future
• Nine Dimensions Team Building Activity
• Sit – Stand – Disappear
• Myer-Briggs Team Reflection

Map Participation Styles

Working together in groups involves a balance of how people actively participate in meetings, workshops and in day-to-day communication at work. Goleman noted that surprisingly, in group situations, those who are overly eager to take part were a drag on the group by being too controlling or domineering. Equally, those who did not participate brought the group down. So learning to balance our styles is important in group dynamics.

The Map Participation Styles exercise uses a visual to aid self-reflection for participants to identify their participation style. They can see where they lie on the X-axis between being shy or being loud. And on the Y-axis, if they need to think in order to talk, or if they think by speaking aloud. 

The exercise helps groups understand the team’s participation styles so that they can adjust their behavior. It helps create balance and opportunities for all voices to be heard.

The Thing From The Future

Working on a creative project together can be a fun way to harness team dynamics. By focusing our efforts on a lighter approach to building emotional intelligence, we can see the benefits in a more organic way.

The exercise is an inclusive storytelling activity where the team travels to the future and are presented with a variety of objects. It works well with 12 or fewer people, with each person choosing an object and spending 10 minutes modifying the design to create an artifact from the future. Taking it in turns, each member of the team presents their object to the group with a story behind its use and purpose. The stories help to create a mutual understanding of the object together.

This activity can be modified to design a specific object relevant to the team’s industry or even relate it to an emotional need. They can also form a group at the end to develop an object together based on what has been created so far. It’s a great way of prototyping and aligning in a joint vision.

Nine Dimensions Team Building Activity

Aligning our own self-awareness with that of our team is paramount to building Emotional Intelligence. By honestly reflecting on what skills we excel at, and seeing which areas we may need to develop, we can be transparent with our team members and work together to create a stronger group.

The Nine Dimensions activity guides us to rate our abilities in nine aspects important to our work environment and how we relate to others. Participants choose colored dots to mark how well they are doing in each area.

The exercise is followed by a team discussion, to discover how everyone feels about the skills, and if we are all in the agreement or not. It works to identify where people may need support, and where others might excel. This awareness can help build better skills in both individual and group emotional intelligence.

Sit – Stand – Disappear

An energetic icebreaker to work together as a team is an effective way to connect when working virtually. At SessionLab, we are all scattered across Europe and we tried this exercise out with some silly music.

Sit, Stand Disappear is a virtual game in Zoom. Everyone adjusts their screen so that they only see 3 people in a row. In each row, the goal is to work in sync to have one person sitting, one standing, and one out of the frame in their row. As each person will have a different view in Zoom, the game will work by making it very difficult to complete!

In a debrief, jointly discuss the dynamics of the group, did you work together by observing others? Did one person take the lead and direct the rest of the team? What were your thoughts and feelings throughout the game?

Myer-Briggs Team Reflection

An interesting way to explore team dynamics could be by using a Personality test such as the Myer-Briggs model. The group can use the test as a jumping-off point to discuss if they identify with that personality type and if they agree or disagree with them.

The exercise works by first of all giving people time to complete the test, and then see for themselves if they agree with the underlying motivations of their character type. Each person then shares with the group points they consider to ring true, and which points don’t. Our group can then feedback on their thoughts.

The point of this exercise is to start with our own self-awareness, and equally that of our team, so that we can recognize certain behaviors, inclinations and motives in the unit.

What are your thoughts?

I hope you’ve come away from this article inspired to use emotional intelligence activities to make your team happier and more productive. The rewards of recognizing our emotions before we take action are huge, and our team can greatly benefit from how we manage our feelings when working together.

Improving your team’s emotional intelligence helps to improve empathy and better our communication skills resulting in a tighter support system with less conflict. I’ve created a workshop template designed to develop your team’s self-awareness to build their emotional intelligence skills.

Are there any exercises you have tried out? Do any of the activities motivate you to develop emotional intelligence skills within your facilitation practice? Let us know of any successes in building emotional intelligence within yourself, and within your team in the comments below.