the Conflict Dojo

17. May 2014

vinylbaustein Agile Mindset, Allgemein, Coaching, Facilitation , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

About half a year ago I announced the Conflict Dojo on my blog and asked volunteers to try out the format. Before publishing the instructions for everybody I thought I could need some help for improving this new format.

Conflict Dojo

I’d like to thank Andrea Chiou, Ruud Rietveld,  Nils Bernert, Silke Rothgänger and Stefano Klinke for giving me feedback and helping me to make the format more simple, more safe and now it can be fun as well! =;-)

The Conflict Dojo is still easy to scale

You can arrange settings from 4 up to xxx people without having a facilitator for each table. Now one Facilitator can easily handle settings up to 20 people. If you have more, count one facilitator per 20 people.

As I’ve created the format as part of a 2-day conflict handling training for Agile Teams, you’ll need at least 90 minutes to run the basic version of the Conflict Dojo. The more time you have, the better it is as you’ll be able to play several rounds. On the other side of the coin, even one round can be very exhausting due to intense discussions and can take up to 1 hour.

Preperation

Create settings with tables for 4 people, 3 can be ok as well if needed. I recommend and prefer 4 people per table. For each table you’ll need to prepare the following:

  • tabletoys
  • 1 dice
  • a pile of plane A5 index cards – red – called challenge cards
  • a pile of plane A6/A7 index cards – yellow/white – called strategy cards
  • marker
  • 4 prepared plane A6/A/ index cards in yellow or white (strategy cards) with
    • fight back
    • ignore & avoid that there is a conflict
    • solution focused questioning
    • NVC (Non-Violent-Communication)

prep cards

Connection

Let everybody take some red and some yellow index cards and a marker. Build pairs. Let the pairs talk about the question ‘remember some old or current conflicts’, write down each conflict on a red Index Card – one card per conflict. Now think about how you’ve handled these conflicts, did you had a solution, have you made the conflict worse? What was your strategy? Write down each strategy / handling-type on one yellow index card. Elaborate what you have written down with your partner.

Concept

Introduce the ice-berg-model and explain how conflicts emerge. As a little help, here is the description of Paul Watzlawick’s model of communication:

A conflict exists, when the Iceberg’s collide on the level of relationship. Pure contentions on a factual level are almost handled as solvable or not solvable problems and challenges or seen as a conflict of opinion or dispute.

Tension and differences are becoming conflicts when involved parties are not able to handle them constructively anymore.

IceBerg Model

Reconnection

Find a table, 2 pairs at each table. You have 5 minutes to introduce your conflicts and strategies. Try to explain why in each situation the IceBergs’s did collide.

Concrete Practice

Arrange all red challenge cards on the table so that you can read all the conflicts. Build on pile of cards with all strategy cards, now integrate the prepared cards as well. Shuffle the pile of strategy cards. At the end place them on the table, face down.

Give a short explanation of the prepared strategies:

fight back
you feel offended and do what ever is needed to protect yourself and fight back with words
ignore & avoid that there is a conflict
try to ignore all direct addresses and speeches, talk about something else
solution focused questioning
try to find a solution, ask questions, be empathic
NVC (Non-Violent-Communication
explain the 4 part process of NVC

All 4 players role the dice ones. The player with the lowest points will start the first round of the Conflict Dojo. The first player can now choose a conflict he would like to practice. Normally this will be a conflict the player currently has.

All three others at the table take one strategy card without showing it to somebody else. They will also role the dice again to find the second player – count clockwise if you want. When the second player is found, the 2 others put back their strategy card at the bottom of the pile and they become observers.

Before starting the role play, give all 2 players about a minute to prepare and sink into their roles. The first player will have to address the conflict with the second player. As the second player will have to act as the strategy card tells him, his reaction might be not his normal reaction.

tabletoys

The player who addresses his conflict can change his strategy during the role play, the second player should stay at his ‘card-given’ strategy. The observers make notes during the conflict on an index card.

The current round is over as soon as the conflict is solved or one player shows his stop sign. A stop sign can be a raising hand, a prepared card or whatever you agree on upfront.

Conclusion

After a round is finished, make a debriefing – this might take a few minutes as all 4 players will discuss what happened and how their behavior was influenced.

When the debriefing is finished, the player to the left of the previous first player will become the new first player. All others will take a strategy card and role the dice again until the new second player is found. A new round of the Conflict Dojo is about to start.

final conclusion

After the last round is played, let participants pair up, if possible with somebody they haven’t talked to so far. Give a timebox of 5 minutes for everybody to have a walkabout and discuss the question, ‘what do I take with me out of this session and how will I integrate it in my daily life?’.

conflicts are for pussies

11. November 2013

vinylbaustein Agile Mindset, Allgemein, Coaching , , , , , 2 Comments

Boxing Siberian Tiger

Have you ever listened to fighting cats, yelling at each other, making threatening strange noises when they defend their district against a foreign cat being an intruder? I hear them sometimes at night in my neighborhood and it really sounds very scary!

That is how they solve conflicts, they fight, rarely they try to avoid a conflict. It’s in their nature, their natural way of life. We’re humans, we should know better. Despite of all of our todays fortune, solving conflicts is a challenge we’re really poor practitioners at. Either we avoid conflicts at all or we start to fight, even if we don’t want to. When a conflict emerges, emotions are involved and this is an important point. Being overwhelmed by emotions makes it a hard challenge to deal with conflicts in a healthy way.

And that is exactly the crucial point, how can we deal with conflicts in a healthy way?

It doesn’t matter if I talk about personal relationships, teams or even societies, learning how to deal with conflicts enables us to discover a new way of communication, collaboration and personal development. Although conflicts can be a starting point to flourish, to grow, to overcome being stuck – as long as it is healthy and well handled.
We need to learn how to deal with conflicts, we need to face them to overcome the emotions which arise in us when a conflict emerges. This can take us to the next step of human evolution. We need to learn how to deal with conflicts in a healthy way!

Have you ever get a present from your grandparents in your childhood which not just disappointed you, even worth, you’ve hated it?

Disappointment

I remember a christmas eve in the early 1980’s. I was 9 years old and I was so excited to finally unwrap my presents. I was expecting this awesome cool Buggy from LEGO Technik and couldn’t wait to start building it. I was sure I’ll get it as my grandparents asked me a few weeks earlier what I was hoping for Santa could bring me…
Already when I received the present I noticed ‘what’s that, it’s so soft…’ It was a pullover, 2 pair of socks and a bar of chocolate. My mother directly noticed my disappointment and I was able to read in her face ‘don’t say that you’re disappointed, don’t make grandma sad…’, like it happened already a few times.

This was somehow the starting point of my vocational brainwashing training on swallowing anger and avoiding conflicts.

When you learn to avoid conflicts you’ll find out soon that in relationships, teams, organisations or societies conflicts are emerging constantly. As we’re all different, with different opinions, perspectives and values, it is natural that sooner or later friction emerges when people talk, work or life together. Human friction is a fertilizer for human development and growth.

What happens when you don’t train a muscle, a skill or quality? It becomes rudimentary! So it is with our ability to deal with conflicts when in an environment where we give everything to avoid them.

As it usually happens, sometimes we need to release that the tension of a conflict can’t be avoided anymore, sometimes we can not swallow that anger anymore and so it ends up in situations where we tend to generalizing and judging people what leads to psychological punishment and violation.

in time

Imagine, you are always in time, doesn’t matter if to a meeting, a date or an appointment, you always arrive on schedule. Your new colleague comes late to your weekly regular meeting, he apologizes and you think ok, no problem. The next week he is late again and the week after as well. Your brain will make a connection as it recognizes patterns – in this case your brain will record, ‘the new colleague is always late’ and puts that label on that person. In addition, the fact of being late collides horribly with your own value of being always in time! Having these labels in your mind for a new colleague will make it even harder for you to address this situation. And even if this colleague will be in time now for weeks and months, as soon as he will be late again the recorded pattern in your brain will call for attention.

communication

So why do we wait so long before we address a conflict? We just don’t know how to handle conflicts! We have no clue how to do it without being influenced from recorded patterns. And when we face a conflict, we’re influenced by such recordings and so we tend to generalize and judge other people. We become unfair like an awkward rookie who just started to learn how to speak.

We fear the unknown, we fear things we can’t handle, we fear things when we’ve made bad experience with them. So, do you have any clue why we have fear of conflict, one of our most dysfunctional problem in our society?

Brainwashed in our youth we tend to avoid conflicts and swallow the anger that comes with it. When the straw breaks the camel’s back, we overact and violate with words. And this just because we don’t know how to handle conflicts.

I suffered from conflicts a lot of times in my life and I know I’m not alone with that challenge. After attending a training on conflict handling earlier this year, I started to think about a format which enables me to practice what I’ve learned and enables learning for others without the need of attending an expensive 3 day training. And after talking with some other coaches I’ve created the conflict dojo. A framework for teams and groups of people to learn and practice facing conflicts. By facing own real-life conflicts in a safe environment, with people who react with different strategies, we’re able to experience different ways of handling conflicts. We analyze what has happened and how to improve facing such a problem. I know that a lot of people might think now, that sounds like learning non violent communication. No, that’s not. Non violent communication is one of the strategies which are available in our conflict dojo, but not the only one. Even if you will discover that #NVC is one of the best ways, if not even the best, to address a conflict, you will also experience other strategies and behaviors so that you’re able to become aware of your own best way how to handle a conflict.

handle it

I’d like to challenge you to become a pussy, to find your natural way of how to deal with conflicts and that facing conflicts does not mean, like for the cats, to start fighting! I’d like to invite you to train your conflict handling muscle and try out a Conflict Dojo. Learn, grow and let conflicts be your own flourishing fertilizer!

I have facilitated the first Conflict Dojo the last week in germany and it worked out very well. If you’re interested to try it out and help improving the format please send me a mail: thorsten@kalnin.net – I will publish the full instructions for a Conflict Dojo within the next weeks. As it is completely new I’d like some people and teams to try it out  first and help improving before I publish it.

don’t transform Managers into effective Terminators

9. June 2013

vinylbaustein Agile Mindset, Allgemein, Coaching , , , , , Leave a comment

Recently I’ve had some dialogs on twitter regarding coaching and management. During one of the dialogs, somebody explained me, that he is teaching coaching skills to managers to make them better leaders and to transform the role management. So far, so good. I agree, the role of management needs to shift if it wants to survive, if it’s not even signed to death. In addition, I agree that learning coaching skills helps immensly to understand others and oneself in a more empathic way. And sure, your way how to deal with others, and even yourself, will change as well when start learning coaching skills.

During a conversation I received a link to a video from David Verble that was shocking. In this video, David is talking about ‘Tips for ‘humble inquiry”. It’s embedded on the website of the Lean Enterprise Institute, which offers managers to learn lean coaching skills to become a lean manager.

Manager Terminator

For preventing misunderstandings, I appreciate any effort to make the world of work a better place and helping managers to find more appropriate ways to deal with their employees. What shocks me is that it seems that adding coaching skills to a manager makes them a lean manager. So if I get it right, a Lean Manager can simply switch roles between being a coach and being a manager, what means he is switching between coaching and command & control! Sounds like an oxymoron. As most managers have their own agenda as they have to reach target goals and numbers, it sounds to me to misuse coaching skills to be able to manipulate people in a better way for achivieng their goals… sounds strange, doesn’t it?

As David describes it in the video, a lean manager can use coaching skills to find out what the employee knows and thinks so that the manager is able to take a better decision. Phew, that scares me!!! They call it ‘humble inquiry‘ and for me it feels like managers misuse coaching skills for interrogating employees. While watching the video a picture popped up my mind, it’s a scene from the movie ‘Terminator II’ when Arnold Schwarzenegger as the ‘good’ Terminator states that he has detailed knowledge of human anatomy and Linda Hamilton says ‘I bet this makes you a more efficient killer…’…

In my humble opinion, the management role needs to shift to a role of a coach and facilitator without any authority, to enable people to self organize and to help them achieve their full potential. I deliberately avoid using the word ‘Leader’ as people have different opinions and interpretations about that term and for me it’s simply just become stretched out.

On the other side of the coin, is this really a shift of the management role? I don’t think so as as long the word management is used, there is also ‘command & control’ in the air.

I appreciate the efforts to coach managers on their roles, this is also a huge part of my work. But on what topics do we coach managers?

What we don’t need are managers which learn how to misuse people in a more effective way and to get closer to the term of ‘human resources’. And, if this is what the Lean Enterprise Institute understands throughout the term of a Lean Manager, than I need to say – this is not the right direction to the future, this is a blind alley!

What I want to say is that if we want to change the role of management, transform or to redefine it, teaching managers coachings skills is just a lousy deal of handling symptoms of a much bigger root-cause – ‘even if it turns Terminators to be more effective Killers’.

business man turn on his bulb head

If we want management to change for the better on a long term, it’s not enough to work with the industry. We also need to address the universities and business school’s and their curriculae and syllabuses all over the world. Somebody else who is involved and responsible in creating and changing the plans for public education are the governmental minitries for education.

During the Agile Coach Camp 2013 in Denmark, I talked with some other participants about ‘Stoos in Action‘ – Stoos is an initiative to change the world for the better. ‘Stoos in action’ will be a conference in autumn this year and during an Open Space session we designed the format for it. In addition, we gathered a lot of ideas for the conference how to make it special and something really different. I proposed to invite and connect to politicians. As I think it’s time to make the next step to bring Agile and Lean to Management outside of IT, it’s also time to start making connections to politics, even if this will be one of the biggest challenges of Agile and Lean. It’s necessary to turn the development of effective ‘Terminators’ into the development of effective Enablers!

co-creation of Ewan McGregor

31. January 2013

vinylbaustein Coaching , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As a second post about the first Agile Coach Camp in the Netherlands, end of April 2012, I’d like to tell the story how the Ewan McGregor game was born.

elephanjt in the room

The elephant is in the room

One of the most challenging situations for a team coach or even a team itself, is dealing with an ‘elephant’ in the room.  In reality I need to say – avoid dealing with the ‘elephant’ in the room.

What is an elephant in the room, sometimes also known as the pink elephant? In simple words, it’s an obvious situation within a human social structure, nobody wants to talk about and even avoid facing this obvious situation. It’s also a part of teamdynamics. You can read on wikipedia: elephant in the room

I’ve experienced several situations in the past, where there was an elephant in the room – in Teams, in relationships – private and business, even within whole departments or companies. But how do you deal with such situations? Do you confrontate, what can be very hurtful, or do you deal with symptoms? My experience is that you need to be very sensitive when dealing with such crucial topics – and never forget, there is a reason why a problem has reached the level of an elephant in the room!

A background of such situations is based on fear of conflict and a lack of trust – the two most important issues of dysfunctional teams, as well as fear of loosing status. During a coaching session, while reviewing such an ‘elephant in the room’-situation, I had the idea of creating a game where such a situation will be simulated and players need to deal with it. My intention was to create a safe environment which allows players to explore such sensitive situations and learn how to deal with them for the purpose of creating awareness.

I was thinking about different approaches to achieve that game but unfortunately a promising idea was missing. But hey, this is a perfect topic to explore during an open space session and the Agile Coach Camp Netherlands was just a few weeks ahead.

Agile Coach Camp Netherlands – 2012

So, during creation of the OpenSpace marketplace I offered a session for co-creating an interactive game to deal with an elephant in the room. Fortunately approx 10 people showed up for the session – wow, that was much more than I hoped would come.

What happened now, I don’t know how to describe it best, let’s just say – what happened now was just magic!

The game was evolving out of an empirical process of simulating an ‘elephant in the room’ – in the true sense of the word! We created a huge obstacle with chaotic piled chairs in the room and taped a real tight space around this obstacle.

We then simulated some situations where a team of participants had to deal with daily work while they had to move within the tight taped space around the piled chairs. After simulating some real world examples of team-issues we removed all the chairs so that just the taped space was remaining on the floor. We asked the team to repeat all team situations in the room, imagining that the chairs were still in the room.

As an Agile Coach Camp is an OpenSpace unconference, there were Bumblebees and Butterflies dropping in the session room by chance. You might be able to imagine that this must be a funny situation for an observer who does not know what’s happening in that team, where people move within an empty space and make strange movements like a pantomime.

When we asked the newcomers what they observed, they told us that it is strange, it’s obvious that there is something wrong in the team but that they’ve had no idea what’s going on and why the hell the members move so strange within their teamspace . We then invited the newcomers to start coaching the team. What happened next surprised everybody attending that session. Remember – the team members move around an non-existing chaotic pile of chairs!

When asked by an observer what they are doing there was just a simple answer – ‘we are working’. When asked why they move so strange, the outrage of the team about that question became obvious – we don’t move strange, we’re just doing our work as usual. The team members started to defense and became more or less angry about some questions of the observer/coach. Very interesting emotions and a very dangerous situation for the coach emerged. With one single wrong question you can ‘close the door’ for gaining trust of the team. The coach is an ‘outsider’.
What is very interesteing, each time when I facilitated that game, and as far as I know other Facilitators made some similar experiences, almost the same emotions show up, created virtually. Teams start to defense the way they work, even if it’s obvious that there is a problem. Even if it’s just a role play, participants tell that they feel a need for defending themselves, they feel the ‘hot air’ etc.

It was amazing, we created a virtual ‘elephant in the room’ and were able to discover all the emotions which occur also in real situations of this kind.

We then started to concentrate on coaching such a situation and how this uncomfortable experience can be handled. That’s were the real work starts!
When appropriate facilitated and coached, this game can be a great eye-opener for dysfunctional teams and can create new insights, options and opportunities for dealing with crucial issues in teams.

After all

We haven’t published the game-instructions so far. But we asked via the LinkedIn-group ‘Agile Games’ if somebody wants to try out this new game and lots of people did. Several Coaches all over the world have already tried out the Ewan Mcgregor game and gave us some interesting feedback. In addition, I facilitated the game also several times so far. What we’ve found out is, that this game is very helpful and provides a lot of learning experiences and insights in team-dynamics. It’s not just for teams, also for coaches it is an awesome experience to be in the role of a team member and experience the emotions when an ‘outsider’ starts to coach a team on such a crucial topic…

Feedback

If you’re interested in running that game please give me a ping or have a look at the ‘Agile Games’-group on LinkedIn. Beyond that I will publish the game instructions Facilitation Flash Cards.

If you have already tried out the game I’m very curious to read about your experiences – please leave your comment here!

Postscript

A lot of people are asking why ‘Ewan McGregor’ – isn’t that a famous actor?

Yes, that’s true – he is an actor and I need to say that his name has no direct connection to the purpose of the game! During the co-creation session we found out, that when running this simulation with a team which has to deal with such a real ‘elephant’ issue, it might be not a good starting point to introduce a session called ‘the elephant in the room’ – it just could influence the outcome or behaviour of individuals. So we just called it ‘exercise without a name’. And as this naming did not sound appropriate to us, we had the idea to just use a shortcut of it, so we ended up with EWAN. And as somebody called instinctively cool, let’s call it Ewan McGregor… that’s it… =:-)

Learn to walk as a Coach

22. October 2012

vinylbaustein Coaching , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Team Coaching

Antecendent

I started with team coaching in 2008, without having any experience in coaching. The only advantage, I’ve already had a deep knowledge of human nature. My approach was to change the complete development framework of a software-development team towards agile.

At that time I was not aware that I was doing team coaching, I experienced this later.

In 2009 I get more and more in contact with the term coaching itself as I started to go to agile conferences and become active in agile communities. It is usual in the agile community to work with coaches.

I was very interested in learning, practicing and experiencing professional coaching skills. But not only for becoming a professional Coach – it was also important for me to experience the role of a Coachee and experience how powerful coaching can be.

Reality

In the beginning of 2010 I started working with a professional Coach. I was coached on a regular basis and was able to help the Coach working with other teams as she was hired as an internal Coach for the company I was working for at that time.

Now as I experienced the magic of coaching to the full, it became more and more clear to me that I’d like to do a vocational training on coaching. But wehre shall I learn all these skills and tools, there are so many coaching institutes out there, lot’s of them say they are the best… hm, somehow this didn’t sound serious to me. In addition, I knew that there are also lot’s of bad coaches out there and I wanted to make sure that I get the best education I could get.

After some investigation on the web, I was able to take a step further. I discovered the ICF Code of Ethics.

The ICF – the International Coaching Federation – founded in 1995, is the leading global coaching organization and it’s core purpose is to advance the art, science, and praqctice of professional coaching.

Looking for a training on coaching which is accredited by the ICF decreases the relevant coaching institutes to an overlooking amount of addresses.

At the same time I received the recommendation from my Coach that a training on Co-Active® coaching could be a great next step for me. Ok, normally Coaches don’t provide any recommendations, but in my case it was ok and I asked for it.

The next step

In 2011 my plans became more concrete, by investigating on Co-Active® coaching I found out, that Co-Active® coaching is a registered method of CTI® – the Coaching Training Institute. And, what a surprise, I already knew some Coaches who finished the Co-Active® coaching training. So it was easy for me to follow their footsteps for a while and learn the skills I need for becoming a better Coach – and, last but not least, to start feeling comfortable by calling myself a Coach!

I discovered that there is a Co-Active® coaching Intermediate programme which could fit my needs perfectly. This programme contains 5 modules and is not really cheap. In addition, my employer, even if he profits from me doing this training, was not willing to pay for that training. So, I’d have to invest ap. € 7.000,–, lots of money, so how can I make sure that this is really what I want to do and to keep the risk as low as possible not to invest money in something wasteful?

Luckily, CTI® had a really great solution for me! The first module out of 5 is ‘Fundamentals‘ and this is the only module of that programme which can be booked separately! What does that mean? I was able to attend the Fundamentals module without booking the full course. This reduced my costs to a minimum and I was able to find out if this programme is really the right one for me.

Part of the Fundamentals-training is the Co-Active® model. There are 4 cornerstones in that model, I don’t want to go to much into detail – this is part of the programme – but I want to mention them shortly:

  • people are naturally creative, resourceful and whole
  • dance in this moment
  • focus on the whole person
  • evoke transformation

These 4 cornerstones are carried by 5 areas – listening, curiosity, intuition (yes, even men have intuition!), self-management and deepen/forward. The core of the whole model are fulfillment, balance and process.

Co-Active-Model by CTI

Beside getting a deep understanding for the Co-Active® model and it’s requirements, the fundamentals training also contains an introduction into coaching, the core competencies of coaching, differentiating between being and doing as well as the three levels of listening. Beside learning all these stuff on a theoretical level the training contained also lots of time for practicing.

For me this already sounded very promising so that I was sure, ok – investing in 3 days of fundamentals coaching training is a good decision. Whether I continue the programme or not.
And, it turned out that it was worth the investment and after these 3 days I was sure that I’d like to continue with the full programme.

After 5 month I finished the whole Co-Active® Intermediate course, packed with lots of tools and experience – during the whole training course you will perform as a Coach as well as a Coachee. This means as an attendee I profit two times – I learned and experienced professional Coaching skills. In addition, I was coached by other attendees.

Coaching Experiment Time

If you want to find out if coaching is the right way for you or if you are passionate about coaching and want to find out how to take the next step – I can highly recommend the Co-Active® approach – even if you find out after the Fundamentals that coaching is not the right way for you – it’s worth the effort!

Discover your inner Planet (at) Play4Agile 2012

22. February 2012

vinylbaustein Coaching, Open Space, StrategicPlay® , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Play4Agile Logo

Last weekend, the Play4Agile 2012 took place at Seminarzentrum Rückersbach, a beautiful venue near Frankfurt. Our theme this year was ‘High Playformance for Agile Teams’ and as the first Play4Agile in 2011 it was a great success again. The event is reinvented itself and that makes the unique power – quote of Christine Neidhardt.

On the 2nd day of the Open Space event, Jenny Jepsen, Martin Heider and I did the session ‘Discover your inner Planet‘. The idea was to run a session with a technique from CoActive® Coaching combined with StrategicPlay® powered by LEGO® SeriousPlay™. Jenny, Martin and I are all StrategicPlay® Facilitators. Moreover, Martin and I are currently doing our vocational training for becoming a CoActive® Coach.

Play4Agile - discover your inner planet - towerWe designed the session during a lunch break and ran it in the afternoon with 20 participants. We started the session with skills building exercises. Skills building are exercises for becoming familiar with LEGO® and reaching a metaphorical flow.

Play4Agile - discover your inner planet - tower - storytelling

First, participants were asked to build a tower, share what’s special about their tower with all other participants, the storytelling, and then adapt the tower to an agile tower. Again, participants had to share what makes their tower agile with all other participants.

To reach the next metaphorical level, we then asked the participants to build a model which describes they’re passion about attending the Play4Agile Unconference.

Play4Agile - discover your inner planet - passion about p4a12 - 1Play4Agile - discover your inner planet - passion about p4a12

These two pictures are models which were built by participants, showing their passion for attending the Play4Agile Unconference 2012.

Again, each participant had to share their model through storytelling.

Now, everybody was in the right mood and flow to start their journey to their inner planet. This journey is a mental one and a technique from CoActive® Coaching, which is used as a tool for discovering individual fulfillment.

Play4Agile - discover your inner planet - journeyWe asked all participants to close their eyes and relax. We turned on some chilling out music and started the mental journey to the inner planet by telling an inspiring and visionary story for the mental journey. This took about 5 minutes.

At the end of this mental journey, we asked the participants ‘how does it feel to live on your inner planet’, open your eyes and build a model which describes this feeling.

You may ask youself now, hm, how can you build a feeling with LEGO® bricks. Indeed, this is challenging. But if you once have the chance to attend a StrategicPlay® session, you’ll discover how this works and I’m pretty sure you will be surprised and amazed!

Here is a picture of such a model which was build by one of the participants:

Play4Agile - discover your inner planet - how does your planet look like, how does it feelThis model was a rotating one, turning on it’s own axis!

As we just had 60 minutes for our session, we had to stop after this exercise. You can build up to this by start to extract individual guiding principals, fulfillment goals or start to discover your personal inner team which lives with you on your inner planet and guides you through life…