Number 24

Have Balloons, Crayons and Hoola-Hoops! Let's Meet!

Since 1976, when I did my first public workshop on cartooning, I have gradually been learning the importance of creating a community within an audience or among participants. When people, attending a public presentation, walk into a training room, a meeting room or an auditorium, they usually do not know very many people. When people walk into a room for an in-house program they may know some more even perhaps all the participants. In either case I have rarely found there was an initial sense of community in any of these rooms. They are just one of a group.

With the tragedies of September 11th, since the bombing in Afghanistan and November 13's airplane crash and tensions resulting from all of these I believe we as speakers need to help our audiences feel more part of communities and to help them become more at ease.

No matter what type of presentation from keynote to on-going small group training program to help put people at ease I weave in a series of exercises and experiences that work towards helping strangers become a community, though it may only be short-lived. Ice Breakers, Energizers, Team Builders, Bonding Exercises, Team Challenges all fit this goal. Thanks to a professional speaker, training and creativity friend, Jack Wolf I became more consciously aware of what he calls the "Socialization Process", a process that people go through from when they walk into a new room until they become comfortable and an active participant in the group.

Based on what I learned from Jack and since his help I have created my own Cre8ng Community Development Process which helps take people from stranger to members of learning creative community.

The exercises range from the initial "Hi I'm ____" type to the let's compete against the other teams. With my focus always on further developing the creative thinking skills in all people every exercise I use is design with that element in it.

After the introduction or opening section of a presentation I turn the session over to the total audience or group into groups (moving towards becoming teams) of five each and assign them a list of 5 or 6 unusual but not overly personally threatening pieces of information to share and discover about each other. An example might be….1) nickname, 2) a place they have lived that has been important to them, 3) something they do just for fun, 4) a place they would travel that they have never been without limits, 5) briefly describe a strange gift they have received.

Early on in my learning I would have the small groups report back to the larger group. Big mistake or can lead to a big mistake. The purpose of the small group exercise is to begin the bounding exercise with similar or like people. During the sharing of the information the people usually find things they have in common in pairs, threesomes, foursomes or all five of them. The other groups have not bonded with the other small groups and therefore sharing the information becomes a breech of comfort level. One of the other goals of small group exercises is to give everyone a chance to share and be involved at the level they are comfortable.

The second exercise is a simple team challenge encouraging the groups to mildly compete. Coming up with the names of candy bars or candies based on clues or the names of companies based on advertising slogans. This general increases the energy in each small group and the total room. I do not offer prizes or stress the competitive nature at this stage. That I might do later once the groups have become working teams.

A third exercise is usually a unique puzzle focused on the content or key points of the presentation. This could consist of a "Word Find" puzzle, a crossword, or something similar.

In a training program I use several to many experiential exercises that subliminally demonstrate key points or learnings related to the presentation's content. By contrast in a keynote I would use only a couple.

I use Energizers when I sense or obviously see that the energy in the room has dropped considerably and we are in a time frame requiring more time. Such energizers might consist of games, entire group handshakes or greetings where people are requested to greet everyone in the room in a limited amount of time. Or simply they may be one of many pair, triad, quad or quintet group standing exercises that I initially learned from taking many of Bob Pike and Creative Training Techniques International's various train the trainer programs and have revised several times eventually created anew based on the premises behind them.

One more factor needs to be added for this approach to work for you in your presentations. That is running them through your speaking style. Each of these exercises can be recreated in nearly any style to fit any speaker and their type of program. That is another article.

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© 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D. CSP