Mailstorming

If you are interested in seeing the exercise done, you can click on the video-icon in the bar to the right.

Description:
Exercise that helps participants to overcome obstacles. Developed by Thiagi.

Purpose:

• To be able to talk about things that are difficult
• To help each other finding solutions
• To make the participants talk together

When:

When in need of processing something that is difficult.

Time:

30-50 minutes

Materials needed:

• You need papers and pens for everyone. And an envelope for each group.
• A bell, whistle or the like.

Best suited for:

10-40 persons

How to get started:

- Place the participants in lesser groups of 3-7 people

- Ask them where the difficulty lies in the subject you chose to work on. E.g. – ask them to name different types of problematic course attendees.

- Give each group a difficulty. E.g. A problematic course attendee type – "The one who knows everything already" or "the one who is forced to attend the course". Write the name of the difficulty/course attendee type on an envelope and hand it to the group.

Give them a piece of paper and a pen and ask them to write down as many ideas as possible concerning how to handle this type of difficulty / course attendee in 5 minutes.

- When the time is up, the group must pass the envelope on to the next group. They now receive a new envelope to which they must write on a new piece of paper for 5 minutes answering the envelope’s question with as many ideas as possible as how to solve the new difficulty/ course attendee.

- Circulate the envelopes 2-4 times.

- In the end, ask the group to look inside the envelope that they received and choose the top three ways to handle the difficulty / course attendee.

- Eventually, do a plenary sum-up with all the groups explain the 3 solutions they came up with.

A variant:

- Eventually, write the 3 suggestions on blocks and showcase them.

- In stead of writing down the difficulties on envelopes, write them on a flip over and ask the groups to move circulate from flip over to flip over.

More info about this exercise:

Bo Krüger, Moving Minds, bo@movingmi...