Spreading Ideas

Key components for successful hybrid teams.

A review of 3 of the 12 rules from the book "Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School" which relate directly to presenting.

Having read "Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School", Garr Reynolds shares what he sees as direct applications for improving presentations. By focusing on three of the twelve rules, the author explains why presentations should be entirely visual, with minimal words, and cause an emotional impact.

Collaborative bosses can use curiosity to escape the echo chamber of their own ideas.

David Marquet talks about how to enhance collaborative leadership in our organizations to build a good-decision making model. He notes that most leaders influence-decision making by the use of their power. They decide on what to be done, then seek validation from the board instead of letting the team play a part in the process as well. As a result, this promotes coercion rather than team collaboration. As a solution, he urges that leaders should be curious to know every board member's idea and ask them the right way for better collaboration. Let's go through seven common mistakes leaders make when asking questions and how they should phrase them instead.

Engage everyone in making sense of profound challenges.

The Conversation Café allows for an unlimited number of people to quickly share their thoughts about a specific subject and steers the group towards a shared understanding of the issue. It works best for complex, difficult, or painful situations as it lays the ground work for being able to move on. A single conversation café session takes from 35 minutes to one hour.

You can include and engage any number of people in making sense of confusing or shocking events and laying the ground for new strategies to emerge. The format of the Conversation Café helps people have calm and profound conversations in which there is less debating and arguing, and more listening. Sitting in a circle with a simple set of agreements and a talking object, small groups will engage in rounds of dialogue with little or no unproductive conflict. As the meaning of their challenge pops into focus, a consensual hunch is formed that will release their capacity for new action.

Share know-how gained from experience with a larger community.

The User Experience Fishbowl helps a large group of people to benefit from the experience of a few individuals by creating a comfortable environment where those with experience can have a "water cooler" conversation while having an audience participate. This creates an immediate "anything is possible" feeling to the session.

It is composed of a small group of people surrounded by observants. The inside circle is formed with people who made concrete progress on a challenge of interest to those in the outside circle. Those in the inner circle debate and share their experiences, while the observers are able to ask questions to spark conversation. The fishbowl design makes it easy for people in the inside circle to illuminate what they have done by sharing experiences while in conversation with each other.

The informality breaks down the barriers with direct communication between the two groups of people and facilitates questions and answers flowing back and forth. This creates the best conditions for people to learn from each other by discovering answers to their concerns themselves within the context of their working groups. You can stop imposing someone else’s practices!