How to Transform Your Workshop Design with a GroupGenius Starter Kit
How to Transform Your Workshop Design with a GroupGenius Starter Kit
Leave behind groupthink in 3 key steps thanks to Co-Founder of Imaginal Labs, Rob Evans.
October 19, 2021
There’s a word for when workshop design and facilitation goes wrong: it’s called groupthink. Groupthink happens when teams decide on ideas that are perceived to please the most which often leads to dull solutions. In contrast, GroupGenius creates a collaborative space for the best ideas to surpass any member of the group, no matter their status. Groups that practice GroupGenius co-labor higher-order solutions.
Let’s put it this way: a group is like a garden. You don’t create the plants or make them produce their crops, you simply create the conditions necessary for them to thrive. Similarly, you can’t create GroupGenius or force breakthrough solutions. You can, however, create the right conditions for propagating GroupGenius with the following key steps provided by workshop design expert Rob Evans.
CREATE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
Harvard Business school author Amy Edmondson states in her book The Fearless Organization that “When people have psychological safety at work, they feel comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution.” Psychological safety at work allows people to use their full, human selves to solve complex issues.
Vulnerability speaks volumes. As a group leader, manager, or CEO, your vulnerability encourages opportunities for others to speak up as well. Most leaders often have problems bigger than their span of control—it’s okay to admit that. You need people to come together to talk about what you need to get done and how to do it. Vulnerability must start at the top for ideas to grow.
Listen more than you talk. Asking good questions yields rich and insightful dialogue, so skip the big talk you were planning. Today’s leader is no longer the never-in-doubt archetype of the past. Leaders today learn to listen and learn to be vulnerable in the face of change. Psychological safety requires everyone, leaders especially, to actively seek out new information when the market evolves.
Stay humble. Be willing to admit to not knowing the perfect solution. To actually invite the best out of our teams, we must demonstrate the willingness to change our minds and challenge ourselves in the face of unknowns. Staying humble is a precondition to GroupGenius.
GET DIVERSE INPUT
Go beyond the usual suspects. The more diverse our teams and vocational backgrounds, the more we break free from our own information bubbles, otherwise known as confirmation bias. Meaning, we often look to the world to confirm what we already think. While comfortable, our bubbles can easily stagnate, particularly if our teams are not diverse—we must go beyond the usual suspects and invite outside voices to speak in.
Ask people to each come up with ideas independently before anyone shares. Research confirms that when you let people come up with their own answers first, you create the opportunity for deeper dialogue. Keep in mind that people sometimes need time to think so send out agendas and questions prior to collaborative workshops for the most exciting brainstorming.
BE TOUGH ON IDEAS, NOT PEOPLE
Get all the ideas out there. The end goal of GroupGenius is not a long list of ideas. The real work begins with narrowing down the ideas by objectively dealing with them before turning them into objects. Choose a space to process the ideas, from sticky notes to digital design thinking tools. Once you organize your ideas, they become divorced from the people who suggested them and should be considered and examined equally.
Creativity is the process of eliminating options. You can either spend endless meetings debating your options or you can test them. Be ruthless in your elimination of solutions if they don’t meet every aspect of your need. Turn to prototyping for sound feedback on your contending ideas. Use that feedback to iterate the idea and make it better. Ideas aren’t sacred, they’re just a step along the way to workshopping the perfect solution.
When you involve people and their ideas about their own organizations, clients, and communities, transformation happens. People support what they help create. If you’re a facilitator looking for more than a starter kit, consider The Collaboration Code®, Rob’s book series of tools, techniques, and case studies on workshop design.
If you are a facilitator leading bold innovation and strategy sessions, you need a space to tackle challenges efficiently and at scale. Bridge Innovate offers a digital studio to drive innovation from anywhere. Empower your teams to engage in real design work with built-in guidance, tools, and automated workflow—ask us about our digital studio.
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