Everyone here at RSVP Design and our clients, partners and suppliers would like to congratulate our colleague Geoff Cox on his recent Doctoral award and his new title of Dr. Cox! Outlined below is some further information on Geoff’s Thesis, and you can contact him for more information on geoff@rsvpdesign.co.uk

Back in 2003,  RSVP Design was created with a real sense of mission around utilising, and developing best practice in the design of learning environments. It was recognised at a very early stage that if this mission was to be achieved there was an urgent need to define exactly what “best practice” looked like. It was at that time that Geoff began his research, aimed at making available to designers, practitioners and buyers of learning events a set of guidelines that would help them to discern the best from the rest!

The early stages of the research were plagued with problems. Different terminology on different sides of the Atlantic, a shocking lack of published material relating to the design dimension of learning, and in particular the extent to which RSVP Design needed to demonstrate the unique value of experiential learning: each an impediment to progress. By 2004 a comprehensive examination of published material brought the conclusions:
a) There were no existing guidelines for the design of experiential learning environments
and
b) We were going to have to write our own
and
c) Any thoughts of this being a quick exercise were now out of the window!

That began six years of action research that started with some initial, tentative guidelines that Geoff put forward and asked our facilitation team to report back on. The guidelines were revised, based on their feedback, and he moved to the next piece of design using the new guidelines. This cycle was repeated on multiple occasions, with groups from business school executives to factory supervisors, each time adding to our knowledge of how the emerging guidelines needed to be revised and applied. The research journey was punctuated by some interesting insights, for instance when it was determined that the guidelines were equally applicable to learning environments that were designed to address the needs of young people, and when the guidelines were used successfully for the first time with electronic simulations as the experiential activity.

So finally, (in 2010!) Geoff has defended his Thesis and is now Dr. Cox. We will shortly be publishing an Executive Monograph of his research on the RSVP Design website and we believe that this will be a key contribution to what we believe to be current best practice in the field of learning design.

·It is an open and transparent statement of how RSVP Design creates experiential learning environments.
·It offers clients who are commissioning experiential learning events a language to define their requirements.
·It offers clients who are buying experiential learning events a way of discerning / interrogating the quality of the designs that they are being offered.

effective lifelong learning, Experiential Learning, learner engagement, Learning Design, Learning Games, learning tools, simulations, Training Games, Training Tools Hide

I read the recent Chartered Management Institute Review which stated some interesting and disturbing statistics for UK managers:

CMI recently questioned UK managers to find out which aspects of management they thought they were best at. Of the 2,158 managers polled, almost half (44 per cent) said they excelled at managing people. Twenty-one per cent were target-busters, 19 per cent believed they were strongest at managing themselves and just 14 per cent felt they were born to lead.

CMI has since put those perceptions to the test by inviting UK workers to use a specially-developed self-diagnostic tool to work out where their strengths and weaknesses lie. The results strongly contradict managers’ perceptions, revealing that, in practice, UK managers are best at getting results (41 per cent) and strong leadership (37 per cent). Just 14 per cent of the 6,056 people who used the tool excelled at people management and a paltry eight per cent proved to be best at managing themselves.

See http://www.hrreview.co.uk/articles/hrreview-articles/hr-strategy-practice/half-of-managers-misjudge-their-workplace-performance/10058

I wondered when I read that where do:

1. Most managers go to find out more about their own learning strengths/preferences and personality/thinking preferences? As little of this is taught to most undergraduates where else can ‘ managers’ get this insight, except through their organisation’s L&D team-building or other activities? Should this be mandatory on all undergraduate courses?

and

2. Managers (new or experienced) go to ‘practise’ their management skills? So much of what we see in corporate/organisational L&D is about presenting theories, models, competency frameworks, performance monitoring etc and less about offering these delegates the chance to practise new skills or behaviours. Group learning through experiential activities is a great way to offer people a non-contentious and safe ‘practice field’ for a wide rnage of management and ’soft skills’ rehearsal – but how do we get employers to provide more of it?

communication skills, creative leadership, Experiential Learning, learner engagement, learning challenges, Learning Design, Learning Games, Learning Mindset, learning styles, learning tools, Lifelong Learning, thinking styles, Training Games Hide

I recently came across this interesting article that suggests that creativity is in crisis!

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

Creativity involves both divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking opens up new options, ideas and possibilities, disregarding barriers and resource limitations. Convergent thinking then takes these multiple options and works with them, refining them until a useful outcome is produced. Many organisations emphasise convergent thinking but limit divergent thinking. My suspicion is that this is a response to the fear and risk aversion that has developed as a result of a culture of blame and litigation: divergent thinking inherently has risk and failure built in. Standardisation, measurement and control serve a purpose – but the downside is that they diminish creative thought.

If it is true that creativity is in crisis (and according to a recent IBM survey, creativity is an absolutely vital leadership skill) we really need to focus on strategies for re-building creative thinking as a core part of our education system and professional development. Fortunately, the evidence cited in the article also suggests that creativity can be learned. So, what can we, as facilitators of learning, do to enhance the creative abilities of our learners?

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. First re-engage people with the belief that they can be creative. Creativity isn’t just for artists and musicians – it’s the lifeblood of engineers, scientists and researchers too.

2. Help people to understand that creativity is not just about getting flashes of inspiration – it’s about making meaning from connecting ideas together, seeing new patterns in things and viewing existing things from new perspectives.

3. Encourage people to challenge their assumptions.  Help them to see how they can block creativity by holding on to past experience that limits them: “This won’t work because it didn’t before…” or “Stick with this because we know it works”.

At RSVP Design we have a number of tools and workshops that focus on building creativity: we love the activities in our Breakthrough Thinking workshop that aim to do just this. Have a look at the workshop materials you can buy for your own use and enjoy getting creative!

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/breakthrough-thinking-workshop-p-31.html

creative leadership, Experiential Learning, learning challenges, learning tools, thinking styles Hide

There are times when a trainer or facilitator ask me for an ‘icebreaker’ and it makes me shudder. I’ve seen some great training delivery in my time – and I’ve sat through some pretty awful sessions too. I think most learners have made up their minds about what a session is going to be like after the first few minutes and that decision is often made on the basis of the introductory activity – or lack of it.  So I’m quite prepared to stand on my soapbox and claim that getting your introductory activities right is a crucial part of your learning design process. Any old ‘icebreaker’ just won’t do!

Face-to-face time in learning is becoming increasingly precious. Yet very often, the process of introducing the course, the participants and ‘breaking the ice’ takes a disproportionate amount of time and doesn’t add value or move towards the learning objectives. And I’m sure we’ve all sat through the lengthy ’round table introductions’ that we could have done informally in a few minutes if we’d had the opportunity to get up and move! So here’s the challenge – find a means of introducing yourself and the group that delivers new insights and learning and ‘tunes people in’ to the core content of your training session.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Use what I call ‘people bingo’. Create a grid of 25 squares. In each one, write a statement about something that it would be genuinely useful to know eg. ‘Someone who is currently working on Project X’, ‘Someone who has experience of Y,’ ‘Someone who has experience of working with a competitor’, ‘Someone who has qualification Z’. Choose things relevant to your group and objectives. Give everyone a copy of the grid – the ‘bingo’ sheet – and give them 10 minutes to circulate and collect as many different signatures in the boxes as they can. They’ll need to talk to each other!!

2. Use imagery. RSVP Design’s ‘Images of Organisations’ and ‘Images of Customer Service’ are great examples of how carefully selected images can generate useful and relevant early discussion and focus people on the theme of the training or to benchmark how they are feeling at the start of an event.

3. Begin with an activity that gets people thinking and talking about the content of the programme. Our  ‘Challenging Assumptions’ puzzle is a quick and simple way of introducing people to themes around problem-solving, innovation and  change management. In just a few minutes they experience an activity that they want to talk about and, as they do so, the introductions happen naturally in a relevant learning context.

4. On a ‘technical’ training programme, use a group activity that gets a group working together and also identifies what they already know of the material they will be learning about. RSVP design’s ‘Learning Loops’ is a great example – a quick, multiple-choice question game that can be tailored to use your own content and then provides an excellent way of testing pre-training and post-training knowledge, whilst also building your learning group as they problem-solve together.

For more ideas and more information about any of the activities suggested above, have a look at the website or drop us a line!

energisers, Experiential Learning, icebreakers, introductory team activities, learning challenges, Learning Games, learning tools, Training Games Hide

RSVP Design is fortunate to have built-up an extremely strong portfolio of learning tools, learning design capability and learning experiences that we can now provide to a wider range of clients. With our strong global associate network we have a fantastic capability to deliver anything from a single workshop to a global leadership programme. If you are an independent business development professional and wish to add our IP to your sales portfolio, please contact graham@rsvpdesign.co.uk

business development, Experiential Learning, learning challenges, Learning Games, learning tools, sales, Training Tools Hide

A great question is the facilitator’s most powerful tool. The questions we choose have very different purposes and lead us to very different results – so how do we go about crafting questions that will generate the responses we are seeking?

If you ask many people to describe to you different types of question and their effect, their responses are often limited to references to ‘open’ and ‘closed’ questions, sometimes with an implication that open questions are in some way ‘better’ than the closed type. When pushed on the question of ‘types of question’, the respondents may extend their thinking to include rhetorical and hypothetical questions and even the idea of ‘the daft (stupid/foolish) question’!

In reality, effective communicators frame questions in many different ways to help to enhance their own communication and to help them to understand the people they are communicating with.
Most of us recognise the impact of a really great question: we are stopped in our thought processes, challenged to analyse our response and given a new perspective on the ‘habitual’ thinking we are engaged in. Equally, most of us recognise the frustration of being asked endless questions, typified by the young child’s repetition of the single question, “Why?”

Too many ill-considered questions cause us to become disengaged, superficial or defensive in our responses but, as any good coach or counsellor knows, the right question at the right time can unlock extensive dialogue and change an individual’s view of the world.

Those of you who read my last post, about using our ‘Whole Brain’ in thinking, will see the link when I describe to you what I see as four valuable categories of question – each related to one of the ‘Whole Brain’ quadrants.

Our ‘upper left’, logical analytical brain leads to questions which are designed to build understanding of processes,
systems and problems.These are often questions of analysis and logic. They are the questions which help us to
understand ‘cause and effect’ and to build convincing arguments and business cases. These questions are objective,
business-like and neutral: they gather information and data and process it effectively.

In contrast, our ‘upper right’, imaginative and synergistic brain provokes questions which are designed to extend our thinking, develop new ideas and approaches and stimulate innovation. These are often questions which ask us to imagine or visualise something new. They often focus on the future rather than the past and on ideal situations rather than ‘real’ ones. They are of enormous value in breaking habits in thinking and encouraging a different perspective and new ideas.

‘Lower left’ questions are designed to create order, control and structure and to help us to plan activities.These are often questions which begin, “How, what, when, who?”. They are questions which organise and categorise our thinking. They
ensure that we pay attention to detail and think through our ideas before we commit to them. These questions are essential in confirming actions, checking understanding and planning.

Finally, lower right questions are designed to build understanding of feelings, beliefs and different interpersonal styles and perspectives. These are often questions which seek to explore people’s feelings and understand their responses.
They are the questions which help us to build strong relationships and to offer empathy to others. They enable us to
anticipate reactions to suggestions and to understand personal problems.

Developing the ability to formulate these questions appropriately is a learned skill. If you play around with the categories you’ll find some much easier to work with then others!

I’ve developed a set of facilitator guidelines and resources that enable you to run an interactive, 2-3 hour skills development workshop around the ‘Art of Great Questions’. If you’re interested and would like more details, contact RSVP Design through the website : www.rsvpdesign.co.uk and ask us questions about questions!

communication skills, Experiential Learning, learning styles, questions, thinking styles Hide

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of right-brain and left-brain thinking. You know the basis – left brain logical and mathematical, right brain imaginative and expressive. However, you might not be aware of the ‘Whole Brain’ model developed by Ned Herrmann which extends this into a really simple but valuable way of ‘thinking about thinking’.

The HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Inventory) shows how we use 4 different types of thinking in our everyday lives in order to deal with different situations and relationships. Very briefly, the HBDI breaks our thinking down into 4 areas which could be summarised as analytical/logical, organisational/administrative, inter-personal/expressive and imaginative/holistic. Each of us uses all of these but, as with most of our skills and competences, we prefer, trust and rely upon some more than others.

Knowing something of our own preferences enables us to play to our stengths and be aware of things that we might miss when we think through a problem or seek to take advantage of an opportunity. Knowing something of the preferences of others around us helps us to understand their priorities, avoid potential conflicts and work with them in ways that are most likely to produce positive ans satisfying results.

The HBDI model can give great insights not only into individual thinking and behaviour but also into how teams work. Within the core RSVP Design team of four, we have four significantly different profiles. Which is just as well, because if we were all the same the business would be destined to fail. Geoff’s profile suggests that he is ‘off-the scale’ in the types of thinking that allow him to be creative, see possibilities, make unusual connections and find alternative solutions to old problems. That’s great for our Design Director, but it is just as well we have Graham to apply logical, rational, critical thinking to balance Geoff’s innovative ideas. Kim manages our sales office so we are glad she has a high level of structured, organisational thinking – we need someone to control and pay attention to details. And my profile, pretty well balanced between the 4 areas, allows me to provide a ‘translation service’ and explain Geoff and Graham to each other!

HBDI gives us some great insights into our learning design. By taking a ‘walk’ around the four thinking styles we can check that our experiences will appeal to diverse learners and that our processes are complete and balanced. Conscious decisions, like selecting activities that will appeal to different types of thinking, and asking questions that come from each of the thinking preferences, mean that we present and review experiences from very different perspectives.

We find the HBDI model much more user-friendly and immediately useful than other popular profiles such as MBTI or DISC. We’re surprised that not many people know it. We think you should!

You can find out more about Ned Herrmann’s work on www.hbdi.com

We’re also planning a series of half-day, introductory ‘Whole Brain Thinking’ workshops and further full-day workshops for those who would like to apply the model to their training and learning design – ‘Whole Brain Training’. If you are interested in finding out more, drop us a line and we’ll help you to get as excited as we are about this integrated thinking model.

Experiential Learning, learning tools, Lifelong Learning, thinking styles Hide

Recently I co-presented a 2 hour workshop at the Institute of Risk Managers Conference at Keele University. At first sight, it seems an unusual place for RSVP Design to be speaking but the reality is that Risk Managers are typical of many professional groups who desperately need the kind of support that we can offer to help them to achieve their organisational goals. Working with a client colleague from TNT, we introduced the Risk Managers to a Facilitation Skills workshop which we developed to help TNT to improve the quality of their Risk Assessments and Risk Workshops. Using practical, facilitated activity we demonstrated how some basic understanding of adult learning, group management, facilitation and decision-making techniques can significantly improve participant engagement and the quality of discussion.

TNT have had great success using our Voyage Mapping activity as a key element within their newly designed workshops – they’ve ordered multiple sets and plan to take it round the world as a simple, visual tool to get people talking and thinking together and to encourage a culture in which people are better educated about the Risk Management process. There are more details about Voyage Mapping, describing other uses, on the RSVP Design website. Simply enter Voyage Mapping in product search to get as enthusiastic about it as TNT have done!

No tags Hide

I’m a compulsive browser around professional networks such as Linkedin and I keep coming across questions that have me baffled. Most of them begin, “What is the one key skill…. ?”  or “What is the single most important attribute….?”.  Many of these are related to leaders or leadership and I find it pretty odd to think that something as complex as leadership can be broken down into such simplistic models. I get the same reaction when clients ask me, “Have you got a practical leadership activity we can do in 30 minutes. We want to illustrate leadership in action and give the participants some feedback on their leadership style.”   Well, maybe you can – but I’m sure I can’t!

All the learning that I’ve done about Leadership in the last 20 years has convinced me that it is a multi-faceted activity that is most needed in situations that are ambiguous, uncertain and complex.  Management is process-driven, systematic and focused on control. Leadership isn’t. Management is about controlling risk. Leadership is about seeing new possibilities, stimulating innovation, creating visions, enthusiasm and buy-in: even though there may be risk attached.

In creating leadership learning experiences for our clients, we need a number of things in place. We need time: time for a leadership strategy to be identified, developed and applied. We need multiple challenges, making different types of demands. We need pressure for change: internally and externally driven. We need uncertainty – an element of confusion and lack of clarity that has to be grabbed hold of, wrestled with and clarified. In offering leadership programmes we want participants to focus on key interactions and transactions: summarised for me in 4 key leadership ‘purposes’…strategic evaluation, creating conviction, developing understanding of integrated and applied solutions and empowering others to deliver in sustainable ways.

So – that’s why I can’t do it in 30 minutes, I’m afraid – or give you a single most important leadership skill!

No tags Hide

As suppliers of experiential learning programmes, we are often asked to design and deliver ‘team-building’ events. It often takes a lot of work to identify what the client actually wants and to explore the nature of the work we need to do. I’ve tried to break this area down and I now use three different terms:

i) Team-building ( (a new team, needing to get to know each other, identify skills, build relationships, merge cultures etc)
ii) Team development ( an existing team facing new challenges, difficult relationships, a need to ‘up’ current performance levels, align with a strategy etc)
iii) Teamwork skills (the skills of building and contributing to high performance teams, specifically important to specialists who regularly join new teams and to team leaders and project managers who constantly build operational teams)

Each of these ‘categories’ has very different needs, objectives and starting points. It becomes more important than ever for the supplier that our clients understand these distinctions and can work with us to develop appropriate content and success criteria. Here are some example questions that might help…

• Is this a team in which individuals work closely together and make decisions as a group? If not, what is the relationship between sub-groups? When do they meet and for what purposes?
• Is this a newly established team or a long-standing team (with or without new members?)
• What is the nature of the  leadership or supervision in the team?
• To what extent do these people control their own work patterns and practices and to what extent are these controlled by others?
• How much of the information they need to do their jobs is provided and how much has to be asked for or researched?
• Is quality/time/standard-setting managed by the group or by external ‘referees’?

• What are the particular communication issues that the team faces? Are they to do with the communication systems or content?
• How inter-dependent are team members?
• How does this team’s action impact upon other teams?

The list could go on. Questions of this type can really help designers to focus the learning and make it relevant and applicable to the teams. If we don’t get this type of information and clearly defined, measurable outcomes, we can’t effectively design and evaluate our ‘team-building’ events.

So purchasers, please help us to know what you really want when you ask for team-building!

No tags Hide