Productivity Exercise on Alignment, Decision Making Positivity Exercise on Const

[duygu]

Here is a multi-purpose, multi-layered exercise to work on Productivity Exercise on Alignment primarily, and secondarily on Decision Making and
Positivity- Constructive Interaction and Communication

Purpose: This exercise is for teams to dream and form a shared vision for themselves apart from the company purpose. It is a way to leverage the collective wisdom and imagination capacity of the team and encourage them to start working together on a common team purpose. It is usually best to use it in the second day of the initial 2 day workshop.

Duration: Approximately 60 min in total.
10 min context setting
30 min exercise
20 min debrief

Context: Before the exercise begins a short context setting on the importance of alignment in teams and how having an aligned team vision serves the team’s capacity to create outstanding results is key. Making a reference to Arthur Mindell’s 3 Levels of Reality helps them understand how dreaming is a big part of alignment and creating great results.

Quick Reference to Arthur Mindell’s 3 Levels of Reality:
Levels Of Experience
In order to understand the dreaming process more, let me describe various levels of experience.(2) One level is called “consensus reality” and includes such things as the way I identify myself, my profession, my weight, my height, my body gestures, the sound of my voice, music that I can notate, etc. These are things that most of us would consent to, or agree upon. A second level is what we call “dreamland”. In this realm lie deeper feelings, our dream images and dream figures. An even deeper level we call the “essence” or “sentient essence” level. This is the area of subtle tendencies that occur before something manifests as a visual dream image, an identifiable feeling, or an exact tune or melody. In Taoism, this realm would be called “the Tao that can’t be said,” that which arises before it can be named. Aboriginal people call this the area of the “Dreaming” which gives rise to all other levels including the material world. In process work, this is the level of the dreaming process.
The dreaming process is the deep source from which all the other levels arise. We can visualize it as the underground roots of a tree from which the visible portions of the tree emerge. In other words, as the essence begins to express itself, it appears as flickering experiences that catch our attention such as something suddenly catching our eye, a fleeting feeling in our bodies, or a quick sound that grabs our attention. When these experiences further unfold, they express themselves as identifiable feelings and the images and figures of our nighttime dreams. In other words, dream images first appear as very slight tendencies and sensations that then unfold into dream figures and images. In fact, if we notice these slight tendencies during the day, we can often predict the dreams we will have at night. When dream images further unfold, they appear in consensus reality at times as disturbances such as body symptoms, spontaneous gestures, slips of the tongue, etc, or, if we follow this unfolding with awareness, they appear creatively in such forms as song, art, and dance. These levels are not really separate but part of a fluid spectrum. By joining the flow of dreaming along this spectrum we can gain access to a great deal of inspiration.
http://www.aamindell.net/music-mystery-and-the-dreaming-process?rq=levels%20of%20reality

Activity:
We invite the team to sit back, close their eyes and focus on their breathing. 4 seconds to breath in, 3 seconds to hold, 7 seconds to breath out. 3 rounds at least. We make sure we take the time to get them relaxed and be ready for visualization. When they are ready in couple of minutes time we say the following:
“Imagine in 2-3 years time, this team makes it to the headlines of the major Financial Newspapers/News Websites with their major success. They have been interviewed and exemplified for their achievements. Their team performance has been stellar and very inspirational.”
Questions to ask:
Now, what is it that this team is acknowledged for?
What have they achieved?
How did they get there?
What is the team most proud of?
What was the vision they held?
What were the teams’ values?
Which top values did they honor on the journey?
What is the impact they had on the whole/bigger company?
What is the legacy of this team?

We then tell the team to note their dream in silence for a few minutes.

We then ask them to discuss what they imagined and come up with a one purpose statement with a metaphor/symbol in 30 minutes.

To complicate it a little, we tell them that we will observe them and intervene at one point to reflect back what we see. We do this midway and pull back again. We treat the activity as an action/learning exercise as well.

We debrief on how they feel about the purpose statement and how the process of dreaming, aligning and communicating worked for them.

Outcome:

The team comes up with a team purpose statement and increase their awareness of how they align, communicate, create and make decisions together.

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