The Teacher’s Manual
Transformative Action Institute
Skills for Success
Bonus Teacher‘s Manual Content November 2017
Transformative Action Institute
Transformative Action Institute
Teaching the key skills that young people need to succeed at making change in their lives and in their communities. A WORK IN PROGRESS If you have any feedback regarding this document, please contact Scott Sherman at ssherman@transformativeaction.org
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Table of Contents INTRODUCTION
06
COURAGE
10
Time Optimization
16
Strong Mindsets
30
Resilience
40
CREATIVITY
50
Innovation
56
64
Transformative Communication
Problem-Solving
74
COLLABORATION
84
Empathy and Compassion
90
Prosocial Behaviors
104
Teamwork
116
CONCLUSION
124
TRANSFORMATIVE ACTION INSTITUTE
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13
1-Minute Drawing
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14
200-Year Gap
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18
Time Audit
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20
Zone of Genius
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22
2100
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28
2100 Plus
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34
1 percent more courage
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36
Status party
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38
Status Role play
42
Gallery of failure
44
Celebrating failure
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46
Three things failure
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51
Remember Antartica
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52
Memory Loss
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54
Curveball
58
Rapid Design
60
Café without Coffee
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62
Reverse Brainstorm
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66
One Story
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68
Story Spine
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72
Act as If
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77
Negotiation or War
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80
Marshmallow Challenge
82
Voice of wisdom
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85
Documentary
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87
Sportscasters
89
Back dancing
92
Lost in Translation
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94
Active Listening
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COLLABORATION
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COURAGE
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Activity
CREATIVITY
COMMUNITY BUILDER
Greetings
Page
REFLECTIVE
ENERGIZER
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Activity Index
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SKILL BUILDER
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COLLABORATION
COURAGE
CREATIVITY
SKILL BUILDER
REFLECTIVE
COMMUNITY BUILDER
ENERGIZER
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98
Self-Compassion
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101
Cultivating Wisdom
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102
Multiple Perspectives
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106
Killing with Kindness
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108
Active Constructive Responding
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110
Make Others Look Good
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112
Seeking Out the Good
114
Spreading Goodness
118
Group Rock Paper Scissors
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120
Cooperative Musical Chairs
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122
Iron Chef
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Transformative Action Institute
Teaching the Key Skills of Successful Entrepreneurs What if we taught the key mindsets and skill sets that help make successful social entrepreneurs? By Scott Sherman / Oct. 31, 2011
Introduction
In the past few years, there has been an exponential increase in social entrepreneurship classes at universities. In most of these classes, professors teach students how to create business plans for social ventures. And many of these courses are excellent.
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But what if we went beyond this? What if we taught the key mindsets and skill sets that help make successful social entrepreneurs? For the past six years, the Transformative Action Institute (TAI) has been promoting a curriculum that teaches these skills. From in-depth studies of social innovators, we have identified seven important competencies that are essential for success:
What are the key skills for success that people need to change the world? In 2011, after significant research, we wrote the following article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review:
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
1. Leadership. These people take initiative and action to solve problems (rather than complaining about what’s wrong). 2. Optimism. These people are confident that they can achieve a bold vision, even when many other people doubt them. They have a strong sense of self-efficacy and a belief that they have control to change their circumstances. 3. Grit. This is a combination of perseverance, passion, and hard work—the relentless drive to achieve goals, complete commitment to achieving their task. 4. Resilience in the face of adversities, obstacles, challenges, and failures. When things fall apart, these people rise to the occasion. They thrive in the most ferocious storms. They see failures as valuable feedback. 5. Creativity and innovation. These people see new possibilities and think in unconventional ways. They see connections and patterns where few other people would imagine. 6. Empathy. These people are able to put themselves in the shoes of others, and imagine perspectives other than their own; this is one of the most valuable qualities for understanding the needs of others whom they serve. 7. Emotional and social intelligence. These people are excellent at connecting with others and building strong relationships. The important thing to note here is that each one of these qualities is something that people can develop with practice. There is a tremendous amount of scientific evidence that people can grow in each of these capacities. They can see statistically significant progress. For a long time, people thought that these traits were fixed. You either had them or you didn’t. There were some people who were born creative, and others who would never have an ounce of creative inspiration. There were some people who were naturally optimistic, and others who just were naturally pessimistic. People couldn’t change. But now we know that people can develop these competencies. Just in the same way that college students can learn a foreign language at age 20, so too can they learn the key skills for being great social innovators—becoming proficient, or even “fluent,” in these core competencies. First piloted at UCLA in 2005, this course has now been taught at more than 30 universities across
the world including Yale, Princeton, Cornell, NYU, Johns Hopkins, and UC Berkeley. Both Echoing Green and Ashoka U have recognized the organization as an innovator in social entrepreneurship education. In surveys, more than 90 percent of students said this class changed their lives. However, the financial downturn has made it more difficult to innovate on campus. Faculty and administrators face an uphill battle because of budget woes. How can you offer new course ideas when universities are cutting deep into traditional course offerings, and hiring fewer and fewer faculty? TAI’s module for social entrepreneurship is adaptable and cost-effective for universities because practicing social entrepreneurs from the local community can be brought in to teach as adjuncts. The TAI curriculum gives instructors a teaching manual to draw from, cutting down their course preparation time, while students benefit from an exchange with real-life social entrepreneurs who can share their experiences. For instructors who have adapted TAI’s curriculum, one of the keys to its success is its flexibility. This is not an all-or-nothing approach. Great success has come from incorporating a small section into an existing course, circumventing the need for new course approval, which can be a lengthy and involved process. Grace Davie, professor at Queen’s College, CUNY, adapted elements of the curriculum into her existing African history course. Davie casts figures in African history as social entrepreneurs: visionaries and innovators who have fought for change in their societies. She uses the concept of social entrepreneurship and a portfolio assignment from the curriculum to help each student identify the changes they want to make in the world. Let me finish by talking about this portfolio assignment, because it’s one of the keys to the success of this course. College students often have passion and energy and a desire to make a difference, but they frequently have no idea what they want to choose as a major, let alone what “big, hairy, audacious goals” they have for changing the world. We have students spend at least five weeks engaging in a rigorous assessment of their talents, strengths, skills, passions, and personal histories. Many students have reported that this was the most meaningful assignment they have ever had at any educational level. It helps them figure out what they want to do with their lives. Our goal now is to help spread this curriculum to more than 200 colleges and universities across the world: to help train the next generation of social entrepreneurs, innovators, and problem solvers for the 21st century.
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Transformative Action Institute
The 9 Essential Skills After several more years of research, and after interviews with countless employers, students, alumni, and parents, we have come up with a new rubric. We have determined that there are nine essential skills – and not just for people who want to change the world. These are skills that are necessary for anyone who wants to have a thriving life. Remarkably these are skills that are rarely taught in traditional education. Here we present a brief overview of these 9 skills, which we have grouped under 3 categories: courage, creativity, and collaboration.
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Courage Time Optimization
Having the courage to act according to your highest values
Strong Mindsets
Having the courage to think like an entrepreneur: acting boldly, taking risks, and having a sense of self-efficacy
Resilience
Having the courage to bounce back from failure, loss, and adversity
Creativity Innovation
Using creativity to create something useful and important
Transformative Communication
Using creativity to communicate in a way that engages and wins people over
We‘re just getting started In the coming chapters, we will look at each one of these in turn. We will share activities that help people learn and develop these skills. We will also look at ways to measure each skill, and milestones to help people get there. Like the entire Teachers’ Manual, this is still a work in progress. We continue to develop this further. If you have suggestions, please contact us at info@ transformativeaction.org
Problem-Solving
Using creativity to overcome the challenges that face us
Collaboration Empathy
Fostering collaboration by understanding others’ needs and perspectives
Prosocial Behaviors
Fostering collaboration by serving other people, to help them meet their full potential
Teamwork
Fostering collaboration through working with others towards a better vision of the world
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Transformative Action Institute
Courage In a world where change happens so rapidly – indeed, one where 25 million jobs will be lost to automation in the next decade alone – people need courage to be able to adapt. Here are a few exercises to get people to feel courageous. Most people are scared to try new things, so this helps people get out of their comfort zones, and realize that they have the capacity to overcome their fears:
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Greetings
ACTIVITY
An activity for getting people connected very quickly; everybody in the room greets each other in different ways ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To connect people and make them feel a sense of belonging
Overview Facilitation
TIME
5-10 Minutes
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because people learn best when they feel part of a community
This is a simple game and a great icebreaker to get the energy in the room up. (If you have an event with a photographer, this is also fantastic for getting great pictures!) Have everybody in the room stand. Then announce that they are going to go around and greet other people in the room. We always begin with this: 1. “Greet the other people like they are your long-lost best friends – your best friends whom you haven’t seen in years!” The effect of this is remarkable. People often start hugging each other with passion and enthusiasm. This works especially well when a group has already known each other. But it’s astonishing how well it works on the first day of an event, when people are total strangers. People often spin each other around, and jump up and down with genuine joy. It’s also a great way to get people feel like they belong. It’s often difficult to stop this, because people are so excited and boisterous. It’s hard to get people’s attention to go to the next greeting. When you do get everyone’s attention, go on to this next instruction: 2. “Greet other people as if they have bad breath.” This is humorous to watch for completely different reasons. People typically laugh for a moment, and then they hold out their arms to shake hands, standing as far away as they can. After they have greeted each other for a moment, you can go to the next one: 3. “Greet other people as if they are celebrities.” Now the students often are very deferential towards each other, even shy and coy. After a minute or two of this, you can move to the final one:
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute,
4. “Greet other people as if they are cowboys or cowgirls.”
adapted from popular improv activity
S CIE NCE :
Even when we have done this in Texas, people resort to stereotypes from old Western movies. Some people will strut; others will swing an imaginary lasso; others will do some kind of square dancing. (Note: Even though all of these are stereotypes, they are all meant to be positive. This activity is not meant to make fun of anyone’s culture.)
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt: An fMRI study of social exclusion.
You can invent your own categories as well. The key to this game is that it helps people feel like they belong. Neuroscientists Naomi Eisenberger and Matt Lieberman at UCLA did a famous study where
Science, 302, 290–292.
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Transformative Action Institute
Greetings
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
they found that the pain of social rejection is processed by the same parts of the brain as physical pain. In other words, it hurts to be excluded. This game makes everyone feel welcomed and part of the group. This game typically does not need a debrief. It’s just a great way to get energy in the room to a crescendo, and also to get people to feel like they belong to a community. Once they have had everyone hugging them and treating them like best friends, people tend to feel close and connected – even though they were strangers mere moments before!
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One Minute Drawing
ACTIVITY
People draw each other as a way of connecting ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To tap into “multiple intelligences”
Facilitation
TIME
5 Minutes
MATERIALS
Pen and Paper
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because some people learn more when they engage in different styles, such as using art
A second way to break the ice is to get everyone into pairs, and tell them that they have one minute to draw each other. Most people think that they have no drawing talent, so when you announce this, everyone usually laughs nervously. They judge themselves negatively, so they are reluctant to do it at first. Fortunately, everybody is in the same boat, and it’s a relatively trivial request, so people go ahead and do it. Indeed, it is a small moment of courage that leads to some connection. Another way we have used this activity successfully is with a group of 20 to 50 people where people have already gotten to know each other pretty well. We usually do this after we have done about 30 minutes of name game icebreakers. We put people in pairs, and then we ask them to draw a certain person in the group. Between the two people in each pair, they have to figure out if they know the person whose name we just announced. Thus it’s a two-part puzzle: They have to figure out who the person is, from among everyone in the group. And then they have to draw the person they think it is. We do this up to 9 times, each time calling out a different name of someone in the group. Finally, for the last round, we ask them to draw someone else in the group who hasn’t yet been called. They can choose to draw anyone at all. The catch is that they then need to go around and show their drawing to other members of the group, and see if anyone can figure out whom their drawing depicts!
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This activity may seem unorthodox, but it draws upon the work of Harvard professor (and MacArthur Genius) Howard Gardner. He insists that traditional education focuses too much on the role of linguistic and mathematical intelligence. In his influential work, he theorizes that there are multiple forms of intelligence, which includes visual intelligence (one that artists and architects often have). By using art in an activity, we hope to appeal to a different kind of intelligence, and different learning styles.
Transformative Action Institute, adapted from popular improv activity
S CIE NCE : Gardner, H., & Hatch, T.; Hatch (1989). Multiple intelligences go to school: Educational implications of the theory of multiple intelligences.”Educational Researcher. 18 (8)
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Transformative Action Institute
The 200 Year Gap
ACTIVITY
People tell a time traveler from the past about modern technology ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE CREATIVITY
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help people gain courage
Facilitation
TIME
10 Minutes
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because most people often are reluctant to speak out if they think they will look silly or stupid. This exercise helps show them that they can exercise courage without worrying that people will judge them.
For this final activity, everyone will be in pairs. One person will be Person A, and the other will be Person B. It turns out that Person B is a time traveler. He/she comes from the 19th century. For example, in the United States, he/she could be someone famous like Abe Lincoln or Harriet Tubman. Then again, it doesn’t need to be someone famous; it could just be an ordinary person who was mysteriously transported 200 years into the future. Person A is going to explain some modern-day technology or convenience to this person who has just traveled in time into the 21st Century. Person A can choose anything he/she wishes: For example, one person tried to explain electric lights. Another tried to explain air travel. A third tried to explain Uber (but then they realized that they had to explain cars and smartphones.) After letting them do this, then you can switch roles. This time, Person A is the time traveler, and Person B is the one who has to explain some different modern-day invention.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, adapted from popular improv activity
S CIE NCE : The Spotlight Effect: Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: An egocentric bias in estimates of
Afterwards, you can debrief about how difficult or easy people felt this to be. Many people laugh about the fact that they don’t even really know how modern technologies work. For people who don’t have the scientific or technological expertise, trying to explain air travel to someone from the past was like trying to describe magic. Of course, the point of this exercise isn’t to come up with respectable, serious scientific explanations. It’s to make people step outside of their comfort zones, and exercise just a small bit of courage. After all, there’s no bad consequence of not knowing how air travel, or an iPhone, works. If anything, it just leads to a lot of laughter, bonding, and connection. That’s the point. Often we fear things that aren’t a big deal at all. We worry that we will look foolish, or that people will judge us for our ignorance. But nobody else is actually watching or caring.
the salience of one’s own actions and appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(02), 211–222 Gilovich, T., Kruger, J., & Medvec, V. H. (2001). The spotlight effect revisited: Overestimating the manifest variability of our actions and appearance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, (38), 93–99.
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There’s a famous study from Cornell about this. The researchers, Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky, made students wear bright yellow Barry Manilow shirts and walk into a room full of other students. (For those who don’t know, Barry Manilow was a disco singer from the 1970s, made famous for songs like The Copacabana. Apparently, he’s not considered to be cool on college campuses today!) The students wearing the garish t-shirts were mortified; they thought that the majority of their classmates noticed their fashion (and musical) faux pas. Indeed, they felt like it must have been terribly embarrassing. Yet, in reality, very few people even noticed them!
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The 200 Year Gap
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation (Debrief)
This phenomenon is called “the Spotlight Effect.” We think that we are in the spotlight, and everyone can see all of our flaws and imperfections. When we wake up and find we have a pimple, we think that everyone will notice. Yet to be honest, most people are not even paying attention! That’s because we are at the center of our own universe. So things that happen to us loom large in our own consciousness. But we aren’t at the center of other people’s universe (except perhaps that of our mothers!) So the things that we think are embarrassing barely even register with others! Indeed, in another study, Gilovich revisited the spotlight effect to focus on behaviors where people really do screw up and say the wrong things. Obviously these people feel like they want to crawl into a corner and hide. Yet, unless you are a star athlete making an error in a crucial game of the World Series, which causes your team to lose, most of your peers don’t give it too much thought. Our fears of embarrassment are mostly in our heads! This should give people encouragement to try new things, to step up their levels of courage. The rest of this section is about that.
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Transformative Action Institute
COURAGE
Time Optimization Having the courage to do what matters most
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
It may seem strange that the first skill
eating the marshmallow, they would
under courage is “time optimization.”
get two marshmallows as a reward
Yet, when working with students
at the end of the experiment. Of
(and with most of the rest of the
course, once the adult left the room,
population), we have found two
many of the children could not resist
major issues:
temptation. They succumbed to their
Most people are struggling with time. In a national survey of 150,000 college students, 34.6 percent reported feeling overwhelmed. Yet at the same time, most of us don’t have the courage to take on what truly matters. We would rather do what’s easy and comfortable, rather than take on something difficult that is far more important. Indeed, 70 percent of college students report that procrastination causes frequent problems. (Only 4 percent say it’s rarely a problem.)
desire for instant gratification, even though they would have reaped a much better reward if they had just waited. Unfortunately, the same is true with most of us when it comes to time. We know that we have many important tasks on our plate. Yet we decide to postpone them until we have indulged in many other tasks that are far more pleasant and easy. The problem is that we feel guilty when we procrastinate; we know it’s bad for us, and it causes stress once we are getting close to the deadline
This is not so surprising. It’s similar
and have very little time to get our
to the challenges of wanting instant
important work done.
gratification that are widespread in our culture. Many people are familiar with Stanford Professor Walter Mischel’s famous marshmallow experiment. He left young children in a room with a tasty, fluffy treat. If
That’s why it takes courage to do what truly matters most. In this chapter, we will look at activities and milestones for developing this important skill.
they could wait 15 minutes without
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Transformative Action Institute
The Time Audit
ACTIVITY
This is an activity for measuring how effectively people are spending their days REFLECTIVE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To analyze whether we are spending sufficient time on what really matters to us
Overview
TIME
10 Minutes
MATERIALS
Spreadsheet, pen; some students may use apps
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because we are often unconscious of how we spend our time; we waste time without even realizing it
Most of our unhealthy habits are the results of unconscious behavior. We don’t know how many hours we are actually spending in front of the TV every day – including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and other streaming services. How much would you guess? Try to estimate it right now. Unless you are keeping a detailed time log of every minute of your day, you will probably be off by a wide margin. According to the latest data, the average American watches 5 hours and 4 minutes every day! (“Well, that’s not true of me,” you scoff. “Sure, other Americans are couch potatoes. But I don’t really watch that much TV at all.” We all like to think that we are far better than average.) Well then, how much time would you estimate that you consume any sort of media – not just TV, but surfing the web, using apps on your phones, checking social media, etc? According to current surveys, it all adds up to an average of 10 hours 39 minutes per day for every American! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some of our favorite moments may be watching shows on Netflix or Amazon, which entertain us; many provide a fun, relaxing distraction from the problems and challenges of the world. The problem comes from the fact that most of us feel overwhelmed, stressed out, and crunched for time. Many people complain incessantly about how they never have time for what really matters. There’s not enough time to exercise; there’s not enough time to eat heathily; there’s not enough time to do so many other things we wish to do. And yet somehow the average American spends nearly 11 hours a day absorbed in media. Recently I was at a luncheon with many friends and colleagues who are part of the club of people who feel overwhelmed. (Many of us seem to wear the fact that we are crazy busy with a badge of pride!) I was surprised when the topic turned to TV. Every single one of these people – these people who claim to have no time – was enthusiastically comparing all the great shows they were watching on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Now. For each title, there was an excited debate about the show’s merits; apparently most everyone had seen all of these shows. Some had even bingewatched every episode for seven seasons! Yet if, on another day, I asked them how they spent their time, they would tell me how there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done – including the things that really matter.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The Time Audit
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Overview
That’s why the first thing we need to do is to act like attorneys who are doing billable hours. It’s hard to do, but we need to record for 72 hours how we spend every minute. (Well, obviously you don’t have to record each minute! Attorneys often bill every 6 minutes, but you can probably get away with recording what you are doing every 15 minutes.) Only by taking an honest stock of your time can you see whether you are truly spending much if any time on what truly matters.
Facilitation
Tell your students: “For the next 3 days, divide up every hour of every day into 15-minute segments. On a spreadsheet, you can record what you have just done. “Admittedly this is very difficult. Many people start recording how they spend their time for the first hour or two. Then they get distracted, and find themselves trying to reconstruct their day right before they go to bed. And they often find it difficult. They ask themselves, ‘Where did the day go?’ “Thus, for those who need technological assistance, there are some apps like RescueTime that can measure how much time you are spending while on your phone or computer. You don’t need to be keeping track on a spreadsheet. The app will do it for you. And you may be surprised and chagrined to hear what it discovers: Some people will find out that they spent several hours on Facebook or Instagram. “Keep track of everything you do for the next three days. When we come back together, we will discuss what you discover.”
Debrief
When the students return after doing this for three days, start a conversation as to what they found out. Did they spend their time on the things that really mattered to them? How much time was wasted? We certainly don’t want to judge how people spend their time. This is based on whether they think that they have used their time wisely. Is their use of time consistent with their stated values? This leads to the first principle of time optimization: There is enough time! We tend to waste and squander inordinate amounts of time on things that give us little ROTI (return on time investment.) For people who claim that, “I have no time” to achieve what they really want to do, author Kevin Ashton writes: “Time is the great equalizer, the same for all: 24 hours every day, 7 days every week, every life a length unknown, for richest and poorest and all in between. We mean “we have no spare time,” a blunt blade in a world whose best-selling literary series [Harry Potter] was begun by a single mother writing in Edinburgh’s cafes when her infant daughter slept; where a career more than 50 novels long [that of Stephen King] was started by a laundry worker in the furnace room of a trailer in Maine; and where three centuries of physics were overturned in a year by a man [Einstein] with a permanent position as a patent examiner. There is time.”
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Transformative Action Institute
Zone of Genius
ACTIVITY
This is a survey that helps people discover their highest values, passions, and talents REFLECTIVE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To discover what are our most important values
Overview
TIME
30-45 minutes w/ debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because we often find a disconnect between our values and how we spend our time
Asking people about their values According to MacArthur Genius Angela Duckworth (whose seminal work on grit we will explore in a future chapter): “Psychologists have found that asking people to reflect in writing on their core values has miraculous effects on motivation.” For example, a study by Stanford Professor Geoff Cohen and UC Santa Barbara Professor David Sherman suggested that having students write about their values significantly increased academic performance, relationships, and health for several months – or even years – afterward! This is similar to findings about the benefits of reflecting on your strengths and talents. As author Tom Rath says, research from Gallup “reveals that people who focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to have high levels of overall life satisfaction.” And what is true in work is also true in school. Therefore, it’s important for everyone to explore their values and strengths in the following exercise.
Facilitation
Step 1: Ask all of your students to take 15 to 20 minutes to write down the answers to these questions: 1. 2. 3. 4.
S OURCE :
5.
This comes from Becky and Christine Margiotta at the Billions Institute, inspired by Kathryn and Gay
6.
Hendricks. I’ve adapted it slightly here.
7. S CIE NCE : Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Selfaffirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333-371
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What activities did you most like to do when you were a kid? What did you think you wanted to be when you grew up? What would you do if you had no fears about money? What do you most love to do? (You love it so much that you can do it for long stretches of time without getting tired or bored.) What work do you do that doesn’t seem like work? (In other words, time passes quickly and you find yourself engaged, motivated, and absorbed, really interested in what you are doing.) In your work, what produces the highest ratio of impact and satisfaction to amount of time spent? (Even if you only spend a few minutes on it, something may spring forth that leads to huge value.) What is your unique ability? (These are special skills that you’re gifted with. These unique abilities, fully realized and put to work, can provide enormous benefits to yourself, to your organization, or to others in the community. While it’s certainly a virtue to be humble, this question asks you to identify where you are relatively stronger compared to most people.)
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Zone of Genius
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Step 2: After everyone has finished answering the questions, tell the class this: “You should now have a sense of what are your ‘genius qualities and skills’ – the things on which you should be spending the most time. It’s similar to the theory of competitive advantage in economics: There are certain things that you can contribute to the world that most others can’t. That’s where you should be spending most of your time.” Step 3: Have people get together in pairs to share their answers. Afterwards you can get together as a class to discuss what they found.
Debrief
Ask people how they liked this exercise. Did it shine light upon their priorities? How did it connect with their time audit from last week? Did people find that they spend most of their time doing what matters most? Or do they find that they are always busy spending time on things that don’t really count. In other words, do they find that they are killing time? (Thoreau famously said that one could not kill time without injuring eternity. He also said, “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?”) The research is clear: You should spend your time in your zone of genius – doing what you love, and playing to your strengths! You will be far more productive and happy. Of course, some students will retort that this is difficult, if not impossible. We all have to do a lot of chores that we don’t like, and which we’re not good at. The statement above is meant to be a north star. People should strive to spend as much time in their zone of genius as possible.
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Transformative Action Institute
The 2100 Game
ACTIVITY
This game helps people live according to their highest values and priorities every day REFLECTIVE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To improve how we spend our time; to become more productive; to prioritize the things that really matter
Overview
TIME
Assigned as homework. 20 minutes to debrief in class
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because most of us feel like we are not very good at managing our time, energy, or stress levels
According to a 2005 study by the Families and Work Institute, over 100 million Americans feel overworked and overwhelmed by all that they need to do. Every day we are bombarded by hundreds of demands on our time. There are never enough hours in the day to accomplish everything that we want. As a result, many people feel like their lives are spiraling out of control. They are falling further and further behind. Yet few of us are very talented at taking back control of our lives. Many people get to the end of the day and wonder where the time has gone. We spend many of their hours doing lots of small tasks, checking things off our “to do” lists, but we don’t feel satisfied that we have really accomplished anything of great importance*. Harvard Professors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer conducted a study of 600 workplaces. They found the single best predictor of happiness on the job is not a high salary, nor even recognition and praise from bosses. The single best predictor was the ability to make meaningful progress on important work every single day.
Facilitation
We will never have time to respond to every demand on our time. Instead, we must focus on what truly matters most – those things that bring the most meaning to our lives. We need to focus on what’s really important and in line with our deepest values. It sounds great. But how do we actually do it?
S OURCE :
Many time management experts recommend that you prioritize your most important tasks into categories of A, B, C, D, and E. A1 is most important; A2 is the next most important; and so on. You are never supposed to do a B task until you have finished all the “A tasks.”
Transformative Action Institute
But many of us spend our time doing “C26 tasks.” Often, the A tasks are big and scary and overwhelming. It’s no wonder that people avoid them! It’s no wonder that people procrastinate! S CIE NCE : Amabile, T. & Kramer, S. (2011). The
This game is meant to help you (and your students) get beyond this syndrome. Indeed, this game rewards you for focusing on what matters most in your life.
power of small wins. Harvard Business Review, 65, 333-371 Galinsky et al. Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much. (2005) Families and Work Institute.
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*There is a reason why so many of us love To Do Lists. We get a hit of dopamine (the chemical in the brain that makes us feel good) every time we check off a box. We love to have that feeling of success and accomplishment. Yet the problem is that we might accomplish a lot of minor, insignificant tasks. Indeed, most people start with tackling their smallest and least important tasks, in order to feel like they have achieved something.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The 2100 Game
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
This is what you tell your students to do for their homework over the next week. (Alternatively you can just copy and paste the following instructions) You are shooting for a perfect score of 2100 points every day. Here’s how this game works. First of all, you determine what are the 3 most important things in your life today. If you could accomplish nothing else, what would make the greatest difference? What three activities would have the greatest positive impact on your life, personally and/or professionally? Then you break down your most important goals into smaller steps. Note that each step should be a small but significant piece – something valuable that you can accomplish in 30 minutes or less. It should be something that you could see as a tangible sign of progress. Think to yourself: What is the next action that I could take to make progress towards my goal? Now you start keeping score. Each action step is worth 100 points. YOUR MOST IMPORTANT GOAL Step 1 – 100 points Step 2 – 100 points Step 3 – 100 points If you achieve all 3 of these steps, you get a bonus of 600 points at the end! (This is a huge incentive to finish these 3 important things. You get 900 points total. If you just do 3 of them, you only get 300 points, because you don’t get the final 100 points, nor the 600 point bonus.) YOUR 2nd MOST IMPORTANT GOAL Step 1 – 100 points Step 2 – 100 points Step 3 – 100 points If you achieve all 3 of these, you get a bonus of 400 points at the end. (Note that you cannot get the 400 points, if you haven’t gotten the 600 points. In other words, you must finish the most important goal completely before taking on the second most important goal! This is to make sure that you have your priorities straight. Otherwise it’s too easy to take on the less important things first, since the biggest, most important project is usually the scariest – the one that is most daunting and most likely to cause procrastination.) YOUR 3rd MOST IMPORTANT GOAL Step 1 – 100 points Step 2 – 100 points Step 3 – 100 points If you achieve all 3 of these, you get a bonus of 200 points at the end (Again, you cannot get the 200 point bonus unless you have received the 600 and 400 point bonuses.) The goal is to get a perfect score of 2100 points. That shows that you have had an incredibly productive day: You took 3 steps towards each of your 3 most important priorities! What’s even better is that this promotes life balance. This system only takes 4.5 hours of your day. It leaves nearly 20 hours for everything else.
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Transformative Action Institute
The 2100 Game
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Questions & Answers
You say that each step should take 30 minutes or less. What if my step ends up taking longer than 30 minutes? (What if, for example, I spend 2 hours on it, and I’m still not finished? Do I get any points?) This is a common predicament. Things always seem to take much longer than we think that they will. The best solution to this is to make your steps based on time, rather than outcome. Just say, “The next action is to work 30 minutes on project X.” Even if you do not achieve some measurable outcome in those 30 minutes, you will have made some progress. This is your first step. As the old proverb says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I’m not satisfied with the answer you just gave. It seems like you are rewarding quantity, not quality. Someone could spend 4.5 hours on one project, and get 2100 points, but not get anything significant accomplished. Isn’t the point of this system to make people more productive? The point of this program is to make sure that people are spending time devoted to their most important goals in life. If your 3 most important goals are to work on a single project, and you spend 4.5 hours on it, then you are living consistent with your deepest values. If you find that you are not accomplishing much during those 4.5 hours, then you need to examine your work habits. But this 2100 game cannot measure the quality of your work. It only can measure whether you are spending your time wisely, on the things that you most value and prioritize. What if I don’t know my most important goals in life? I’m pretty confused and lost. I don’t have any sense of what’s really important. I just seem to be drifting through life, without much direction. I don’t have a sense of mission or purpose. I spend most of my free time just watching TV and playing video games and surfing the Internet. Even when I am at work or school, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything meaningful. It’s all just drudgery and boring things that need to get done. In order to play this game, you need to figure out what truly brings you meaning, joy, and purpose. What are your deepest values? When in your life have you felt the greatest sense of satisfaction? OK, let’s say that I do know my goals. What if I don’t know the action steps to reach these goals? Think about what is the next physical, visible activity that you need to take in order to carry your goals forward. For example, let’s say that you have to write a 40-page report. It may seem overwhelming and you don’t even know where to start. But there must be something that you can do to begin. What is the one physical behavior that you can take to move one step forward? It may be just to write one paragraph of notes, brainstorming the major ideas for the report. It may be to gather all the research together in one place. It may be to make a phone call, interviewing an expert who could provide clarity on the report. According to productivity guru David Allen, the secret is just asking what is the very next thing that you need to do to move the project forward. When you continually ask this question, you have “an extraordinary shift of energy and productivity,” he claims in his book, Getting Things Done. (p. 236) Rather than making us procrastinate because we confront a huge, massive project, this question makes us focus on the one small, simple task that we can do and complete right now. When we
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The 2100 Game
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Questions & Answers
actually figure out that step and do it, we feel a great sense of accomplishment – a big victory!
Thinking about what is the next immediate action leads to clarity, accountability, productivity, and empowerment. This gets us out of the victim mentality; it makes us realize that there is a possibility of change, and we can do something to make it happen. Instead of complaining or feeling paralyzed, just ask what is the next action. When you do this, you get a great sense of being in control, and winning, and affirming that you have self-efficacy. To summarize: The secret is just figuring out one small action step that you can take right now. And then go take that action!
“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the longrange risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” JOHN F. KENNEDY What if my priorities change during the day? What happens if there is a crisis or emergency and I need to drop everything to take care of it? Or what if I end up dealing with new business? In my life, it seems like I am always putting out fires – always reacting to the latest thing that drops on my desk, or a phone call, or email that demands to be answered right away. You can change your list of important priorities throughout the day, especially in the case of an emergency. But remember to differentiate between the things that are urgent and the things that are truly important. We always are going to have a lot of projects that seem urgent, but that don’t lead to lasting positive outcomes. The idea of the 2100 game is to figure out what is truly important in your life – the thing that will make the greatest positive impact. This is about figuring out what matters most, and what is in line with your deepest values. It may help to keep track of every minute that you spend over the course of a week. By becoming mindful of how you are spending your time, you can see whether your schedule is truly in line with your values. You can then cut out things that aren’t truly contributing to your welfare. Many meetings, for example, are a waste of time (or go on way too long.) We also over-commit and overbook ourselves. You can find ways to cut back and lead a more simple life. What if my most important goal doesn’t have 3 steps? What if I can get it done in two steps, or even one step? If you can accomplish one of your most important goals in less than 90 minutes, then congratulations! It’s fine to have multiple goals. The basic idea is to spend 4.5 hours of your day on the things that truly matter most to you – whether this means 1 project, 3 projects, or 12 different projects! What if I can’t take on my first priorities right away in the day, because of my busy schedule? (For example, what if I have a meeting or phone call scheduled at 9 a.m.? It may not be my first priority; in fact, it may be C26. But I have a commitment to it.) So how would this work with the 2100 game? It’s true that you may not always have control over your schedule. There may be meetings or classes
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Transformative Action Institute
The 2100 Game
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Questions & Answers
or other events that have predetermined times. The first question is to ask whether you really need to participate in these things. Are these the best use of your time? What will be the consequences if you do not take part in the meeting or the phone call? (Millions of hours and billions of dollars are lost every year to wasted time in meetings, where most of the people don’t even need to be there.) If you do need to participate in these meetings or phone calls, that is understandable. But hopefully you do have control with regards to most of your schedule. In other words, you have choices. In this moment, you could be vegetating in front of the TV, or you could be doing something much more meaningful to you. Your system seems to be based on the idea that we should do our most important things at the beginning of each day. What if my energy levels are low at the beginning of the day? Usually I like to take on lots of small, relatively trivial tasks at the beginning of the day, to warm me up. I am actually a night owl, and get my best work done at that time. So how do you deal with that? The 2100 game allows you the freedom to do anything you want. You don’t need to use this system in the morning if you know that you can’t get anything productive done during that time. The whole point is simply to be a mindfulness system. Are you really accomplishing, at the end of the day, the things that are truly important to you? During your productive hours, are you accomplishing the tasks that make the greatest positive impact? Or are you spending your time on lots of smaller, relatively trivial, things that make little difference to your happiness or the happiness of others? If you aren’t accomplishing much, then you need to look at your life, and see where your time is truly going. The 2100 game simply motivates people to take back their lives and make the best use of their limited hours on this Earth. It’s an attempt to stop the sad trend of people who are wasting their lives and killing time. As Thoreau said, “it is not possible to kill time without injuring eternity.” What about life balance? What about other things that are important to me like family, friends, spiritual life, exercise, etc.? Where do those fit into this system? You can tailor this game to your lifestyle. The most important things in your life could be spending time with your friends and family; it could be pursuing your spiritual practice; it could be exercising or meditating or reading great new books that expand your mental horizons. It doesn’t need to be work projects. The 2100 game doesn’t impose any limitations or judgments. Your priorities are yours to choose. It always comes back to what you truly value.
“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die… Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it – our life – hides from us, made invisible by our laziness, which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly. But let all this threaten to become impossible forever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India… The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves in the heart of a normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think we are humans, and that death may come this evening.” MARCEL PROUST
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The 2100 Game
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
You can debrief this activity after students have been playing the 2100 Game for a week, or two weeks, or longer. Have people transformed their habits? Have they managed to score 2100 points on a consistent basis? If not, what were the obstacles they encountered? How can they overcome these challenges? In the past, some students have loved this activity, and found that it helps them achieve significant progress on meaningful goals. Yet other students have admitted that they haven’t played the game for more than a day or two. Therefore, it’s important to have accountability partners for students who are likely to let this activity fall by the wayside.
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Transformative Action Institute
Bonus: 2100 Plus
ACTIVITY
This is an advanced activity that you can give to students when they have mastered getting 2100 points every day for a week or longer. REFLECTIVE LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Advanced
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To improve how we spend our time; to become more productive; to prioritize the things that really matter
Premise
TIME
Assigned as homework. 20 minutes to debrief in class
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because most of us feel like we are not very good at managing our time, energy, or stress levels
Once you have mastered getting 2100 points each day, it means you are achieving the most important things in your life. But you can then move on to get bonus points and even higher scores. As we have seen, measurement transforms behavior. When you start giving yourself bonus points for areas of your life on which you want to work, then you see your actions shifting.
Instructions
You can set up categories for which you will receive bonus points. The categories are really up to you. Let’s say that you want to do any of the following: • Meet new people • Take more risks • Work on writing a novel • Exercising • Meditating • Eating more fruits and vegetables and other healthy choices • Reading books You will get 100 points for each time you do something. It’s that simple. For example, each time you write 1 page of your novel, you get 100 bonus points. If you write 10 pages today, you will earn 1000 points.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute
S CIE NCE : Amabile, T. & Kramer, S. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business
Similarly each time you reach out to a new person, or each time you take a small risk, you could get 100 bonus points for that – for the effort to go outside of your comfort zone. Again, it doesn’t matter what are the results of your actions. You don’t have control over those. This system just rewards you for making the attempt to live your life in a consistent manner with your deepest values. You could write 10 pages on your novel, and they could be terrible. But the point is that you devoted yourself to it and made it a priority; you did not procrastinate or avoid it or fear it. You took action. That’s what counts in this bonus game.
Review, 65, 333-371 Galinsky et al. Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much. (2005) Families and Work Institute.
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Notice that this 2100 Plus game is completely positive: It never penalizes people, or takes away points. It never tells you what you should stop doing. It doesn’t moralize and say, “You should stop smoking, or stop drinking, or stop wasting so much time in front of the TV.” Instead, it’s all about focusing on positive alternatives. It’s about asking yourself what are the good habits you want in your life, not the bad habits you are trying to defeat.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Bonus: 2100 Plus
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Questions & Answers
Why is everything worth 100 points? Your system seems to make everything equivalent. You seem to suggest that I just give myself 100 points for each time I exercise, regardless of whether it is an easy 5-minute walk on flat land, or an intense, hour-long bike ride over hilly terrain. Similarly, if I reach out to a friend, it is worth 100 points. Shouldn’t some things be worth a lot more than others? We have created this system to be as simple as possible. By making everything worth 100 points, it makes it easy to calculate. But you can decide what is worth 100 points. For instance, we don’t suggest that you get 100 points for writing an entire novel! Instead, we suggest that you get 100 pages for each page you write. By the same token, you could decide that you get 100 points for every 20 minutes of exercise that you undertake. The point is for you to decide what makes sense in your life. This game is open source. You can make it work for you. Each person will have a different calculation for the 2100 Plus Game, depending on your values and priorities. What if I want to measure quality? As mentioned above, this system rewards you just for trying. It does not judge you on the quality of your efforts. You get 100 points for each page of writing that you do, whether it is brilliant or terrible. The idea is simply to help people overcome their fear of failure, and to encourage people to make the attempt to do what’s most valuable to them. It’s better to write 10 terrible pages than to write nothing at all, for fear that it will be terrible. But of course, you can create special exceptions to the 100-point rule – i.e., times when quality does count: For example, let’s say that you want to start exercising every day. You could just give yourself 100 points for every time that you exercise. Or you could measure the time and quality of your exercise. So let’s say that you run for 30 minutes. You didn’t push yourself very hard, so you would give yourself a score of 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. Then you multiply the time times the quality. 30 times 5 equals 150, so you just got 150 points!
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Transformative Action Institute
COURAGE
Strong Mindsets Having the courage to think like an entrepreneur: acting boldly, taking risks, and having a sense of self-efficacy
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Overview There is a wealth of scientific research emerging about the different mindsets that make people more successful. In this section, we will refer to “the entrepreneurial mindset.” This mindset is for everyone – not just for people who are planning to become entrepreneurs. It involves
things are unchanging. People who score 120 on an IQ test at age 7 will always have that same level of intelligence. People who are not creative will never be able to develop creative talent. People who were picked last for the basketball team will never develop into better athletes.
having the right mindsets to take
Yet people with growth mindsets
action, be bold, and overcome
believe that we can improve in all
challenges.
of these areas. They see the brain as
We will begin with an overview of the different mindsets that have been researched. The scientific results are fascinating:
a muscle. The more we use it, the stronger it can get. Therefore, people can increase their intelligence with practice. People can also become far more creative, far more skilled at athletics, and even far more kind. All
From Fixed Mindset to Growth Mindset… Stanford Professor Carol Dweck has
it takes is taking on challenges, and learning from one’s mistakes in order to get better.
become an academic superstar with
In fact, the research on mindsets
her research on mindsets. She has
shows that people will have very
found that many people have a fixed
different views of failure. For people
mindset. In other words, they believe
with fixed mindsets, they will avoid
that many human characteristics are
failure at all costs. Even people
set in stone. For example, we tend
who score very high on IQ tests will
to prize qualities like intelligence,
tend not to challenge themselves,
creativity, and athleticism. For people
nor take on intellectual risks. That’s
who have a fixed mindset, these
because, if they fail, it will prove that
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Transformative Action Institute
they aren’t very intelligent after all! By contrast, people with growth
From Stress Mindset to Challenge Mindset
mindsets see failure as the best
Record numbers of young people
way to learn, grow, and develop. As
suffer from anxiety and stress. In
Einstein said, “A person who never
2016, the American College Health
made a mistake never tried anything
Association found that 62 percent
new.”
of all college students reported experiencing “overwhelming anxiety”
From Growth Mindset to Benefit Mindset More recently, Ashley Buchanan and Peggy Kern have started researching a third alternative: the Benefit Mindset. (See Buchanan & Kern. The Benefit Mindset: The Psychology Of Contribution And Everyday Leadership. (2017) International Journal of Well-Being, Vol 7, no
in the previous year. Yet there is a growing body of research showing that people perform much better just by changing the way they frame the anxiety-inducing events in their lives. Instead of seeing stressful events as problems that are burdening them, they can see such events as fun, exciting challenges to be overcome.
1.) This goes beyond having the
It’s true that stress is linked to the six
mindset of individual achievement
leading causes of death. Yet it’s also
and performance. It’s a mindset of
true that stress can be good for you!
contributing to the greater good. It’s
In fact, scientific research shows that
about developing strengths in a way
stress can lead to better performance
that makes a meaningful difference
and productivity, greater resilience,
in society.
deeper relationships, and a stronger sense of one’s personal values. It all depends on your mindset. Alia Crum at Stanford is one of the leading scientific researchers
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
on the subject of mindsets. In her
reported high levels of stress but who did not
experiments, she has shown that just
view their stress as harmful were not more
teaching people about the positive
likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of
side of stress can lead to better
death of anyone in the study, even lower than
health, better grades in school, and
those who reported experiencing very little
reduced depression and anxiety.
stress.
And this is not just true for students.
The researchers concluded that it
All people can benefit from seeing
wasn’t stress alone that was killing
stress as something positive to be
people. It was the combination of
used for better performance and
stress and the belief that stress is
productivity.
harmful.
In 1998, scientists asked 30,000
Of course, most people have never
American adults how much stress
been introduced to this research
they had experienced in the past
on transforming the way we frame
year. The researchers also asked
problems and failures. It takes
them if they believed that stress was
courage to begin to see stress as
harmful to their health. Eight years
something positive and to actively
later, the scientists tracked down
embrace it.
the health records of these 30,000 people. The results were astonishing. Stanford faculty member Kelly
So how do we cultivate these mindsets? We can begin with the following activities:
McGonigal summarized the finding in her excellent book, The Upside of Stress: High levels of stress increased the risk of dying by 43 percent. But—and this is what got my attention—that increased risk applied only to people who also believed that stress was harming their health. People who
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Transformative Action Institute
1% More Courage
ACTIVITY
People take small steps towards having courage REFLECTIVE ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help people achieve small victories; to get them to be just a little more bold and action-oriented; to start to shift their mindset to one of growth and possibility
Introduction
TIME
5 min. for the first step; 30 min. to debrief at next class
MATERIALS
Pen and Paper
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because up to 70 percent of even the most accomplished students feel like they are frauds and impostors; this exercise helps them achieve legitimate self-confidence
Earlier in this manual, we had offered an activity called “Daring Greatly.” We encouraged people to think about the highest dreams and aspirations that they harbored, but which made them too scared to even take the first step. This activity works wonderfully for some people. We have seen students who had been afraid to ask for money for their social ventures; they hadn’t even asked for $25,000, but, with this activity, they approached investors and asked for a million dollars. Remarkably, this helped them get a meeting with the investor, and they ultimately succeeded in getting many millions of dollars! Of course, this is a rare case. And the idea of “daring greatly” can be incredibly intimidating for most people, especially for those people (most of us!) who suffer from the “impostor syndrome.” Studies show that, even among the most successful people, 40 to 70 percent believe that they are frauds. This is a common experience in college, for example. Many people secretly think that everyone else is so much smarter than they are, and that they don’t really belong. As journalist Oliver Burkeman has noted:
S OURCE : Judith Martinez, social entrepreneur, and founder of “In Her Shoes,” a nonprofit that helps young women increase self-confidence
“Almost 30 years ago, the organisational theorist Karl Weick made an observation that campaigners on everything from global warming to homelessness have been ignoring ever since. Sometimes, he pointed out, convincing the world that you’re fighting a Very Serious Problem actually makes it harder to solve. In a paper entitled Small Wins: Redefining The Scale Of Social Problems, Weick argued that perceiving challenges as huge made people seize up – disabling “the very resources of thought and action needed to change them”. The history of gay rights, feminism and environmentalism, he claimed, showed that pursuing little victories was the better plan. They delivered quick motivation boosts, triggering a snowball effect. Want to change the world? First, stop trying to change the world.”
S CIE NCE : Sakulku, Jaruwan (2011). “The Impostor Phenomenon” International Journal of Behavioral Science. 6 (1): 73–92. Weick, K. E. (1984). Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems. American Psychologist, 39(1), 40-49.
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So an alternative to asking people to dare greatly is asking them to take a small step. This is the way to get those small wins that Michigan professor Karl Weick talked about. In this spirit, social entrepreneur Judith Martinez invented an activity called “One percent more courage.”
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
1% More Courage
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Ask people what would they do if they just had one percent more courage. Give everyone five minutes. On a sheet of paper, they can write down a list of “slightly courageous” things that they would do. The trick of this exercise is that people often take on challenges that are far more courageous than just one percent. (To be honest, it’s hard to measure 1 percent of courage.) They come up with plans for acting boldly. Then put them into small groups to share a single bold action to which they commit. The issue the challenge: They have 24 hours to accomplish it. They just need to take the first step.
Debrief
The next time that you meet with all the students, everyone has to report about what happened when they dared to act with 1 percent more courage. There are usually quite inspirational stories. You can spend 20 minutes hearing people’s stories. Then ask what they have learned from this activity. Often people will echo the research of Karl Weick in their answers: By achieving small wins, they felt like they could succeed in moving towards goals that seemed impossible and scary at first. They have a greater sense of self-efficacy.
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Transformative Action Institute
Status Party
ACTIVITY
People greet each other at an imaginary party, reacting to others based on their status (as depicted in a playing card) ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help people recognize the malleability of status
Facilitation
TIME
10 minutes for the party; 15 to 20 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS
A deck of playing cards. (Of course, if there are more than 52 participants in the room, you may need multiple decks of cards.)
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many people perceive that they have low status, and have the mindset of being powerless; this activity helps them learn that they can change it
This first exercise shows how people have an innate sense of what their status is. Step 1: Offer a deck of playing cards to everyone. Make sure to take the jokers out of the deck! Each person can choose one card, but he/she cannot look at what it is. Then they have to put this card on their forehead.
In the picture to the right, the cards happened to stick to people’s heads. But most people probably need to hold it with one hand to their head (like the person in the background, on the right hand side of this photo)
Step 2: Tell everyone, “Look around you. The people in the room who have face cards (King, Queen, and Jack) are royalty. They have the highest status in the room. The lowest status people are those who have 3, 2, and Ace (which counts as a 1).” S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, based on popular improv activity
S CIE NCE : A. Singh-Manoux, N.E. Adler, and M.G. Marmot. (2003) Subjective social
Continue your instructions to everyone: “Now go around the room and treat people according to their status. Don’t tell anyone what card they have on their head. Just treat them the same way that most people treat people with high status, low status, or medium status.” Step 3: Let everyone go around mingling with each other. There will probably be a lot of laughter, as well as anxiety. Often you will see people bowing down to the royalty, or fawning all over them as if they were great celebrities. You might also see people ignoring or dismissing the people with low-status cards.
status: Its determinants and its association with measures of ill-health in the Whitehall II study. Social Science & Medicine 56, 1321-1333.
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Just observe the dynamics in the room, and let the participants interact with each other for about 5 minutes.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Status Party
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Step 4: Call an end to the mingling. Tell everyone to line up according to the status that they think they have on their head. At one end of the room, you will have the Ace, 2, 3, and 4’s… At the other end, you will have the Jacks, Queens, and Kings. Usually people are pretty accurate when they line up. People know when they have been treated as low-status. People also know when they are high-status. Somehow the people in the middle usually figure it out as well. There are rare exceptions, when a low-status person will line up with the royalty cards. That is part of the valuable conversation that follows.
Debrief
People always prove quite enthusiastic to debrief this activity. Ask them how it felt to be high-status. Usually the Kings and Queens have funny stories about how people wanted their autographs, or wanted to take selfies with them. Then ask people how they knew that they were low-status. They usually have anecdotes about how they felt invisible, or worse. (Fortunately many of these stories are quite humorous, too, because people know that it’s just a game.) Yet this debrief also brings up very strong feelings and emotions. Some people who were low-status talk about how it felt to be ignored and rejected. Many people decry how we treat people based on their status, and there are some who even engage in civil disobedience, treating everyone equally regardless of what it says on their forehead. After debriefing, you can talk about how status is something that we internalize. But we can act as if we do have positions of high power, and people often treat us accordingly. As Keith Payne, a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina (UNC) writes in his excellent book, The Broken Ladder:
“We have to take subjective perceptions of status seriously, because they reveal so much about people’s fates. If you place yourself on a lower rung [of a ladder of status], then you are more likely in the coming years to suffer from depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. The lower the rung you select, the more probable it is that you will make bad decisions and underperform at work. The lower the rung you select, the more likely you are to believe in the supernatural and in conspiracy theories. The lower the rung you select, the more prone you are to weight issues, diabetes, and heart problems. The lower the rung you select, the fewer years you have left to live…. These things are more likely to happen to you if you feel poor, regardless of your actual income.” For proof, we go into the next activity:
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Transformative Action Institute
Status Role Play
ACTIVITY
Two people, one with high status and one with low status, exchange power COURAGE CREATIVITY
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Moderate
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To further demonstrate how people can act in ways that enhance their status and power
Facilitation
TIME
5 minutes for the role play; 10 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many people perceive that they have low status, and have the mindset of being powerless; as with the previous activity, this exercise helps them learn that they can change it
Ask for two volunteers from the audience to perform a role-play in front of everyone. When the two people come forward, ask the audience to shout out a situation in which one of the people is highstatus and the other is low-status. For example, we have had suggestions of a wealthy aristocrat and his personal butler; or of a parent and a child; or even a professor and a student. Choose which person is going to play the high-status role, and which person will play the low-status role. Allow them to act out a scene for a minute or two in which the hierarchy is clear. For example, the student might be meekly approaching the professor, plaintively asking for a higher grade on an essay. It’s clear who has the power, and who does not. But here’s what makes this exercise so intriguing, and such a crowd-pleaser: After a minute or two, you stop the performance. Now you have the low-status person act as if she has high status, and vice versa. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that the person who played the student will now switch roles and play the professor. It means that the student will now act powerfully, and the professor will act as if she has low status. If you wish, you can have them switch who is high-status and who is low-status multiple times. It can be quite funny, but it also leads into a powerful debrief…
Debrief
After the role-playing comes to a finish, you can ask everyone how it felt. Here’s the main point of this: Whether we act low-status or high-status is up to us. As Harvard professor Amy Cuddy writes in her book Presence, “whether we feel powerful or powerless has huge consequences in our lives.”
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, based on popular improv activity
Columbia professor Adam Galinsky and Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner are among the leading researchers on this phenomenon. They have done numerous studies that show that we can choose to feel – and act – powerfully, and it has significant consequences. People who are primed to feel more powerful have better reactions, even when they are confronted with stress, rejection, negativity, and physical pain. They are more likely to be proactive, be decisive, and take action.
S CIE NCE : Magee, J.C. and Galinsky A. (2008) Social hierarchy: The self-reinforcing nature of power and status. The Academy of Management Annals, 2, 351-398.
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What’s notable is that in all the studies, it was very easy for the researchers to make people feel powerless or powerful. In many studies, the scientists prime people unconsciously by exposing them to words – either those that connote power (e.g., control, command, authority) or its absence (e.g., yield, obey, subordinate.) The people in these studies don’t even realize that they are being
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Status Role Play
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
made to feel powerful or powerless. But their actions are very different depending on how they are primed. Even assigning someone to be a boss or employee in a hypothetical scenario can make a measurable difference. Afterwards, people act as if they had power (the boss) or were relatively impotent (the employee). In sum, our mindset greatly affects how we act in the world. Whether we are hopeless and helpless is up to us; it’s all a matter of our interpretation. We can choose to be powerful.
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Transformative Action Institute
COURAGE
Resilience, Grit, and Perseverance Having the courage to bounce back from failure, loss, and adversity
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All people will face setbacks,
grow and develop! Is there a way that
obstacles, failures, rejections, and
we can teach people the benefits
loss. All of us are fighting our own
of post-traumatic growth without
struggles. That’s why many people
having people go through terrible
face post-traumatic stress syndrome.
suffering?
Yet there’s actually a tremendous
The activities in this chapter represent
amount of research on how people
a few ways to reach that goal.
bounce back from difficult events.
They build on ideas of resilience,
Resilience is a skill that can be
and go even further. As University
learned.
of Pennsylvania Professor Angela
Indeed, there’s a whole field of research that studies “post-traumatic growth.” Even though we would never wish to have terrible events in our lives, frequently they lead to growth and development. According to UNC Charlotte professors Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, the leading experts on post-traumatic growth, 90% of survivors of a trauma report at least one of the following in the months or years that follow: • Greater appreciation of life. • Stronger relationships with others. • New possibilities • Greater personal strength • Positive spiritual change, including a greater desire to help others Of course, we don’t want to inflict
Duckworth has found, the key skill for success in life is grit: the ability to persevere and not give up, even amidst the greatest difficulties and failures. She found this to be a greater predictor of accomplishment than intelligence, natural talent, and any other factor that could be correlated with success. Indeed, she found this to be true in everything from the Spelling Bee to the military. People who work hard and don’t give up can overcome a lack of ability in an area; indeed, they can come to outperform those who are born with far greater gifts. Here are some beginning steps to help develop resilience, perseverance, and grit:
trauma on people so that they might
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Transformative Action Institute
Gallery of Failure
ACTIVITY
Everyone posts anonymous stories of times they have failed; everyone gets to tour the gallery to read about the fact that all of us – even the most accomplished, seemingly perfect people – have struggled. REFLECTIVE COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students understand that everyone has struggled and failed repeatedly
Overview
Facilitation
TIME
5 minutes for the role play; 10 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS
At least 5 Post-It Notes for each participant; pens
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many students feel like they alone are struggling, which leads many of them to drop out; an exercise like this makes people significantly more resilent
Many people feel like they are alone in their struggles. They look at people who have accomplished and achieved great things, and feel like they could never come anywhere close to those people’s success. This activity is meant to combat that feeling, and to show that everyone has failed and gone through difficult times. Give everyone the Post-It notes. Tell everyone in the room that they are going to write down failures that they have experienced. In each Post-It, they will put a separate failure. This is all anonymous and confidential; they won’t disclose anything that will give away their identities. You can tell everyone that the failures could be humorous; they could be serious. There’s usually quite a wide mix in the classroom. After they have written 3 to 5 failures, they will post their notes on all the walls of the classroom. It’s like an art gallery, but instead of having a room full of paintings, they will have a room full of failures. Then tell everyone that they can walk around the gallery, looking at the failures that everyone has posted. There are usually stories of people who have failed tests, failed classes, failed relationships, and failed in jobs. This leads to a powerful debrief:
Debrief S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute
There are two ways to debrief this activity. You could have everyone get into small groups, and talk about the notes that most resonated with them and why. Or you could just lead a discussion with everyone in the room. Ask them how they felt when reading these stories of failures. Usually we hear from participants that this is reassuring. They might have felt alone; they felt that they were the only ones who were struggling. Many students have said that they look at other people’s lives (especially on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram), and it seems like everyone else has perfect lives full of happiness, romance, and adventure. When they see how everyone in the room has failed, it’s liberating.
S CIE NCE : Lin-Siegler, Ahn, Chen, Fang, and MayaLucero. (2016) Even Einstein Struggled: Effects of Learning About Great Scientists’ Struggles on High School Students’ Motivation to Learn Science. Journal of Educational Psychology. 2016, Vol. 108, No. 3, 314–328
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Indeed, much research has been done on activities like this. For example, researchers at Columbia University had students read stories about famous scientists. The students in the control group just read about these amazing people (Marie Curie, Michael Faraday, and Albert Einstein) and their major discoveries. Two other groups of students were exposed to either stories of these people’s personal failures and struggles throughout life; or to a story of these famous scientists’ numerous professional failures and missteps, something about which we almost never hear. Both groups that learned about the famous scientists’ failures ended up doing significantly better on their science
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Gallery of Failure
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
tests afterwards, and felt more connected to the subject. Similarly, students have reported that, after going through this exercise and having seen that everybody screwed up numerous times, they feel more resilient when they subsequently struggle and get bad grades in school. Indeed, many people comment about how powerful this “Gallery of Failures” activity is, because it teaches them that they can overcome their failures and struggles. After all, everyone in the room has stumbled and fallen, yet everyone has gotten back on their feet. Indeed, on the surface, it seems like their colleagues are all successful and accomplished. But in reality, we only achieve success after countless failures. It’s part of the process of being human, and nothing for which we should feel shame. (Indeed, in retrospect, many of these failures that are posted on the wall are quite humorous. One person wrote that he/she somehow broke the Hubble space telescope; it probably seemed like a tragedy at the time, but years later, this person looked back on it with laughter.) This leads into the next exercise:
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Transformative Action Institute
Celebrating Failure
ACTIVITY
Everyone proudly announces that they have failed, and takes a bow. ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To take away the stigma from failure
Facilitation
TIME
5 minutes for the activity; 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many people don’t take risks, because they are afraid of failure; they see it as something terrible, rather than as a learning opportunity
Have everyone get into a circle. Then give everyone the following instructions: “We are going to celebrate failure and making mistakes today. Failure is an essential steppingstone towards success. If people don’t fail, then they probably aren’t challenging themselves enough.” “Thus, given that we have all failed countless times in our lives, we are going to celebrate that fact. We are going to go around and shout out, “I have failed!” After you do so, you can take a bow, as if you are a performer on stage, at the end of a bravura performance for which you are getting a standing ovation. And indeed, everyone else is going to cheer wildly. Every time someone announces that they have failed, the rest of us are going to celebrate it as if you have just been victorious in a sporting competition.” You can start this activity by modeling how it’s done. Declare proudly, “I have failed!” Then take a bow, and encourage everyone to go wild with applause and excitement. Then go around the circle and do this for every single person. (Note: There are times when the energy in the room is very low, and people might find this exercise to be silly. If the applause is tepid, then encourage people to increase their energy, and support each other more.) Usually when we go around the circle, some people add extra flourishes to the announcement that they have failed. Some of them raise their arms in triumph. Others jump and down with excitement. All of this is welcome.
Debrief
After everyone has gone around the circle, remind them that this is something that they can do throughout the rest of the semester. Hopefully this will become a memorable activity that becomes a theme for the rest of their time together. In many of our classes and workshops, we hear people spontaneously erupting in cheers when they make mistakes. If you wish, you can debrief with them and ask them why they think it’s valuable to celebrate failure, instead of hiding it or being ashamed. Many students will have insightful comments about the critical role of failure.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, based on popular improv activity
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It’s crucial to distinguish between two types of experiences that we call “failure.” The first is when you attempt something bold and valuable, and it does not turn out the way you had hoped. For example, you applied to colleges and were rejected by all of your top choices. Or you took a risk in trying to do stand-up comedy in front of a crowd, and nobody laughed. Those are all valuable failures, because you took risks; even though you didn’t succeed, you might have learned
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Celebrating Failure
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
something. It was worthwhile because you won’t be regretting your lack of courage to pursue what is really important to you. You won’t be wondering “what if?” On the other hand, there are failures that come by not taking action. Let’s say that you want to write a book, but you always procrastinate and fail to take action. Or perhaps you write a manuscript but you fail to send it to literary agents or publishers. You are too scared of rejection, so you never take the steps that would be necessary to get it done. That’s not failure; that’s cowardice! This leads into the next exercise:
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Transformative Action Institute
Three Things!
ACTIVITY
Everyone attempts to name three random things; if and when they fail, everyone celebrates. ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To establish and reinforce a theme for the rest of the year: cheering failure as a valuable sign of having taken a risk
Facilitation
TIME
5-10 minutes for the activity; 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because it’s easy to forget these important lessons; by repeating the habit of cheering our failures, it makes our actions more likely in the future
Have everyone get into groups of 4 to 6 people. Then give them the following instructions: “In your small groups, one person is going to challenge another to come up with three silly, crazy things. You will all get a chance to go. “This is how it works: The entire group will clap three times and chant, ‘Three Things!’ Then one person will point at another person on their team, and declare the challenge. “For example, someone might point at me and say: ‘Give me three rejected names for Snow White’s dwarves.’ I might reply, ‘Farty… Prozac… and… and… and…’ Notice how I wasn’t able to come up with a third name. So that’s when I can just declare, ‘I have failed!’ and take a bow, while everyone in the group cheers. In other words, you are going to cheer your teammates whether they successfully come up with three things or if they fail. “Remember that there are no wrong answers. Whatever three things that the person says, we accept them and applaud them. “After the first person has gone, that person gets to choose another person in the circle to go next. Again, everyone will clap three times and chant, ‘Three Things!’ Then the person who has just had their turn will point at someone else, and declare their challenge. It could be anything. They could say, ‘Give me 3 things to do with an eggplant, other than cooking or eating it.’ Or they could say, ‘Tell me 3 things that would get you kicked out of college.’ Anything goes.” Allow about 5 minutes for everyone in the room to do this in their small groups. There is a lot of laughter and cheering.
Debrief
At the end you can debrief this, asking people how it felt to have everyone cheer when they failed. Were there any surprises that came out of this activity? What insights did they gain about their resilience in the face of failure? Journalist Megan McArdle has a fascinating prompt for discussion in her book, The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well is the Key to Success. She asks:
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, based on popular improv activity
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What happens if you do a Google search for “the best thing that ever happened to me”?
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Three Things!
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
Most people imagine that it would be things like “falling in love” or “having a child.” But those are actually tied for a distant third in the voting. Well, it turns out that the thing that comes up again and again on Google is a Gladys Knight song. But if you eliminate that, the most popular answers for “the best thing that ever happened to me” include: • Cancer • Divorce • My husband’s affair • Getting fired • Being left at the altar • Prison • Dyslexia (105) But this isn’t so surprising. When most people look back on their lives, they realize that the times of crisis were the wake-up calls. Most of us ignore small warning signs that we are in danger. But when faced with some traumatic event, that can be transformative.
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Transformative Action Institute
Resilience Measurement A guide on how to evaluate one‘s resilience over time
Introduction
There are a number of ways to measure resilience. In an earlier chapter, we talked about the Positive 5 game, which is an excellent way to see if you are taking risks and responding positively to setbacks, obstacles, and failures. But for our purposes now, we are going to just have a simple measurement: the number of times that you attempt something that scares you. Of course, we have a few caveats. As with the Daring Greatly exercise, there are several rules for this activity: 1.
You can’t do anything that could put you or anyone else in danger
2.
You can’t harass anyone
3.
You can’t do anything against the law!
4.
You can’t do anything sexual
Other than that, you are free to go out and try things that scare you – safe risks that are just beyond your comfort zone. (Again, we don’t promote you doing anything potentially hazardous to your safety! While this can be a powerful activity to make you more resilient, it is essential that you use common sense and caution.) We are going to ask you to attempt up to 100 failures. (Instead of “small wins,” as Karl Weick has written about, these will be “small losses,” or more accurately, “small teachable moments.”) Of course, you may end up succeeding, and that’s wonderful.
Milestone 1
Complete a C.V. of failures. Most resumes are about our accomplishments; we tend to hide or obscure all the places we have fallen short. But Melanie Stefan, a postdoc at CalTech, decided to publish her failures for all the world to see. In the prestigious journal Science, she wrote, “As scientists, we construct a narrative of success that renders our setbacks invisible both to ourselves and to others. Often, other scientists’ careers seem to be a constant, streamlined series of triumphs. Therefore, whenever we experience an individual failure, we feel alone and dejected.” As a result, she ended up creating a CV of all her failures, rejections, and unsuccessful application. We can do the same thing, and go even further to make sure that we learn and grow from the losses, missteps, and mistakes. Here are the instructions: Write down all the times that you have failed. Write down any valuable lessons that came out of each failure. Reflect on whether the failure was as disastrous and life-crushing as it might have seemed at the time. After all, you are here today. Your failures didn’t kill you; somehow you bounced back. Were there any ways that you grew stronger or developed as a person from your mistakes?
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Resilience Measurement (Continued)
Milestone 2
Three Attempts That Scare You Create a list of 3 things that you have been scared of doing, because you were afraid of rejection, failure, and embarrassment. These can be things that seem too difficult for you; they might be things that you feel unready to take on. For each of the three things, you have to take the first step. Report what happened.
Milestone 3
Seven Attempts That Scare You After achieving the previous milestone, add 4 new scary things to your list. Ideally these will be slightly harder than the ones before. Again, report about what happened after each attempt, and what you learned. You can keep a portfolio of all your attempts.
Milestone 4
Twelve Attempts That Scare You After achieving the previous milestone, add 5 new scary things to your list. Once more, these should continue to be slightly harder than the first seven attempts you made. The rest of the instructions are the same.
Milestone 5
Eighteen Attempts That Scare You After achieving the previous milestone, add 6 new scary things to your list. Keep this pattern going until you arrive at the level of mastery in this exercise:
Ultimate Destination
100 Attempts That Scare You (“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”) When you end up with 100 total attempts, look back at everything that you accomplished. How many times did you fail? How many times did you actually succeed? Did you learn anything valuable from the failures? Did it open up any new doors, directions, or possibilities for you? More importantly, did this exercise begin to create a habit for you of taking on things that seem difficult, challenging, or scary? That’s the ultimate goal of this exercise – to build your courage.
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Transformative Action Institute
Creativity In a survey of 1500 CEOs in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, creativity was considered to be the most valuable skill for workers in the 21st century. Yet, as noted earlier, this is something that few of us learn in our formal education. So here are some introductory exercises to get people warmed up for creativity:
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Remember Antarctica?
ACTIVITY
People work together to improvise a story of an adventure they shared ENERGIZER COMMUNITY BUILDER CREATIVITY
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To get people to begin testing their creativity
Facilitation
TIME
3-5 minutes for the activity; 3-5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because most people stay within their comfort zones and consider themselves uncreative; yet creativity is a skill that can be developed with practice.
Get everyone in pairs. (Make sure that everyone has just one partner. If there is an odd number of people in the room, then you, the facilitator, can partner with someone, so that everyone feels included.) Tell everyone: “You are going to tell a story together. The first person will say, ‘Do you remember...?’ And then they will fill in the phrase. “For example, the first person might say, ‘Remember our epic trip to Antarctica?” Then the second person says, ‘Yes,’ and then they provide the second line of the story. “They might say, for instance, ‘Yes, it was so crazy when the airline lost our luggage, and we were in sub-freezing weather with just a t-shirt and jeans.’ “Then the first person will continue the story, agreeing with whatever the second person just said. ‘Yes, and we huddled with the penguins for warmth.’ “This will continue on and on until I call stop. Together you will build a story. You should always add to what the other person said. You don’t want to contradict or deny what they said. For example, you would never say, ‘We didn’t go to Antarctica! Ay ay ay, the mental hospital thought you were cured of all your delusions!’ While that might be funny, the point is to support each other’s statements.” Usually there’s a lot of laughter and enthusiasm in the room. After about 3 minutes, you can stop the stories.
Debrief
What do we learn about creativity from this exercise? You can touch on the lessons about creativity from earlier in this manual.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, adapted from popular improv activity
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Transformative Action Institute
Memory Loss
ACTIVITY
A storyteller keeps forgetting a story, but a colleague provides the missing information, which turns the tale in a different direction ENERGIZER COURAGE CREATIVITY LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To continue building the skill of creativity
Facilitation
TIME
About 8 to 10 minutes for the activity; 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because creativity is not something that can be learned in a lecture; it is something that people have to practice continually as they try to master it effortlessly – like learning to ride a bike, or learning a foreign language
This is a similar concept to the previous exercise. All the people will remain in pairs. (They can switch partners if they wish.) One person will start telling a story. The story can be about absolutely anything. It can be true, or it can be wild and fanciful. The storyteller has free rein to say whatever he/she wants. But every 15 to 30 seconds, this storyteller will start to get forgetful. That’s when the second person will get to say anything they want to fill the gap in the story. The storyteller has to accept the new line as a gift, and incorporate it into the story… Here’s an example. The storyteller begins to tell the following tale: “One time I was on a voyage to Mars. I was going to be the first person ever to colonize Mars. The reason I volunteered was, um,…. I forget…” At this point, the second person can jump in and say anything they want. For example, they might say, “you had just broken up with your significant other.” The first person accepts it, and says, “Yes, that’s right. I decided to go to Mars to get as far away from my boyfriend as possible. I used to think that we were in love. But then he has the most annoying habit of… um, well, I forget…” Again the second person can say anything: “Your boyfriend has the annoying habit of talking in his sleep and confessing to nefarious crimes.” Again, the first person incorporates that suggestion into the story as if it were part of the story all along… You see how this goes. Together the two people will tell a great story. After about 3 to 5 minutes, you (the facilitator) can stop the stories. Then have the pairs reverse roles: The second person will become the forgetful storyteller, while the first person will provide the missing words and phrases every 15 to 30 seconds.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, based on popular improv activity
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Allow this second one to go 3 to 5 minutes as well. Then bring an end to the game, with a lot of applause.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Memory Loss
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
Again, you can ask what new insights that this creativity exercise spurred in them. Did they find it easier to be creative this second time? What happened when the story became ridiculous? What happened when the partner threw a word or phrase that the storyteller wasn’t expecting? How did they adapt? Did they try to resist it and fight the unexpected interruption? Or did they embrace it and build on it? That’s the point of creativity: to see everything as a gift, and see how to use it for good, even if you weren’t originally expecting it. This leads nicely into the next activity, which is similar, but with the same curveballs coming to everyone in the room…
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Transformative Action Institute
The Curveball
ACTIVITY
A storyteller repeatedly gets surprising new information to add to a narrative COURAGE CREATIVITY
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Moderate
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To continue the trajectory of growth and development of people’s creativity
Facilitation
TIME
10 min for the activity (5 min for each storyteller in a pair); 5 min for the debrief
MATERIALS
Slides on a projector screen. You will have chosen 10 unusual words or phrases for each slide beforehand.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because creativity is like a muscle; it grows stronger the more you use it and challenge it
After warming up with the previous two exercises, you can culminate with this last, and most challenging, activity. This time, all the pairs are sitting in chairs, facing each other. Person A is facing the screen where words will be projected; Person B has their back to the screen. Person A starts telling a story. Again, it can be about absolutely anything. At random times, a new word or phrase will be projected onto the screen. It will probably have nothing to do with the story they are currently telling. But they have to integrate it seamlessly into the story. So for example, you as the facilitator might have a PowerPoint presentation of the following words and phrases. THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS SURRENDER DOROTHY FAKE NEWS ADDICTED TO LOVE THE END IS NEAR (You can come up with your own funny words or phrases. They can be references to popular culture, including names of songs, famous quotes, or lines from movies (as in a few of the above examples); they could be strange juxtapositions of two familiar words; they could be anything. Use your creativity when designing this exercise! Just make sure that they are not offensive or insensitive to anybody in the room.)
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, based on popular improv activity
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After person A has told their story for about 30 seconds, you will flash the first phrase on the screen. As in the previous exercise, the storyteller will just go with it. You let them go on for about 30 to 60 seconds before flashing the next word. You notice that this story is slightly longer than in the previous exercises; again, we are trying to strengthen the creativity muscle. Often people run out of things to say in their story, but they have to keep going.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The Curveball
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Remind the pairs that this is not a conversation. Person B will not be adding to the story in this exercise; he/she will be mostly quiet. Of course, he/she can laugh and smile and give eye contact; and he/she should be fully supportive. But Person B’s job is to be the audience. Incidentally, throughout this entire activity, Person B can’t see what the word is. After all, the words and phrases are being projected on the wall behind them. Person A has to continue telling the story, whatever the curveball that might be thrown at them. After 5 minutes, you can stop the first person’s story. After you give people a moment to laugh in relief with their partner, it’s time to switch chairs. Now Person B will face the screen, while Person A has his/her back to the random words that will be projected. This time Person B has to tell a story with each curveball that comes his/her way. Obviously you should have a new set of five words or phrases to show on the screen. Allow 5 minutes for the second story as well. When you end the second story, applaud everyone’s effort, and invite them to applaud themselves as well. This was a challenging activity, and everyone deserves recognition for taking risks and embracing the possibility of looking silly.
Debrief
You can begin this debrief by asking for people’s reactions to this activity. Ask them if they are getting more comfortable with creativity after having done a few exercises. As noted in the earlier chapter of creativity, there are a number of key lessons, which we hope that they are all learning and practicing: • • • •
Anything goes in creativity There are no wrong answers You can just go with the flow; whatever arises in your mind, no matter how ridiculous and wild it might seem, you allow it to be there The idea is to let go of any self-judgments or self-consciousness; you can turn off the voice of the critic inside your head
You can invite people in the room to add to this list. These are central lessons of creativity, which will be important for the following skill-building exercises on innovation, communication, and problemsolving.
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Transformative Action Institute
CREATIVITY
Innovation Using creativity to create something useful and important
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
In an earlier chapter, we talked about creativity. As we shall see in this first activity, creativity alone is not enough. In order to make the world a better place, we need to come up with innovations that improve people’s lives.
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Transformative Action Institute
Rapid Design
ACTIVITY
Students invent a new product and their classmates transform it into something useful that will change the world. CREATIVITY REFLECTIVE COLLABORATION
LEVEL
Beginner
GROUP SIZE Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
TIME
30-45 minutes, including debrief
To discover the difference between creativity, innovation, and social innovation
Facilitation
MATERIALS
Get lots of random things with which students can create and design a shape. There may be pages from magazines with colorful pictures; there may be string; there may be tape; there may be materials of unusual shapes and sizes. The more random things that you can get for them to make something, the better this will be.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because creativity alone is not enough; creativity must be in the service of doing something useful and beneficial to society
Step 1. Tell everyone that they have 10 minutes to design an object. This tests their skills of creativity. They will have unusual materials, and they should make whatever they wish. Step 2. At the end of the 10 minutes, ask people to share their creative designs with one other person in the class. What do they think they have designed? Step 3. After everyone has shared their designs, you can ask for a few volunteers to share with the class. Most often the volunteers have very creative ideas; otherwise they wouldn’t raise their hands. But this raises the question: What is the definition of creativity? Step 4. You will lead a discussion with the class about this: How do we define creativity? The simplest definition is simply inventing new ways of seeing the world; it’s about making up new ideas and concepts. Or as the Oxford English Dictionary says, it’s “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something.” Here’s the challenge. You can be very creative, and not invent anything useful. A creative person could make a t-shirt out of bricks and mortar, but that would probably never be an article of clothing that any person would ever want to wear. In contrast to creativity, innovation is about creating something useful: some new product that will actually be superior to what came before it. In the 1970s, someone took rocks and sold them as pets. Unlike dogs, cats, goldfish, and hamsters, this was a pet that didn’t need to be fed. It would never get sick, and it would never die. It wouldn’t bite you or pee on your carpet. “Pet Rocks” became a hit, and sold 1.5 million in less than a year. (At $4 each, the creative mind behind it became a multimillionaire.) The craze swept America. Of course, this may have been a creative idea, and it was certainly profitable, but it wasn’t an innovation.
S OURCE : Adapted from an exercise by Keith Sawyer, with help from award-winning social entrepreneur Gemma Bulos
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Discuss with the class the difference between creativity and innovation. Highlight this key point that innovation isn’t just about generating tons of crazy, wild ideas; it’s about creating practical ideas that could be of value.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Rapid Design
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation Step 5. After everybody has understood the distinction between these concepts, you are going to ask the students to create something innovative – i.e., something useful and practical. Here’s how you will do it: Tell everyone to give their creation to another person in the class (not the person with whom they had been sharing.) In other words, everybody should be holding an object that they have never seen before. At this point, ask everyone to choose a number between 1 and 6. When they have done so, you read the following: “All of you are going to come up with some innovation: “If you selected number 1, you will reframe this as something that can be used for a baby. “If you selected number 2, you will reframe this as something that can be used in the bathroom. “If you selected number 3, you will reframe this as something that can be used in a kitchen. “If you selected number 4, you will reframe this as something that can be used as a weapon. “If you selected number 5, you will reframe this as something that can be used as a toy. “If you selected number 6, you will reframe this as something that can be used as a beauty product. “Get with a partner and explain how you are re-interpreting this object as something useful.” Step 6. After they have had a few minutes to do this, then you have a few people share their ideas with the entire class. Usually people have very clever, innovative uses. Step 7. Now it’s time to take the final step. Here you define social innovation: According to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, it’s “a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.” In other words, there’s a simple question to ask: Is it something that is helping the world? Ask everyone to switch their objects one last time with a different person. This time, each student has to reframe the object as something beneficial to society. It’s something that is more than just valuable and innovative; it’s also serving the common good. Step 8. For one final time, you can ask students to share their new uses for the object. This is a good exercise to help students learn what is the essence of social innovation. Bonus: You can also do one final round, which goes to the essence of social entrepreneurship: creating a business model where people can earn money from their innovation. Social entrepreneurs often operate differently from the traditional nonprofit model; many of them do not rely on donations from philanthropies and individuals. Instead they offer goods and services that people value, and for which people are willing to pay. Many social entrepreneurs are even for-profit companies, or hybrids of nonprofit and for-profit. So if you decide to do this bonus round, you can have people come up with a business model for the objects in their hands. They have to come up with a way that these will earn money and not depend on charitable donations.
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Transformative Action Institute
Cafe without Coffee
ACTIVITY
A creative task becomes more challenging when surprising constraints are added CREATIVITY
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To learn that the most creative solutions often come from having constraints
Facilitation
TIME
15-20 minutes, including debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because we often have limited resources; if we are to create a better world, we can’t wait for billions of dollars to pour in. We can start creating solutions right away with what we have.
Another way to encourage people’s innovative thinking is to give them a challenge to think in new ways. In this exercise, you want them to design a new café or coffee house for their community. Here’s the one catch: It can’t serve coffee! Place them in teams of 4 people. Give them 10 minutes to brainstorm what their coffee-less coffee house would do. How would it work? What would it sell? How would it stay in business? At the end of the 10 minutes, each group can present their ideas to the entire class. Usually people have fun with this, and come up with extraordinarily innovative ideas.
Variations
You can spur this innovative thinking with other examples: For example, you can ask the students what are necessary elements of a restaurant. They might say that every restaurant needs food, a chef, waiters/waitresses, silverware, walls, a floor, etc. Now take away one of those elements. How might you have a restaurant that doesn’t serve food? How might you have a restaurant with no chef? How might you have a restaurant with no walls? In each case, you can spur innovative thinking by putting limits and constraints around a problem.
Debrief
Ask the participants for their reaction to this activity. Often they say that it was surprisingly fun and easy. This gets into an important point about creativity and innovation. A key ingredient for innovation is to have constraints. People are more creative when they have limits and obstacles, rather than when they have free rein. There’s a lot of truth in the old saying: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
S OURCE :
Indeed, Jane McGonigal, an expert on games, has written about how obstacles are actually necessary to create great experiences. No game would be fun unless there were obstacles and limits. She gives the example of golf. If the goal were just to get the ball into the hole, with no constraints, then people could just walk up to the hole and drop the ball in with their hands. But that would be no fun! There would be no challenge. What makes the game fun is the element of constraints: You are more than 100 feet away from the hole; using only a club, you have to get a small ball into that small hole.
Transformative Action Institute, based on traditional improv and creativity exercises
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In design thinking, the key phrase is “How might we…?” This phrase is an essential tool for getting people to think of possibilities, where otherwise they might have seen roadblocks.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Cafe without Coffee
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer offers a fascinating example of this. She goes into a room of schoolchildren and shows a picture of a man in a wheelchair. She asks the children if this man can drive a car. Overwhelmingly, the children say no. Then she goes into a different room of schoolchildren. She shows the same picture of a man in a wheelchair. This time she asks, “How might this man drive a car?” Inevitably, the children come up with dozens of creative ideas: “He could use a pole to to push down on the brakes and accelerator… He could use a voice-operated system… He could have someone in the passenger seat who has their own brakes and accelerator, while he steers the wheel…” The main difference is just asking for how might we solve a problem.
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Transformative Action Institute
Reverse Brainstorming
ACTIVITY
People brainstorm the best ways to fail at achieving their real objective CREATIVITY COLLABORATION
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To look at a challenge from a completely new perspective
Overview
TIME
10 minutes, including debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because too often we think in routine ways, which blocks creativity; this activity helps people come up with new solutions they might never have seen before
In the TV show Seinfeld, there’s a funny episode in which George Costanza, one of the main characters who is famous for complaining, realizes that everything he has ever done in his life has been a mistake. He decides that he will do the opposite of his instincts. For example, when he goes to a job interview, he typically is meek and deferential; this time, he denounces the boss. Remarkably, the boss admires his honesty and hires him immediately. Indeed, every time George does the opposite, fortune turns in his favor. There’s a similar way to encourage creativity by “doing the opposite.” In reverse brainstorming, everyone comes up with the worst ideas possible. This helps people overcome their fear of bad ideas, and self-criticism and judgment. For example, using that same example, you might ask students, “If you were going into a job interview, and you wanted to make the worst possible impression, what would you do?” Students come up with funny answers, including: • Show up 20 minutes late • Show up naked • Insult the interviewers • Do no research into the company beforehand, and ask them what they do • Get into an argument with the boss • Start the interview by asking how much money they will give you • Show up drunk There’s usually a lot of laughter as the students do a rapid-fire brainstorm. But then you show that this is actually a helpful way to do brainstorms. Reverse everything that they just said if you want to find out how to do a great job interview: Show up on time; be professionally dressed and groomed; be respectful and deferential; do your homework and know everything there is about the organization and the people interviewing you; etc.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute, based on improv
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Now you can do the same thing with any other topic: Have the students reverse brainstorm any challenge for which they need an innovative solution. Before they come up with good ideas, they should come up with the worst possible ideas, and then flip them. Surprisingly, people report that this yields new insights – discoveries and innovations that they never would have considered previously.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Reverse Brainstorming
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
This activity might seem silly, but it’s actually powerful and based on evidence. For example, take hospital infections. They are the #1 killer of patients in America; people can enter the hospital and end up even more sick than when they came in! Moreover, this is costly, hurting the health care system to the tune of $35 billion each year. According to Michael Gordon, Professor of Social Innovation at Michigan Business School, one hospital did a reverse brainstorm: “If we wanted to create the most hospital infections possible, what would be do?” When they did the activity, they realized that they were actually doing many of the terrible practices in the hospital, even though they were supposed to be in the business of saving lives. This activity was able to shine the light of awareness for them to be able to dramatically reduce the number of patient deaths.
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Transformative Action Institute
CREATIVITY
Transformative Communication Using creativity to communicate in a way that engages and wins people over
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
In an earlier chapter in this manual, we talked about the importance of conflict resolution and negotiation skills – communicating in a way that can transform adversaries into allies. In this chapter, we focus on storytelling. One of the most critical skills for succeeding as a social entrepreneur or innovator is being able to tell a compelling story. Someone could have a brilliant idea, but if they can’t communicate it in a way that inspires, uplifts, motivates, and touches people’s hearts, they probably won’t find the support that they need for their cause. They need to be creative in how they connect with others. Unfortunately, most people aren’t very good at this essential form of communication. We have all sat bored through presentations, lectures, and conferences where the speaker doesn’t connect with the audience. How do people develop the skills for telling a great story? In this chapter, we look at a few creative activities that help people do just that.
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Transformative Action Institute
One Story
ACTIVITY
People choose a single story from their lives to share in three minutes CREATIVITY COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To connect deeply with other people through a creative story
Facilitation
TIME
Depends on the size of the group: 3 minutes per person, plus 10 minutes for debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because humans have a deep need to connect and belong
This is a simple, yet profound, exercise. Tell everyone that they have just three minutes to tell a single story from their life. It could be inspirational, touching, funny, surprising, or any other emotion. You could do this in small groups of just 4 to 5 people. Or you could do this as an entire class if it is smaller than 20 people. People can volunteer to go in any order, but they all should participate. It’s important to make sure that people keep the story to 3 minutes. We have done this activity dozens of times in many cultures and nations. It always seems to work, so long as you don’t let people drag their stories on and on. All too often, people are oblivious to time, and can tell a rambling 10-minute story if you let them. It’s hard to cut someone off, especially if they are telling something deeply emotional and powerful from their lives. So it’s a good idea to make sure that you are giving people signals for when they just have a minute left, and then signal when their time is out. Of course, you can be a bit flexible and let them have an extra 15 to 30 seconds, but it’s important to be respectful of everyone’s time. The other caveat is to watch out for competing noise. For example, if you separate people into small groups to do this exercise, and all the groups are in different corners of a classroom, it can be very distracting. One group might be listening to an uproarious story, where everyone is laughing hysterically, while another group is trying to hear a deeply emotional story from someone who is soft-spoken. So if you divide people into small groups, just make sure that the acoustics are good, so people can hear each other.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute
S CIE NCE : McAdams, Dan P. (2013). The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford University Press. Moon, Y. (2000) Intimate exchanges: Using computers to elicit selfdisclosure from consumers. Journal of Consumer Research 26: 323-39.
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Those are all the instructions: People get to choose a single story from their lives; then they have 3 minutes to share that story with the rest of the group. Almost always this turns into an incredibly bonding and powerful experience. It leads to laughter, tears, hugs, empathy, and connection. Many students have even called it a “magical” experience, and remember it years later.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
One Story
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
Ask the students: Why does such a simple exercise work so well? It’s just about telling a story. Yet so often people try to tell stories in classes or at conferences, which end up boring their audiences and lulling them to sleep. What’s different about this activity? Why is it so powerful? It’s partly because you are asking people to choose, from their entire lifetime, one story that they want to share. Therefore, it’s unlikely that the stories will be prosaic and dull; inevitably some students are going to share something deeply meaningful. (Alternatively, those people who don’t want to disclose anything vulnerable often contribute something hilarious that provides comic relief in the midst of many emotional stories.) And the more that people share something deep, so too will others reciprocate. This leads to another key for this exercise: the fact that people are willing to let themselves become vulnerable, which rarely happens in everyday conversation. Most daily conversations – even conversations with friends and close family members - are quite shallow and superficial. But vulnerability makes a huge difference. As writer Rom and Ori Brafman puts it in their excellent book Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do:
Most of us think that when we make ourselves vulnerable we are putting ourselves in a susceptible, exposed, or subservient position. By revealing their inner fears and weaknesses, many feel they allow others to gain power or influence over them. But in terms of creating an instant connection, vulnerability and self-disclosure are, in fact, strengths. They accelerate our ability to connect with those around us. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable helps the other person to trust you, precisely because you are putting yourself at emotional, psychological, or physical risk. Other people tend to react by being more open and vulnerable themselves. The fact that both of you are letting down your guard helps to lay the groundwork for a faster, closer personal connection. One example of this comes from surprising research done by Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon. She had computers ask people to disclose their biggest disappointments or times in the past when they had felt hurt. Most people refused to divulge much to the computer. Their answers were terse and unrevealing. But then she had the computer start by “being vulnerable.” It would write: “There are times when this computer crashes for reasons that are not apparent to its user. It usually does this at the most inopportune time, causing great inconvenience to the user. What have you done in your life that you feel most guilty about?” Remarkably, the students would reciprocate with the computer. Now that it had disclosed some “guilty” secrets of its own, people instinctively felt like they could confess their own sins and open their hearts. Mind you, everyone knew that this so-called self-disclosure was just coming from a programmed machine, with no live person communicating behind it! Still this is how powerful vulnerability is. Of course, it’s important to point out that there are limits to vulnerability. If people disclose too much (or start out by being extremely vulnerable at the start of a conversation with a stranger), it freaks people out! The secret, as we saw earlier in the manual in the Deep Connections activity (see index), is becoming slowly vulnerable over time.
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Transformative Action Institute
Story Spine
ACTIVITY
An activity to help people tell great stories, based on “the hero’s journey” REFLECTIVE CREATIVITY COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To understand the template for many stories and myths
Overview
TIME
30-45 minutes, including debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because the stories we tell can invest our lives with meaning and purpose
This is another powerful way to tell a story. It is based on the idea of the “Hero’s Journey,” a storytelling template that transcends cultures and nations. The late Joseph Campbell, an expert on myths, found that stories tend to follow the same pattern throughout all epochs and all places. You can have students fill in their own template for their lives: At the beginning of a story, the routine of life is happening: Once upon a time… (the students will complete each one of these italicized sentences) And every day… Then there’s a challenge – a disruption of the routine. Campbell often called this, “The Call to Adventure.” This is when an obstacle appears. Notice that in all great stories, there is some conflict or danger. (We try to live our lives in very different ways from great stories. Most of us want lives that are comfortable and easy, free of conflict. But the best stories have drama, turbulence, and conflict!) But one day… Once the hero or heroine follows this call to adventure, a number of consequences follow. This is the action in the story. Because of that…. Because of that… Because of that… And then comes the climax of the story: Until, finally… And then the resolution, or the moral of the story: Ever since then…
S OURCE : Kenn Adams
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Story Spine
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Overview
You might notice that this is a template that many Hollywood films follow as well. Indeed, there’s a popular screenwriting manual in the film industry called, “Save the Cat.” It essentially sticks to this same formula. Some students (and many adults) might argue that they aren’t leading a life of heroism; there is no great call to adventure; there is no dramatic story in their life that fits this template. Yet the point that you can make is that we all have faced conflict in our lives. And the essence of all great stories is growth, development, and change. Whether it’s a breakdown of a relationship (divorce of parents; or the students’ own breakup), or doing poorly in school, or struggling with financial issues, we all have faced struggles. That’s a human universal. What the Story Spine exercise does is to help us come to resolution. It helps us to become a major actor and protagonist in the story, rather than a helpless victim who is at the mercy of forces beyond his/her control.
Facilitation
Step 1. Introduce the idea of the story spine, following the formula above. Explain how each step works. Step 2. Have students fill in the end of each of the following sentences. It will probably take them 5 to 10 minutes to complete their own stories. Once upon a time… Every day… But one day… Because of that…. Because of that… Because of that… Until, finally… Ever since then… Step 3. After they have written their stories, have them share with each other in small groups. This could take another 5 to 10 minutes. Students can give each other feedback: Is this a compelling story. Step 4. Finally have some of the students who are willing to share their stories in front of everyone.
Debrief
Again this activity is often quite powerful. The volunteers usually share quite powerful stories. Ask them why they think this activity worked well. It will be interesting to hear different theories. After hearing and validating the students’ ideas, you can tell them about the archetypes that transcend cultures, eras, and epochs. You can even analyze how this “hero’s journey” is present in Harry Potter, and other popular books and films that they probably know. Indeed, these narratives appeal to us precisely because they are universal! And what do you do if this exercise didn’t work well? I guess you improvise! Or, building on the lessons from previous chapters on resilience, you learn from failures, and adopt the growth mindset!
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Transformative Action Institute
Story Spine
ACTIVITY
An activity to help people tell great stories, based on “the hero’s journey” REFLECTIVE CREATIVITY COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To understand the template for many stories and myths
Overview
TIME
30-45 minutes, including debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because the stories we tell can invest our lives with meaning and purpose
This is another powerful way to tell a story. It is based on the idea of the “Hero’s Journey,” a storytelling template that transcends cultures and nations. The late Joseph Campbell, an expert on myths, found that stories tend to follow the same pattern throughout all epochs and all places. You can have students fill in their own template for their lives: At the beginning of a story, the routine of life is happening: Once upon a time… (the students will complete each one of these italicized sentences) And every day… Then there’s a challenge – a disruption of the routine. Campbell often called this, “The Call to Adventure.” This is when an obstacle appears. Notice that in all great stories, there is some conflict or danger. (We try to live our lives in very different ways from great stories. Most of us want lives that are comfortable and easy, free of conflict. But the best stories have drama, turbulence, and conflict!) But one day… Once the hero or heroine follows this call to adventure, a number of consequences follow. This is the action in the story. Because of that…. Because of that… Because of that… And then comes the climax of the story: Until, finally… And then the resolution, or the moral of the story: Ever since then…
S OURCE : Kenn Adams
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Story Spine
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Overview
You might notice that this is a template that many Hollywood films follow as well. Indeed, there’s a popular screenwriting manual in the film industry called, “Save the Cat.” It essentially sticks to this same formula. Some students (and many adults) might argue that they aren’t leading a life of heroism; there is no great call to adventure; there is no dramatic story in their life that fits this template. Yet the point that you can make is that we all have faced conflict in our lives. And the essence of all great stories is growth, development, and change. Whether it’s a breakdown of a relationship (divorce of parents; or the students’ own breakup), or doing poorly in school, or struggling with financial issues, we all have faced struggles. That’s a human universal. What the Story Spine exercise does is to help us come to resolution. It helps us to become a major actor and protagonist in the story, rather than a helpless victim who is at the mercy of forces beyond his/her control.
Facilitation
Step 1. Introduce the idea of the story spine, following the formula above. Explain how each step works. Step 2. Have students fill in the end of each of the following sentences. It will probably take them 5 to 10 minutes to complete their own stories. Once upon a time… Every day… But one day… Because of that…. Because of that… Because of that… Until, finally… Ever since then… Step 3. After they have written their stories, have them share with each other in small groups. This could take another 5 to 10 minutes. Students can give each other feedback: Is this a compelling story. Step 4. Finally have some of the students who are willing to share their stories in front of everyone.
Debrief
Again this activity is often quite powerful. The volunteers usually share quite powerful stories. Ask them why they think this activity worked well. It will be interesting to hear different theories. After hearing and validating the students’ ideas, you can tell them about the archetypes that transcend cultures, eras, and epochs. You can even analyze how this “hero’s journey” is present in Harry Potter, and other popular books and films that they probably know. Indeed, these narratives appeal to us precisely because they are universal! And what do you do if this exercise didn’t work well? I guess you improvise! Or, building on the lessons from previous chapters on resilience, you learn from failures, and adopt the growth mindset!
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Transformative Action Institute
Act As If...
ACTIVITY
In this exercise, people perform as if they were the best public speaker they know CREATIVITY COURAGE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help people get past their fears of public speaking
Overview
TIME
20-30 minutes, including debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because public speaking is the #1 fear in America. If people are going to learn how to communicate effectively, they need to learn how to step beyond their fears
Often many people have difficulty with public speaking. They get up and are very nervous about it In this exercise, people act as if they are taking part in a performance. It’s OK if they have never done any acting before. In a famous Russian study in the 1950s, children were asked to stand still as long as they could. The longest that they could last was 2 minutes. Yet then they were told to pretend that they were soldiers at guard, who needed to stand still. When they were performing this role, they could stand still for 11 minutes! People often give speeches that are dry and factual, and, quite frankly, quite dull. They might not even have self-awareness of how poor their speech is. But they change their tone very quickly if you change the environment. Here are ways to do it.
Facilitation
First have the students give their regular pitch: a typical 3-minute speech about their social innovation project. Then have them do it again, but this time, you ask them: Tell it as if you were acting like the best speaker you’ve ever seen Tell it as if it were a great story Tell it as if it were a secret Tell it as if you were a fiery preacher Tell it as if it were the best news ever Tell it as if you were telling friends in a pub Tell it as if you were talking to 5 year olds You can do this activity in two different ways: You could either have people do this one-on-one in pairs. Or you could ask people to perform in front of the entire class. Spend about 10 to 20 minutes trying out the different scenarios.
Debrief S OURCE : Cathy Salit, from her book Performance Breakthrough
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Ask the students about how they performed differently in the scenario where they were acting as another person. For example, in the first scenario – where you asked them to perform like the best speaker they had ever seen -- how did they do things different from their normal style of speaking? Perhaps they had more energy; perhaps they projected more confidence; perhaps they were more animated and enthusiastic, moving around the stage, giving everyone eye contact, to spread their
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Act As If...
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
passion to the audience. We have seen remarkable transformations from this activity: People might have seen themselves as shy or introverted. But when they perform as a great public speaker, they start to embody those abilities. It turns out that they had the capability within them the whole time. We can break out of the limiting definitions we have of ourselves: “I am shy. I am fearful. I am a poor public speaker.” In reality, we have the ability to be different personalities. As Walt Whitman wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” The famous American philosopher William James once said: “If you want a quality, act as if you already have it.” In the past century since the time of William James, there have been hundreds of experiments confirming that this practice works. For example, Clark University psychologist James Laird has done studies that showed that many people could make themselves happier just by simulating a smile. For example, if you say “ee” (which makes your mouth form in the shape of a smile), you will feel happier than if you say “yule” (which makes your face more into a displeased look). If you support a pencil in your teeth versus your lips, you will also simulate smiling and act happier. The point of all of this is that people can perform as if they were more effective speakers, and they will be able to increase their skill dramatically. Obviously they would need to practice this skill more and more in order to grow and develop as great communicators. But this activity is a powerful and practical way to show people that they have the capacity within themselves.
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Transformative Action Institute
CREATIVITY
Problem Solving Having the courage to think like an entrepreneur: acting boldly, taking risks, and having a sense of self-efficacy
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Creativity is most useful in the
have, every source we turn to for
service of solving problems. We
help has made us believe that
all will confront many adversities,
when we have a big problem, we
challenges, and obstacles in
should focus our time, energy, and
our lives. Knowing how to solve
attention on it, we should work
problems is a crucial skill.
harder, dig deeper, and fight the
Yet we tend to do it backwards. We tend to focus on our problems. Author David Niven talks about how this is dangerous. He begins with the story of Steven Spielberg when he was making the movie Jaws. Today that movie is considered one of the classics of Hollywood cinema – a masterpiece of horror. Yet when he was making the film, his mechanical shark didn’t seem scary at all. In fact, it looked absolutely fake and ridiculous. It was something that would cause people to laugh, instead of scream. What’s worse is that the mechanical shark was expensive, and it was rusting in the water. It would have been natural for Spielberg to spend a ton
problem with everything we have. And if Steven Spielberg had done that, his shark and his film would have sunk straight to the bottom of the sea. Instead Spielberg did something different. He thought about his ideal solution, instead of focusing on the problem. He wanted to make a movie that would frighten his audience, but he realized that the most frightening elements of a shark attack are the moments of suspense and uncertainty when you think it might be lurking, but you don’t actually see it. So Spielberg did something remarkable: He made a shark movie without a shark!
of money and attention trying to fix
At least for the majority of the
this problem. As Niven wrote:
movie, you never see the predator.
Everything we have ever been taught, every native impulse we
You hear the ominous music that has become famous. You see through the eyes of the frightened
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victim: someone scanning the
fixed: a coffee cup with a straw
horizon nervously, unable to see
that not only spilled frequently,
much beyond the watery horizon.
but also burned the users! The
This is what made the film so
other randomly selected students
successful.
were only told to design the ideal
In his excellent book, It’s Not About the Shark: How to Solve Unsolvable Problems, Niven uses this story to get a major point across: Problems infect our thinking in many ways—but the basic equation is simple. If we let problems define who we are, if we let problems serve as our guide, then our problems tell us what we can’t do. We can’t do this. We can’t do that. Our lives become negatives and absences.
inexpensive, spill-proof, disposable coffee cup. The engineering students who saw the problem were 17 times as likely to fail as those who just focused on the ideal solution. They became fixated on the problem. They were trying to fix the straw for example. In the ideal solution, almost none of the students even used a straw! They came up with many other creative, far more effective designs. (Jansson, David & Smith, Steven. (1991). Design fixation. Design Studies. 12: 3-11.)
There’s much scientific evidence to support this. For example, Texas A
The main point is that problem-
& M professors David Jansson and
solving is a skill that needs to be
Steven Smith had their engineering
developed. It’s not something
students tackle several design
that most people are naturally
challenges. One of these was to
talented at. And this first activity will
design an inexpensive, spill-proof,
demonstrate this abundantly:
disposable coffee cup. They showed one group of students an example of the problem that needed to be
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Negotiation or War
ACTIVITY
Students engage in a time-pressured negotiation that will result in a massive war if they cannot resolve their differences CREATIVITY COURAGE LEVEL
Beginner
GROUP SIZE
TIME
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
At least 60 minutes: 20 minutes for each team to prepare; 20 minutes for the negotiation; 10 minutes for a possible extension of the negotiation; and 10 minutes for debrief. (There can also be a chance to let the teams switch sides if they fail; you can give them an extra 10 minutes.)
To help students understand how difficult it is to solve problems by immersing them in a high-pressure, high-stakes negotiation
Instructions Facilitation
MATERIALS
Two copies of the instructions below: one for each team that is negotiating
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because few students have the skills for effective problem-solving. Even those who have learned about transformative action and “win-win” solutions earlier in this course will often end up going to war at the end of this game, even though that is the worst possible scenario. This leads to an important moment of realization for students; what was an intellectual concept comes to life.
On the following page (best to read first) Each team will go into a different room for the first 20 minutes to negotiate their strategies. When they return, they can start negotiating with each other. They will send up three representatives on each side who will represent them. All the other students will be right behind their representatives, cheering them on -- and sometimes offering advice. They have only 20 minutes to negotiate a solution. Every 5 minutes you will switch the leaders of the negotiation. In other words, if you have a class with 24 students (12 on each side) you are going to have everyone be the lead negotiators at different times. What’s remarkable about this exercise is that we have often seen the most quiet students, who have seemed passive for many weeks, become strong leaders when they do this activity. It helps us see different sides to their personalities. They speak up forcefully, take charge, and become enthusiastic. Indeed, these negotiations are usually quite entertaining and energetic. With the urgency of the deadline looming above their heads, the students become quite animated. Often the Empire will refuse to negotiate and will take a hard line stance, trying to intimidate the Rebels. Even when the Rebels warn the Empire that they will be destroying their own self-interests if they invade, the Empire still takes a belligerent stance. Throughout the negotiations, you can remind everyone of how much time is remaining, and the deadly consequences of not reaching a solution. The teams will make offers and counter-offers, and they will sometimes come to you and ask for more time. You can grant them two extra sessions of 5 minutes. But then you need to save a lot of time for discussion (and for a role reversal, if the two nations end up going to war.)
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Negotiation or War
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Intructions
ROLE PLAY SCENARIO: The Empire Invades Rebel Territory Please read through the following scenario to understand all the issues mentioned below. Your role as leaders of either side is to reach an agreement that is acceptable to your followers. IF NO AGREEMENT IS REACHED WHEN TIME IS CALLED, THEN THE FOLLOWING WILL OCCUR: THE EMPIRE INVADES REBEL TERRITORY. ALL REBEL MEN MURDERED. ALL REBEL WOMEN AND CHILDREN ENSLAVED. The Empire is the most powerful force in the world. Now they are about to invade Rebel Territory. Before the Empire invades, as is their custom, they have sent a delegation to talk over the possibility of a peaceful surrender with the leaders of the Rebels. Although there may be room for negotiation, one thing is for certain. If the Empire ends up invading Rebel Territory by military force, all of the Rebel men will be killed and the women and children made slaves. Although the outcome of such a war is certain, such an invasion would result in the Empire losing a significant number of soldiers and force them to postpone other plans to expand their territories. The Empire is interested in making money off of the Rebels. They want complete control over the Rebels’ economy. This is the most important issue for the Empire. They are also requesting that all government functions come under the direction of the Empire leaders and that each Rebel family pay 75% of their weekly earnings to the Empire. The Empire is in need of cash to supply, maintain and feed their growing armies. The Rebel Territory has the most advanced infrastructure in the world for exporting many of its products like food, clothing, military armor and distilled spirits (all of which would be destroyed if there is an invasion). Many people in the Empire also want to force the Rebels to swear loyalty to Darth Vader, and to worship their God the Sun instead of the Rebels’ God the Moon. The Empire is likely to destroy any physical displays of the Rebels’ God the Moon. For the Rebels, religion is extremely important and they do not want to worship the Empire God the Sun. Some of them are even willing to fight to the death to maintain their religious freedom. The Rebels are very proud people. They heavily dislike, and most even hate, the Empire and do not want to surrender or be slaves to the Empire. The Rebels have a very distinct culture and do not want to be forced to be citizens of the Empire. They believe strongly that their God the Moon is on their side in this fight, and some of them do not want to surrender, no matter what the costs or risks involved. Unfortunately for the Rebels, if war is declared their entire civilization will no longer exist because the Empire will surely destroy everything. Will there or will there not be a war? Issues that MUST be addressed (not necessarily in this order): 1. Invasion/Slavery 2. Control of Economy 3. 75% of Weekly Earnings 4. Loyalty Oath to Darth Vader 5. Religion: Sun God or Moon God
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Negotiation or War
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
About 67 percent of the time, the two sides will go to war, because they cannot resolve the situation within the time allotted. People are quite disheartened, deflated, and upset after this. So this is a valuable time to discuss what went wrong. It’s a powerful time to talk about transformative action – everybody coming on the same side against the common problems that they share. Often, after the nukes are launched, and we have a discussion, we give them a chance to switch sides at the end, and provide them with 10 more minutes to try again. It’s fascinating to see how they invariably come to a resolution. This second go-around is an exercise in empathy, where they step into the shoes of their adversaries. Once they do this, they are far more likely to succeed.
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Marshmellow Challenge
ACTIVITY
Students have 18 minutes to build a tower out of spaghetti sticks and marshmallows. CREATIVITY COLLABORATION
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size, divided into teams
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students understand the importance of trying things, rather than spending all their time thinking or planning
Facilitation
TIME
About 35 minutes: 5 minutes for the preparation and instructions; 18 minutes for the challenge; 12 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS
Marshmallows, uncooked spaghetti sticks, scotch tape, string, scissors, measuring tape
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because the best way to learn is to try something quickly – “rapid prototyping” – and see what works, and see what needs to be improved
This is another activity that calls for problem-solving skills. Divide the room into teams of four people each. Every team should get one marshmallow, one pair of scissors, 20 spaghetti sticks, a meter of tape, and a meter of string. Tell everyone that they have 18 minutes to buld the tallest possible free-standing structure, using only the ingredients that have been given to them. There are a few rules: 1.
The marshmallow has to be on the top of the structure. (In other words, they can’t put the marshmallow on the bottom, as the base of their creation.)
2.
They can’t tear up the marshmallow into smaller sizes. They have to use the full marshmallow. (They can however cut up/break the spaghetti sticks, the tape, or the string, if they wish.)
3.
They can’t tape the structure to the wall, or tie a string to hold it up. It must stand on its own at the end of 18 minutes.
Once every team has their materials, you can begin the 18-minute countdown. It often helps to project a countdown timer onto a screen in front of the room. (You can do this easily with your computer. Just do an internet search for “countdown timer,” and you will find plenty of free resources that you can program to count down from 18 minutes.)
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Even if you have the countdown timer, it’s always a good idea to announce milestones throughout the 18 minutes. For example, you can say at the 9-minute mark, “You have used half your time already!” This usually gets people working more frantically, especially because so many teams spend a lot of time just planning their structure, and haven’t start to construct anything yet. You can also announce, “5 minutes left” at the appropriate time. Again, this heightens the pressure.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Marshmellow Challenge (Continued) Debrief
ACTIVITY
At the end of 18 minutes, call time. Everyone must cease working on their structures. You will go around and measure the height of each one that is still standing. (Often when we do this activity, none of the structures stand! They all collapse at the end of 18 minutes when we tell everyone to stop! That’s an important part of the debrief.) If there are any structures standing, you see which one is tallest, and you announce the winner! When you debrief this, you can begin by asking what went wrong (especially for groups who failed to get the structure to stand at all.) Why weren’t they able to solve this challenge? Some may mention the scarcity of time and resources, and the stress and pressure. That’s when you can challenge them with a surprising fact: Ask them what group of people has consistently built the tallest structures. They may make a few guesses, but the correct answer is young children in kindergarten! They consistently outperform students at Harvard Business School, as well as students in other prestigious schools, and other intelligent adults in the working world. Why is this? The students can come up with their own answers. Here are some that you can contribute if nobody else comes up with them: It turns out that adults tend to spend much of their time planning and designing. This is normally helpful, but it backfires if some of the assumptions are wrong. For example, most adults assume that a marshmallow is fairly light, because it seems so fluffy and insubstantial. But when they place the marshmallow on top of a tower made out of spaghetti sticks at the end of 18 minutes, they see that the entire tower topples over! Young children, by contrast, will just start building their structures – iterating right away. They might discover in the first minute that the marshmallow is heavy. Therefore, they will try a second attempt, and a third attempt, right away; they are constantly learning from their mistakes. This is valuable in that it gets to the main idea of social innovation and entrepreneurship. The best way to see if your theory of change is correct is to test it out in the real world. As Eric Ries, the author of the Lean Startup writes, you want to create a “minimal viable product” (MVP). You want people to create rapid prototypes: to figure out what works, and what needs to be improved. This is the most effective way to learn, especially for social innovators and entrepreneurs. You will never know if your plans really will succeed if you spend all your time in planning and thinking. You need to test it out again and again, with what author Peter Sims calls “little bets.” These aren’t expensive tests where a failure will end in catastrophe. They are small attempts to test one part of your model. Sims gives the example of comedian Chris Rock. We see his comedy specials and think that he’s a genius, because every joke seems to be hilarious. But what we don’t see if all of Rock’s little bets; he goes to comedy clubs for months, testing hundreds of jokes and comedy routines to see which ones fall flat and which ones succeed. Then he takes only the best ones and puts them together in his final act. Similarly all of the great entrepreneurial success stories have only come out of the wreckage of countless failures that we never see. For instance, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, had many initial tests for his coffeehouse, which were disasters. Originally he had opera music in all the earliest pilots of Starbucks; he wanted it to be as Italian as possible. But customers didn’t like it at all, so he ditched it. Similarly, he also had waiters in tuxedos at the early coffeehouses. Again, this was a failed test that never made it. But he could never have been successful if he hadn’t tested out a lot of different variations to see what would work best. This is why in the “resilience” section of this manual, it’s so important to try so many attempts. 81
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The Voice of Wisdom
ACTIVITY
Students write a reflection to themselves on a problem where they need wisdom REFLECTIVE CREATIVITY LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size; this is an individual exercise
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students find wisdom by distancing themselves from a problem
Overview
TIME
35 minutes total: 5 minutes for explanation; 20 minutes for writing; 10 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS
Just something to write with (pen/pencil and paper; or computer)
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because often we are too close to a problem; we are so immersed in our own perspectives that we can’t see a way out.
Here’s an exercise that you can have people do when they are struggling with a difficult problem. You can begin by asking the students if they have ever noticed that it’s so much easier to give advice to another person than to one’s self? When another person is struggling, we can often proffer wisdom. Why is that? Students will probably have a number of answers: One of the main responses is because we have distance from their problem. It’s much easier to have a detached perspective. There’s a way to provide this wisdom to ourselves. This is a writing practice that many people have found to be extraordinarily effective. The idea is to have an imaginary conversation with someone we respect, and whose wisdom we appreciate. It doesn’t have to be someone living. It doesn’t even have to be a real person; it could be from a work of fiction. The idea is that you are asking someone who has wisdom and perspective that you feel like you lack, because you are too close to the problem. Some people choose wise ancestors – perhaps parents or grandparents who have passed away. Others choose to have this conversation with religious figures. (Some even choose to talk to God.) Others might choose to talk to someone renowned for their sagacity; these could be living or dead: anyone from Abe Lincoln to Malala. It could be a therapist or counselor. So long as it’s someone whose insights you respect, this activity will often prove powerful. Important note: It’s essential to tell the students that this will be completely confidential and private. They will not be turning this in, and they do not have to share anything about it with other students or with the professor. (After the activity is done, people can volunteer to talk about their experience with writing if they volunteer, but nobody will be asked to talk about the content of what they wrote.) Here’s how the exercise works:
S CIE NCE :
People start writing down their problem, as if they were talking to this wise person. So, for example, they might write to Eleanor Roosevelt:
Pennebaker, James W. (1997). “Writing about Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process.” Psychological Science. 8 (3): 162–166
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“I’m feeling lost. I’m really struggling. I am doing poorly in school, I have no direction, and I can’t pay my student loans. I need your help.”
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The Voice of Wisdom
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Whenever the student feels like he/she has gotten to the end of their statement, they then turn it over to the voice of wisdom. Whatever are the first words that come up in their mind, they start writing. Usually we recommend that they do this part in CAPS, so as to differentiate between their own plaintive voice and the voice of wisdom. So in this case, the first thing that might pop up in their mind is this: “PERHAPS YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR COURSE OF STUDY. YOU’RE NOT REALLY HAPPY STUDYING CHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY. YOUR FAMILY IS PRESSURING YOU TO GO INTO THESE SUBJECTS, HOPING YOU WILL BECOME A DOCTOR. BUT YOU KNOW THAT’S NOT REALLY WHAT YOU WANT. IT’S NO WONDER YOU CAN’T FIND THE MOTIVATION TO DO IT.” Tell the students to allow the two voices to have a conversation for about 20 minutes. Even if they think that they have run out of things to say after 10 minutes, encourage them to keep going. If they think they have solved the problems within the first few minutes, they can do this again with another problem until they have reached 20 minutes. Give everybody notice when there is just about 2 minutes left so that they can wrap up. Then, after you call time, it’s time for the reflection and discussion:
Debrief
Ask the students how they feel after doing this exercise. Did they tap into surprising wisdom? Did it feel good to write to a voice of wisdom (even if it’s admittedly just an imaginary exercise)? You can share with the students the scientific evidence behind this activity: University of Texas professor James Pennebaker has discovered that writing can be powerfully cathartic. When people have struggled with traumas and terrible adversities, a single intervention of writing 20 minutes per day, for three consecutive days, can help them. Even though many people became quite emotional and even cried when writing about these difficult times, they ended up feeling like the process was healing for them. Indeed, months later, the students who had participated in this exercise were healthier than randomly selected students who had not done the exercise. You can ask the students why they think that writing about the struggles and adversities is so therapeutic. They may give a number of answers. One of Pennebaker’s theories is that it gives the person distance, as we mentioned above (and as we will explore in another wisdom exercise, under the Empathy skill-building section.) Reflecting on the event with distance, they are able to invest in with meaning and purpose. For example, some people who have suffered violence or abuse then go on to devote their lives to helping prevent this same sort of terrible treatment towards other people. Wrap up the debrief by reminding students that this is an activity that they can do at any time in their lives when they are struggling. Countless people have found it to be helpful to tap into this inner wisdom.
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Collaboration Most creative breakthroughs come as the result of teamwork. In previous chapters on creativity, you had people attempt improvisational exercises. People might have surprised themselves with how they could be far more creative than they thought. Yet one of the key lessons about creativity – one that is counterintuitive to most people – is that creativity works best as a collaborative effort. We tend to think of creative geniuses as lone wolves – people who could come up with brilliant ideas on their own. In truth, most creative breakthroughs come as the result of teamwork. The exercises in the following sections are designed to help students develop their capacity for teamwork:
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The Documentary
ACTIVITY
Two people work together as documentary filmmakers, creating a “true-life” movie about their classmates ENERGIZER COLLABORATION COURAGE COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students begin to develop the skills of collaboration
Facilitation
TIME
15 minutes total: 5 minutes for Team A to “make their documentary”; 5 minutes for Team B; and 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because working together with other people is increasingly an important skill in the 21st century, especially as more traditional jobs are being taken over by machines.
This is a good activity to do after you have had people do the 3-Minute Story (see index). In that exercise, you had people in pairs: one designated as person A and the other designated as person B. Now you have these people join forces. In other words, person A and person B are now a team. They are going to get together with another pair. In other words, there are now four people working together. One of the pairs will now be Team A. The other pair will be Team B. (They can choose for themselves.) Now you say: “Team A, you are a couple of documentary film makers!” (When you say this, there is usually a lot of laughter and anticipation.) “Indeed, Team A, you are making a documentary about the two people in Team B…” There’s suspense in the room, as you continue: “As you can clearly see, the two people in Team B are identical twins!” (There’s usually a lot of laughter at that comment, since the two people who are randomly put together in teams often don’t look like each other at all!) On some occasions, when there is an odd number of people in the room, you will have a team of three people. In other words, there will be one group playing identical triplets! You continue: “The reason that you are making a documentary about these identical twins is because they were separated at birth. They didn’t even know about each other’s existence until just recently. In fact, they just discovered each other by accident! Now you are going to ask them questions about how this happened. You can ask them anything you want: why their parents split them up, and never told them about each other; how they accidentally discovered each other; what amazing similarities that have in their behaviors, etc.” Now you direct the other pair: “Team B, you are going to tell the story together. In other words, you are helping each other out. One person might start saying something, and the other person can add to it.”
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The Documentary
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
And those are all the directions. Now you allow the documentary filmmakers to interview their subjects, the amazing identical twins who were separated at birth. Let this go on for about 5 minutes. There’s almost always a tremendous amount of laughter. More importantly, there’s a great sense of teamwork, as the two members of Team B work together to devise a story. One will often jump in and rescue the other when their colleague has run out of things to say. As in all improv, there are no wrong answers. After about 5 minutes, you can stop it, and applaud everyone’s efforts. (Usually everyone in the room will applaud themselves as well.) Now you can say, “We are going to debrief this exercise, but not until we have turned the table…” “This time, members of Team B, you will be the documentary filmmakers. You are going to interview Team A. It turns out that they were co-founders of a very successful business that made more than a billion dollars! But then their company collapsed, they started fighting, and now they are suing each other. It is your job as filmmakers to interview them about this remarkable story of rags-to-richesto-rags again. As in the last round, you can ask them anything you wish: You can ask them about what was their billion dollar idea; you can ask them why the company went bankrupt; you can ask them why they are arguing… Team A, even though you are suing each other, you have begrudgingly agreed to appear in the same room to answer the filmmakers’ questions. Together you will tell the remarkable story.” Again, you let this go for about 5 minutes, with lots of laughter. In this case, there may be some “shouting” as well, as the two co-founders pretend to fight. The energy in the room is usually quite high during this exercise! Even people who are usually quite shy and introverted in the classroom can become very animated during this activity.
Debrief
Ask everyone what they learned about creativity and collaboration from this activity. Was this easier or more difficult than when people had to do improv all by themselves? (People almost always say that it was much easier to do it with a partner.) Allow people about 5 minutes to share what they gained from this. Then you are ready for the next activity:
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Sportscasters
ACTIVITY
Two people work together to broadcast an imaginary sports competition ENERGIZER COLLABORATION COURAGE COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To continue to help students on their trajectory for growth and development in collaboration
Facilitation
TIME
15 minutes total: 5 minutes for Team A to be sportscasters; 5 minutes for Team B to do the same; and 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because collaboration is a skill that is developed and improved with practice
For this one, you have people in groups of four again. Once again, as in the previous activity, there will be a Team A and a Team B. (If you wish, the previous groups can switch partners, so as to meet new people.) Now say the following: “Team A, you are a pair of sportscasters, who are narrating an amazing competition. And Team B, you are the two people competing for this championship. But you are not competing in a typical sport like basketball or football or running. Instead you are competing in some everyday, ordinary activity.” People might be confused as to what this means, so now you offer some examples: “For instance, in the past, we had people who were competing in combing their hair. Other people were competing in tying their shoelaces. Still others were competing in brushing their teeth. It can be absolutely anything. “Team B, you get to choose what you are competing in. Take about 15 to 30 seconds to decide on an activity together. Then tell the two sportscasters what activity you have chosen. They are going to need to know what you are doing, so that they can narrate the action! (In other words, don’t keep it a secret! This isn’t charades!)” “Once all four of you know the activity, then the two competitors should start acting out the championship competition. Meanwhile, the two sportscasters will tell the nailbiting story to an imaginary audience.” Here you can imitate a sterotypical announcer with an exaggerated voice, saying something like: “It’s the Super Bowl of getting ready for school! I have never seen anybody with such skill and such talent as these two! There may be a record broken today! It looks like Kelly is going to try to put on a backpack. Can she do it? Yes, she can! It’s a gooooooooal!” Now let the teams do it for themselves. This activity is one of the most exuberant and energetic of all of the exercises in this entire manual. The room erupts in hilarious action, whereby the individuals in Team B start competing in ridiculous activities. The sportscasters go wild, narrating every event
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Sportscasters
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
with breathless enthusiasm. After a few minutes, you can bring everyone back to attention. Before you debrief this activity, announce that you will switch sides. Now the roles reverse: The people who were the competitive “athletes” will become the sportscasters, and vice versa. Again, the room will erupt with excitement.
Debrief
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Finally, after all the sports compatitions, you debrief the activity. As before, the secret of the success of this activity is in its collaborative nature. One person couldn’t accomplish this alone; it takes all four to make it happen. This goes contrary to the myth of creativity and innovation: that it’s the work of a rare, solitary genius who just has some magical talent. On the contrary, creativity thrives in collaboration.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Back Dancing
ACTIVITY
People dance back to back ENERGIZER COLLABORATION COURAGE COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students further develop skills of collaboration
Facilitation
TIME
3-5 minutes
MATERIALS
Speakers to blast music; a music player (you can play songs from your computer, so long as it is connected to a speaker system)
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many students are embarrassed to dance in public; but when working together towards a common goal, they can achieve things they never would have imagined
This one is very easy to do. You just need to clear a lot of space in the classroom for people to move. Ask people to get into pairs. They have to stand with their back to the other person’s back. Now you are going to have them all dance! You can play some wild song that everyone loves. In the past, we have used the song Starships by Nikki Minaj. The students all know this song and love it (although this has explicit lyrics, so be careful if you decide to use it!) Throughout the entire song, as they are dancing, they have to keep their backs together at all times. There’s no room for solo performances; there’s no room for anyone to steal the spotlight as the star of the show. By the same token, there’s no room for anyone who feels like they are a terrible dancer to feel ashamed or embarrassed. They are too busy collaborating with their partner to stay upright. More than that, our experience shows that even the shyest wallflower with two left feet – someone who would never dare go out on a dance floor at a bar mitzvah or a wedding, let alone at a nightclub - enjoys this experience! If they aren’t already doing so naturally, encourage the dancing partners to move around the dance floor. In other words, they shouldn’t just dance in place for the entire song. It’s much more fun, and more challenging, if they cooperatively conga through the room. Often in the middle, we stop the music, and tell everyone to change partners. For the second time, we often play “Stayin’ Alive,” the classic disco hit by the Bee Gees. No matter what age our audience is, everybody seems to recognize this, and they start doing the disco motions with their hands pointing towards the sky, as if they were John Travolta. (And they do this while still keeping their backs together!) There’s no need to debrief this one. It’s another work of collaboration.
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COLLABORATION
Empathy and Compassion Fostering collaboration by understanding others’ needs and perspectives
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Many people have emphasized
something to alleviate it. There’s
the importance of empathy – of
abundant evidence that people
being able to stand in another
who train themselves to grow in
person’s shoes. Harvard professor
compassion can better handle the
Steven Pinker even theorizes that
slings and arrows of this world.
the significant decline in violence around the world over the past several decades is likely correlated to an increase of empathy. As we read books and see films about the lives of people of different cultures,
Whether we seek empathy or compassion, we need to start with the key skill of really listening to other people. So the first two exercises are about this:
genders, nationalities, and sexual orientations, we are more likely to respect them. Of course, given the current state of the world, we still have a long way to go! And some critics, like Yale professor Paul Bloom, argue that empathy is actually misguided. He cites a number of scientific studies that have shown the existence of empathy fatigue – i.e., when we hear about the suffering of other people and we step into their shoes, we can feel overwhelmed and helpless. He suggests that a more appropriate response would be compassion. In compassion, you don’t just empathize with another person’s suffering; you are motivated to do
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Transformative Action Institute
Lost in Translation
ACTIVITY
This is like classic children’s game of Telephone, but with people’s real life stories COLLABORATION COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students develop listening skills
Overview
TIME
40 minutes total: 20 minutes for the initial stories; another 15 minutes for the second round of stories; and 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because listening skills are essential for developing greater empathy and compassion. Indeed, it’s an essential part of all social and emotional learning
It’s very important that you don’t give away the point of this game. It’s really a game about active listening. But don’t tell people that at the beginning. Instead you should keep it a secret. You can tell people that it’s another storytelling exercise. And it is that, but it has a big twist. It’s like the children’s game of Telephone. People are going to tell each other stories. Yet we all know how often people don’t really listen to each other. They often are just waiting for others to finish speaking, so that they can contribute their own brilliant idea. Or they are lost in their head, thinking about what they are going to say next. Or they are distracted, thinking about what they are going to do about a problem at home. In other words, we rarely ever truly pay total attention and listen to another. This game will reveal that in a humorous way, and lead into the next Active Listening activity.
Facilitation
Step 1. Give everyone a card with a number on it. Then pair people up randomly: perhaps 1 with 2, 3 with 4, etc. Step 2. Tell all the people who are holding an odd number that they will tell a 3-minute story about something interesting, wild, or crazy that happened to them in the past 5 years. The people holding the even-numbered cards will just listen. This is not a conversation; it’s more like a soliloquy. Only the people holding odd numbers will be speaking for now. Step 3. After 3 minutes, you switch. Now all the people holding even numbers will tell their own 3-minute story about something interesting, wild, or crazy that happened to them in the past 5 years. Step 4. After the second 3 minutes, you halt the storytelling. You can say the following: “Thank your partner for listening to your story. Now you are going to give your card to your partner. So #2 will be holding card #1, and vice versa. #4 will be holding #3, etc. “Here’s where it gets interesting. You are going to find a new partner. You now have to tell the story you just heard (the one associated with the card you are holding) to another person as if it were yours! You will re-tell the story except this time you will tell it as if it happened to you. Try to remember all the details and tell it as accurately and completely as possible.”
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Lost in Translation
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Step 5. Have people spend 3 minutes telling each other the story associated with the person who gave them the original card. In other words, this is similar to steps 2 and 3 above, except for the fact that people are telling other people’s stories as if it were their own! Step 6. Then the process repeats itself: Everybody in the room trades cards one more time. Then everybody finds a third partner. And for the final time, the people tell stories associated with the card they are holding – as if those stories were their own. So again this third round will go for 6 minutes: 3 minutes for each story. Step 7. Finally everyone trades cards for the third time. In other words, the card is now in the hand of a fourth and final person. Now you ask for volunteers to tell the story associated with that card. Again they are going to tell the story as if it happened to them! Mind you, these are stories that they heard third-hand. When each volunteer has finished telling the story, you can ask whose story that was originally. That person will be able to tell everyone how accurate the fourth-hand version of the story is! There will probably be a lot of laughter and bewilderment. As in the children’s game of Telephone, the story has probably been garbled in numerous ways. It may not even have any relation to the original story.
Debrief
Talk to the students about what they believe to be the lessons of this game. If, indeed, the stories changed dramatically, why is that? (Presumably, after the first round, when they knew the trick of the game, they were trying to listen more closely. Yet still it’s probable that the story changed in numerous ways.) This is a nice lead-in activity to the next one, which is about how to be an active listener.
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Transformative Action Institute
Active Listening
ACTIVITY
Everyone listens closely to another person, without giving advice, judgments, or consolation COLLABORATION COMMUNITY BUILDER REFLECTIVE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size; people do this in pairs
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students more effectively develop the skill of active listening
Facilitation
25 minutes for the activity and debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because listening skills are essential for developing greater empathy and compassion. Indeed, it’s an essential part of all social and emotional learning
You can use the following PowerPoint slides if you wish. Meanwhile you can use the following text as a script. This activity is very simple. It’s just four steps:
1. LISTEN to your teammates and peers when they share their concerns.
Facilitation
2. GIVE YOUR FULL ATTENTION. You may show encouragement and support. But you should not try to interrupt. Don’t tell people they are wrong to feel the way that they do. Most of all, you should not try to give advice, or solve the other person’s problem!
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TIME
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Active Listening
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
This can be insulting to people. If it were so easy to solve the problem, they would have probably solved it already! Many people are expressing their frustrations, but at this stage, they just want to be heard. They aren’t ready for solutions yet. (And when they are ready, it’s best if you can ask questions that help them arrive at their own solutions! These are far more effective.) Additionally, you should not try to turn the attention to yourself, telling a story about when this happened to you. Your goal is simply to provide a safe space for the other person to be heard and have their opinions valued. This is why it’s called listening! You aren’t trying to impress them with your wisdom; you are simply allowing them to be respected and appreciated.
3. ACCEPT everything that they say. (After all, these are their true feelings. Even if you disagree with their point of view, you can’t deny that they are feeling sad or fearful or angry.)
4. REPEAT BACK their main points at the end, to make sure that your team member feels understood. If they don’t feel like you have expressed their concerns correctly, please give them another opportunity to share what they wish to say. Then try again. It’s that simple.
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Transformative Action Institute
Active Listening
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Indeed, the best way to remember this is that you are like a mirror. A mirror doesn’t argue with the person looking into it; it doesn’t reject anyone; it doesn’t try to solve any problems. A mirror simply reflects back to the viewer, just like in this famous photo of Nelson Mandela. It accepts whatever it sees. Here’s one final example: The bird here might not even understand what it is seeing in the mirror. In the same way, you might not completely understand what the other person is telling you. Yet you still just reflect back exactly what you are presented, without judgment. (Note to presenter: The reason why we have three different images is because we are trying to get people to remember the metaphor of being like a mirror.) Now let’s try it. After you’ve read the preceding text, and/or shown the slides, sk people to get into pairs. For 5 minutes, have Person A share an issue that troubles them. It could be a fear or anxiety that they have about their work or school. It could be a personal or professional issue that they don’t mind confiding in another. Person B should just listen. She is not trying to solve the other person’s problem. She is simply there to acknowledge and validate the other person’s perspective. After five minutes, Person B can try to summarize what she heard. For example, she might say, “What I’m hearing is…” And then Person B repeats the story to Person A, asking them if it’s correct. This will continue on for 2 to 3 minutes. After about 8 minutes total, the trainer can stop the exercise and ask for feedback. How did Person
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Active Listening
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
A in each pair feel? Was it a good experience having someone listen to them without judgment? Did they feel heard and understood and appreciated and respected? After a few minutes of receiving feedback from the participants, you can have the pairs try it again. This time, Person B will share an issue that troubles him. The roles are reversed: Now Person A is the person who will offer her full attention for 5 minutes. At the end of that period, Person A will attempt to repeat back what she just heard, to make sure it’s correct. It’s that simple. At the end of the second 8 minute session, you can do another short debrief to see if staff members have questions. But then you can ask everyone: What happens after we feel like we have been able to express our concerns, and have felt appreciated and valued? Then we need to move to the next stage of transforming the communication….
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Transformative Action Institute
Self-Compassion
ACTIVITY
A writing exercise to help people learn about how to have compassion for one’s own flaws and imperfections COLLABORATION REFLECTIVE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size (This is a private, confidential writing exercise, w/ a group discussion at the end)
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students learn the important concept of selfcompassion, and the scientific evidence behind it
Overview
TIME
30 minutes total: 5 minutes for the introduction: 15 minutes for the in-class writing exercise; and 10 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS
Handouts of the writing exercise (copied and pasted from below)
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many students are their own harshest critics. Such self-criticism does not motivate them to take action to change. In fact, it often does the opposite, making people feel hopeless and helpless.
Many of us are extremely harsh towards ourselves. We say things to ourselves about how we are not smart enough, not good enough, and not thin enough, among many other judgments and selfcondemnations. If a stranger said these things to us (not to mention an enemy, or even a friend or family member), we would be offended and most likely upset. Yet we often are our own harshest critics. It would be fine if this self-criticism helped us transform our behavior. Yet an abundant body of research shows that it backfires as a strategy. When people criticize themselves for being overweight, for instance, they are much more likely to engage in binge eating, to try to improve their mood. (Plus, they might think that there’s nothing that they can do. Rather than motivating us, selfcriticism makes us feel hopeless and helpless.) Kristin Neff, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, has developed strategiesd for overcoming this. She has pioneered the entire field of self-compassion. Dozens of scientific research studies have found that self-compassion is linked with great happiness and optimism; people who practice self-compassion experience less anxiety and depression. Here’s an exercise that Neff recomends for cultivating self-compassion: It involves seeing our common humanity. As Neff says,
S OURCE : Kristin Neff
Often, when something goes wrong, we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see— we feel very isolated in that moment, as if everyone else has these perfect lives and it’s just us who’s flawed and defective. When we remember that imperfection is part of the shared human experience, you can actually feel more connected to people in those moments.
S CIE NCE : Neff, K. D.; Kirkpatrick, K.; Rude, S. S. (2007). Self-compassion and its link to adaptive psychological functioning. Journal of Research in Personality. 41: 139–154.
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This exercise is taken verbatim from her book, Self-Compassion. It is a writing exercise. Obviously students wouldn’t want to be so vulnerable as to admit all of their self-critiques in front of their peers. So this is a private, confidential exercise. They don’t even need to share what they write with their professor. Instead, after they do this, they can share what the experience was like.
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Self-Compassion
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Prompt
You can give a short introduction to this exercise, based on the overview above. Then you can hand out the following questions for a 15-minute writing exercise in class. Feel free to copy and paste it.
Writing exercise (15 minutes) on Self-compassion Source: Kristin Neff, Ph.D., Professor at the University of Texas Part One: Everybody has something about themselves that they don’t like; something that causes them to feel shame, to feel insecure, or not “good enough.” It is the human condition to be imperfect, and feelings of failure and inadequacy are part of the experience of living a human life. Try writing about an issue you have that tends to make you feel inadequate or bad about yourself (physical appearance, work or relationship issues…) How does this aspect of yourself make you feel inside - scared, sad, depressed, insecure, angry? What emotions come up for you when you think about this aspect of yourself? This is just between you and the paper, so please try to be as emotionally honest as possible and to avoid repressing any feelings, while at the same time not being overly melodramatic. Try to just feel your emotions exactly as they are – no more, no less – and then write about them. Part Two: Now think about an imaginary friend who is unconditionally loving, accepting, kind and compassionate. Imagine that this friend can see all your strengths and all your weaknesses, including the aspect of yourself you have just been writing about. Reflect upon what this friend feels towards you, and how you are loved and accepted exactly as you are, with all your very human imperfections. This friend recognizes the limits of human nature, and is kind and forgiving towards you. In his/her great wisdom this friend understands your life history and the millions of things that have happened in your life to create you as you are in this moment. Your particular inadequacy is connected to so many things you didn’t necessarily choose: your genes, your family history, life circumstances – things that were outside of your control. Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of this imaginary friend – focusing on the perceived inadequacy you tend to judge yourself for. What would this friend say to you about your “flaw” from the perspective of unlimited compassion? How would this friend convey the deep compassion he/ she feels for you, especially for the pain you feel when you judge yourself so harshly? What would this friend write in order to remind you that you are only human, that all people have both strengths and weaknesses? And if you think this friend would suggest possible changes you should make, how would these suggestions embody feelings of unconditional understanding and compassion? As you write to yourself from the perspective of this imaginary friend, try to infuse your letter with a strong sense of his/her acceptance, kindness, caring, and desire for your health and happiness.
Debrief
Ask people: “How did this activity feel? Did you feel better afterwards?” Obviously people will have been discussing very private things, so you don’t want to ask them to disclose anything personal. But you can see if volunteers want to offer their general perspectives on this activity, and on the concept of self-compassion in general. Please feel free to share in the discussion about the scientific research. Many people think that they need to be harsh on themselves to motivate them to take action. They think that, if they are forgiving towards themselves, they will become self-indulgent. They think it’s like letting themselves off the hook to do anything they want.
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Transformative Action Institute
Self-Compassion
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
Scientific research shows that the opposite is the case. When we care about ourselves, then we want to do what’s best. An analogy can be made with parents: Parents who love their children don’t indulge and spoil their daughters and sons. On the contrary, because they care for them, they take action to help. Admittedly, they know that their children will make mistakes, but they still love them. It’s human nature to have flaws and imperfections, and to make mistakes. That will always be part of the process of growth, learning, and development. Indeed, this is the foundation of much wisdom, which will be the subject of the next activity:
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Cultivating Wisdom
ACTIVITY
A writing exercise where people look at their problems as if from a distance COLLABORATION REFLECTIVE
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students cultivate increased wisdom
Overview
TIME
5 minutes for the role play; 10 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because wisdom is another essential part of social and emotional learning, including the development of empathy and compassion
This is another exercise in developing empathy and compassion. Often we have limited perspectives because we are immersed in a situation. We are too close to it. (See the related activity of the “Voice of Wisdom,” elsewhere in this manual.) But wisdom comes from having a distant perspective. Can people cultivate wisdom in their lives? Ethan Kross and Igor Grossman, scholars at the University of Michigan, decided to do a study. According to their academic research, “three important dimensions of wisdom involve: • Recognizing that the world is in flux and the future is likely to change • Recognizing that there are limits associated with one’s own knowledge, and • Possessing a prosocial orientation that promotes the ‘common good.’” They developed the following activity to test their theory that people could develop this sort of wisdom.
Facilitation
This is another private, confidential writing exercise: Ask the students to think about a problem in their lives: something with which they have been struggling. Now tell them the following instructions: “Imagine the events unfolding as if you were a distant observer. Look at yourself in this situation as if you were an outside witness. Perhaps you are someone from Iceland watching this situation. What advice would you offer? Write about it for 10 minutes.”
Debrief
At the end of the exercise, ask people for their reactions and observations. You can let people know that scientific evidence backs up this specific activity for boosting wisdom. If you wish, you can contribute the following perspective from the research:
S CIE NCE : Kross, E. and Grossman, I. Boosting
Kross and Grossman found that people could have much greater wisdom if they have a “fly on the wall” perspective – if they saw a problem as happening from afar.
wisdom: distance from the self enhances wise reasoning, attitudes, and behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 2012, Vol. 141, No. 1, 43–48
Specifically Kross and Grossman asked students to imagine, “imagine the events unfolding as if you were a distant observer.” When they did this, they were much more likely to solve their problems and have wisdom than students who were asked to “imagine the events unfolding before your own eyes as if you were right there.”
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Transformative Action Institute
Multiple Perspectives
ACTIVITY
People debate a contention issue from 6 different points of view REFLECTIVE COURAGE COLLABORATION LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
TIME
Any size
Assign students to research all the roles as homework in advance. Then this activity will take about 45 to 60 minutes of class time.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students understand perspectives very different from their own
Facilitation
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because it’s easy to demonize people who disagree with us as irrational, deplorable, uneducated, or even evil. This activity invites us to explore the very good reasons why a good-hearted, rational person might take a different point of view. It is intended to increase empathy and compassion, and decrease the dehumanization and polarization so rampant in our society.
“Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes!” JACK HANDEY COMEDIAN
In this activity, you will have people talk about a powerful topic, but they will talk about it from multiple points of view. Get people into groups of six. The topic can be anything you choose. For instance, we did one where the United States was going to spend many extra billions of dollars and send 20,000 soldiers into Syria to fight against terrorism. In this case, we choose six perspectives, which can vary: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
The President of the United States (the commander in chief of the armed forces) The family of a U.S. soldier being sent to Syria A Syrian refugee A peace activist in the U.S. A human rights group A libertarian in the U.S.
There are two important notes for this assignment: First, people have to do significant research in advance. Otherwise, many students won’t know how to play these roles. Second of all, they have to play the roles seriously, as if they truly were representing these points of view. Someone who is opposed to the current U.S. President can’t make him look like a buffoon; the person playing the role should try to embody the President as a reasonable person who is truly doing what he/she thinks is in the best interests of the nation. Similarly, people who would normally dismiss peace activists as hippies shouldn’t play this role as a satire of such views; again, the point is to truly understand why people would think and act this way, and to portray that reasonably. Here’s the catch: In the role-play, there will be 6 rounds. Each person in each group will get a chance to play all of the roles!
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Multiple Perspectives
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
For instance, in Round 1, Student A might play the role of the President. In Round 2, she might play the role of the family of the soldier. In Round 3, she might play the Syrian refugee. And so on… People will rotate through all roles. The point isn’t to come to a resolution of the conflict. It’s for each side to honestly portray their views. Here’s another important point: In each round, the new actors should shed light on some perspective of their character that hasn’t already been spoken. In other words, they aren’t just repeating what the previous actors have said in that role. They are fleshing out the perspectives even further! By the end of all six rounds, each character should be multi-faceted and complex. Note also that all of these roles are complex in themselves, and not to be stereotyped. For example, it’s possible that the family of the U.S. soldier is extremely patriotic and proud of the fact that their child might be serving his/her country, and possibly giving his/her life, for America. It’s equally possible that they feel like their child’s life is being potentially jeopardized for an unjust cause. Similarly, the peace activist is not necessarily against the military intervention; they might see it as a way of keeping the peace and stopping the civil war that has killed more than 250,000 Syrians.
Debrief
Alternative Assignment
After all six rounds, it’s valuable to debrief this experience. Did it give insight, empathy, and understanding as to how reasonable, intelligent people could differ on important issues? How did it feel to portray a point of view different from one’s own without lampooning or ridiculing it? What does it tell us about the human capacity for empathy? And does it hold any hope for working together with others who have different perspectives – in a way where we don’t demonize our opponents?
Another way to do this perspective building is with a homework assignment Assignment: Choose a topic about which you are extraordinarily passionate. Now write a persuasive, well-reasoned, well-researched essay from the opposite perspective of what you believe! We have found this assignment to be astonishing. Many students, after writing from the opposite perspective from their own, actually change their views. This may seem heartening in what it says about the power of empathy – standing in another person’s shoes. Yet it also says something disturbing about the fact that someone could have been deeply passionate about an issue, and not been aware, until this assignment, of the very reasonable arguments for the other side. (It also might be a bit scary for what it says about how easily people’s strongly held views can be uprooted. It might be that people could be vulnerable to propaganda, if they can be swayed so easily!)
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Transformative Action Institute
COLLABORATION
Prosocial Behavior Fostering collaboration by serving other people, to help them meet their full potential
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Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Few people have heard of the term “prosocial.” What a sad commentary on our society that we all know the term “anti-social,” but few people have heard of its opposite: the term that stands for positive acts of kindness, goodness, generosity, and altruism. Indeed, until recently, both Microsoft Word and Gmail would both underline the term “prosocial” in red – indicating that you had made an error in typing! They simply didn’t recognize the existence of a term that stood for acts of virtuous, ethical character! We seek to change that imbalance. Starting here, we offer a few beginning activities to cultivate prosocial behavior.
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Transformative Action Institute
Killing with Kindness
ACTIVITY
A nonviolent version of the popular college game “Assassin” – one in which people go on a rampage of goodness COLLABORATION COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students see that prosocial behavior is contagious.
Necessary Pre-Work
TIME
24-hour homework assignment (or, alternatively, up to a week); 15 minute debrief in class afterwards
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because humans have a negativity bias, which makes us far more aware of threats in our environment; we need a corrective that helps people see the positive side of their lives, especially when they are struggling in their lives, their campuses, and their communities
On the day that you are going to announce this activity, you will need to have an assignment due from the students. They must type and print out three remarkable, fascinating facts about themselves – fun facts that almost nobody else knows. In other words, these should be secrets. But they are obviously secrets that they don’t mind sharing with other people; they aren’t guilty secrets of which they are ashamed! It’s like asking people in an icebreaker, “What are three things that people in this classroom probably don’t know about you?” It’s hard to think of these things when asked spontaneously in a classroom. But you will assign this in the previous class as homework. People will not put their names on these printed sheets. Instead you will assign each person a secret number, and they will just put that number at the top of their printed page. They can use some unusual font if they want, just to disguise their identity even more. They will soon discover why they are doing this.
Facilitation
Read the following overview and instructions to your students: On many campuses, there’s a controversial game called “Assassin.” In this game, students secretly select the names of other students who are playing the game. Then they have to find that person alone, and shoot them with a toy gun (with a harmless dart, fortunately!) When you successfully assassinate someone, you then are responsible for next trying to kill the person whose name that person had. The last person to survive is the winner. Of course, the reason that the game is so controversial is that many critics say that it glorifies and glamourizes violence. That’s why we invented a game where you have to go out and kill with kindness. The goal is to take on one of the following missions: • • • •
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Give a genuine compliment to someone Do a random act of kindness Be generous (above and beyond what you normally would do) Express your gratitude
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Killing with Kindness
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
Here’s how it works: It’s similar to Secret Santa. You will be assigned one person in the classroom for whom you have to do as much good as possible. Over the next 24 hours [note: you could make this a weeklong activity if you wish], you will spread as much goodness to this person as possible. You will want to be as creative as possible. The more spectacular the act of kindness and goodness, the better! A few rules: 1.
2.
Obviously we don’t want people to spend too much money; generosity does not have to involve money or material goods. There are other ways of being kind to people that are free. We know that not everyone has wealth to share. Don’t do anything that is inappropriate – meaning anything that would harass another person, that would be construed as sexual, or anything dangerous
Here’s the trick: We will not reveal the name of the person you have been assigned! We will only give you a few clues about their identity: a few secrets about them that almost nobody else knows. Your goal is to try to figure out who this might be. But meanwhile you have to be going out and targeting them with “bombs of kindness” and “explosions of generosity and gratitude.” If you’ve targeted the wrong person, then all the better! Innocent bystanders will be caught in the crossfire of kindness! At the next class (the next day, or the next week), each person will try to guess who was targeting them. [Note to facilitator: This is the point that you assign people the sheets of secrets. For accountability purposes, you should record which number you are giving to which person in the class.] Now go forth and do good!
Debrief (at the next class)
Who can guess who was doing kind things for them? The students may make guesses. If they are right, ask them what made them realize that this person was engaging in prosocial behavior. Why was this above and beyond the way that this person normally treats them? (One would hope that we always go around being kind, complementary, generous, and grateful to others.) How did it feel to be the recipient of this prosocial behavior? How did it feel to perform these acts of prosocial behavior? If they were wrong about who was their “Secret Assassin of Kindness,” why did they think that another person had their name? What did that person do to make them think they were the intended targer? How is that different from most people’s normal everyday behavior? Why do we not always treat each other these ways? What were the most spectacular acts of kindness and altruism? What were the funniest stories – either of people being caught in the crossfire, or of unexpected reactions? What were the most creative acts of prosocial behavior? Most importantluy, how might this activity change people’s behavior going forward, long after the game is done? Will it make any difference?
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Transformative Action Institute
Active Constructive Responding
ACTIVITY
People listen to the success stories of others and react with support and encouragement COLLABORATION COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students understand that there is an additional element to social and emotional learning, which is focused on the positive: “co-passion.”
Overview
TIME
15 minutes for the activity; 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because traditionally empathy and compassion focus on suffering. This can lead to fatigue. So it’s important to introduce a positive element to the mix, which is elevating and nourishing.
Shelly Gable of UC Santa Barbara has developed an exercise for getting people to appreciate each other. This is co-passion, instead of compassion. While compassion is sharing in someone’s suffering, with the goal of helping to alleviate it, copassion is about sharing in another person’s joy. It’s remarkable that, in the English language, we don’t have a word for this. We have a word for taking joy in another person’s suffering (schadenfreude) but we don’t have a word for taking joy in another person’s joy! That’s what we call co-passion.
S OURCE : Transformative Action Institute,
Why don’t we savor other people’s happiness? You can ask students this. They may say, correctly, that people see good news as something competitive – as if it’s a zero-sum game. If one person is having good news, then it must mean that my own life must be worse by comparison.
inspired by Shelly Gable, as well as by researchers at the University of Helsinki who coined the term co-passion: “the sharing of another’s enthusiasm.”
S CIE NCE :
Indeed, it’s this sort of social comparison that makes people miserable. It’s one of the reasons why the use of social media like Facebook and Instagram has been correlated with depression. We see other people enjoying exotic vacations in Tahiti or the Bahamas, and we feel like our lives are boring in comparison. Or we see people who are posting pictures of their apparent bliss and perfect relationship. And if we are single, we think that our lives are somehow diminished. (Of course, we don’t see the downsides of this. People rarely post Instagram photos of the intestinal bug that they caught on their vacation, or Facebook updates about the fights that they have been having with their significant other. We see only their happiness, and somehow think that their lives are perfect.)
Gable, Gonzaga, and Strachman. (2006) Will You Be There for Me When Things Go Right? Supportive Responses to Positive Event Disclosures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 91, No. 5, 904–917
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So selfishly, many of us are reluctant to celebrate good news of another person – even a close friend or family member – because it makes us feel down about our own lives. Here’s the fascinating thing: Happiness is not a zero-sum game. It’s not like happiness is a scarce resource that gets depleted if someone else consumes it! On the contrary, if we can sincerely feel happiness for another person’s good fortune, then there is more happiness for everyone! It’s a positive-sum game!
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Active Constructive Responding (Continued) Overview
ACTIVITY
Of course, few people think this way. Thus, when somebody has good news, there are three negative ways that we might respond, if we aren’t careful: Passive-Destructive: We can change the subject, talking about ourselves, instead of celebrating the other person’s good news; Active-Destructive: We can even actively point out all the bad things about their good news. (For example, when someone gets a promotion at work, someone might respond, “That sounds like a lot more work for you, and much more stress.”) Passive-Constructive: This is just to acknowledge the other person’s good news, but without much emotion or interest. The fourth way is much more positive. It’s called Active-Constructive Responding, and it is about affirming the other person’s good news by showing great enthusiasm and interest. Help other people savor the good things in their lives by asking lots of questions: Here’s an example of active-constructive responding: “That’s wonderful! Tell me more! How did you feel when you got the news? Do you want to go celebrate?” Make other people feel special and supported; this will help build team dynamics enormously.
Facilitation
You can do an activity where everyone shares good news and has other people share in their joy. Have people get in groups of 3-5 people. Have one person share something good about their lives for several minutes, and have the others practice enthusiastic active-constructive responses. (If you want, you can have them start by trying some of the other ways of responding, just to get the contrast.) For active-constructive responses, have them ask the person to describe their experience in more detail; to ask them how it made them feel; and other details that will make them savor the moment.
Debrief
At the end, ask them how it felt to have people take genuine, excited interest in their stories. Did they come more alive? Did they feel more genuinely connected? Is this something that they would be willing to practice more often in their lives? Such a gift is entirely free, and it makes others feel uplifted and excited. This leads nicely into the next exercise:
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Making Others Look Good
ACTIVITY
Highlighting the best in other people and spreading the news to others COLLABORATION COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To go against one’s own self-interest for a day, and promote other people’s interests
Facilitation
TIME
24 hours for the activity; 10 minutes for the debrief at the next class
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because, for almost all students, this leads to a surprising discovery, supported by scientific research: that they become happier when they devote themselves to making others happy
“It’s amazing how much can be accomplished if nobody cares who gets the credit” – John Wooden (but he probably wouldn’t care if he didn’t get credit!) Earlier in this guide, we talked about the first (and best-known) principle of improvisational theatre: Say, “Yes and…” to everything. One of the lesser known principles of improv is to make other people look good. This is especially effective because trying to make ourselves look good is often bound to backfire. When we brag about our own accomplishments, people think we are egotistical jerks. When we drop the names of famous people we have met, people see us as slightly ridiculous. (That’s why the term “name-dropping” is a pejorative. We think that it will impress people if we mention that we have met some famous celebrity; but often people find us to be a bore!) And if you were ever to start a speech by talking about how impressive you are, the audience would think you were arrogant. (Interestingly enough, audiences warm to us more when we are vulnerable.) Yet, if the person introducing you were to list these same accomplishments, people would look on you quite favorably! In this activity, you are going to highlight the good of other people. You are going to go out of your way to shine the light on others’ contributions, rather than your own. This is a bit similar to the “Killing with Kindness” activity from earlier in this manual. But this time, you have the names of 3 different people, and you know who they are. For 24 hours, you are going to go out of your way to make these people look good – to serve their best interests.
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For each individual whose name you have, your goal is to uplift him/her, to make that person look good, and to speak good of that person all the time. This is supposed to be sincere. It’s not about faking it or engaging in false flattery. It’s about actually seeking out the good. That leads into two final, related, exercises:
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Making Others Look Good (Continued) Debrief
ACTIVITY
At the next class, you will discuss people’s experiences. Most people will be astonished to find that it felt really good to help others. When we are focused on ourselves, we often are miserable. But when we seek to engage in prosocial behaviors on behalf of others, we get a “helper’s high.” Scientific research shows that doing good for others lights up the same pleasure centers of the brain as when you eat chocolate! In a similar vein, Penn professor Martin Seligman often assigns his positive psychology students to try out two activities: one that is intensely pleasurable for themselves, and one that does good for others. The pleasure from the selfish activity (e.g., having a giant sccop of your favorite ice cream) often wears out within minutes, and fades away to nothing. Indeed, the short-term pleasure can even turn to longer-term pain, as when you feel sick from eating too much sugar! Yet when people did random acts of kindness for others – even for strangers – the high from the activity often lasted for many hours, if not even until the following days! This is an important concept to discuss with the students. To paraphrase the Dalai Lama: If you’re selfish, and all you care about is your own happiness, then the best way to get it, ironically, is to act selflessly! That will lead you to the greatest happiness. Or as Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw wrote:
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations This leads into the next activity:
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Seeking Out the Good
ACTIVITY
People debate a contention issue from 6 different points of view REFLECTIVE COLLABORATION
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help the students understand the concept of neuroplasticity – that they can change their brain with practice
Overview
TIME
24 hours for the activity; 10 minutes for the debrief at the next class
MATERIALS
None; just an outdoor environment
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many students are caught in vicious cycles of negativity, anxiety, and depression; this exercise and the accompanying scientific research show that they can start to retrain their brains to see the good
Neuroscientists have discovered that we can change the structure of the brain, even in adulthood. Countless studies have been done on this concept of neuroplasticity. Many of them indicate that repetition of thinking styles establishes a pattern in the brain. As scientist Donald Hebb said, “neurons that wire together fire together.” For example, if we spend all of our time paying attention to negative things in our environment, then this becomes a habit that is hard to break. By contrast, if we practice spending our time focusing on the good, we can actually change the brain.
Facilitation
Tell students to go outside to some public place, ideally with other people in the area. For 5 minutes, they should look for everything that is negative about their surroundings. For example, they might see things that they think are ugly; they might judge people negatively based on their appearance; they might find fault with the levels of noise, with the quality of the weather, or with numerous other things. They should continue this exercise of noticing what they don’t like for the next few minutes. They should take note of what’s wrong. At the end of that time, ask them to notice how it felt to have such a judgmental state of mind. After that, task them to switch their focus to all the things in the same place that they appreciate. They can look for things that are positive and uplifting; they can look at what they consider to be beautiful and good. They can even notice things for which they are grateful, and perhaps which they normally take for granted – e.g., the fact that they live in an area of relative peace, while so many people in the world live in areas of violence and even war; or that they have enough to eat while so many people go hungry. At the end of 5 minutes, ask them to notice how it felt to have a positive state of mind.
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When everybody comes back into the room, you can discuss the distinction between the two states. It’s likely that people probably felt in a bad mood when they were dwelling on the negative. They might have felt angry or fearful or pessimistic or depressed with the state of the world. It might have
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
Seeking Out the Good
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Debrief
sparked a thundercloud in their minds. By contrast, most people will probably report that they felt much better overall when they were consciously looking for the good in the same exact situation. They probably felt lighter and sunnier; they might report a playfulness and humor that was absent in the first scenario. It’s possible that some students will object, saying that we can’t live in a positive state all the time. And that’s an excellent point. It’s natural and even valuable to notice any threats in the environment. Indeed, scientific research has found that humans have a negativity bias. We pay more attention to what’s bad than to what’s good. Evolutionarily speaking, that makes sense. If you didn’t notice a serious danger, you might be eliminated from the gene pool. By contrast, if you don’t notice some delicious fruit on a tree you pass, it probably won’t be fatal; there will be plenty of other opportunities to eat. But the point of this exercise is to show that we feel better when we seek out and focus on the good. Our negativity bias is over-active in the modern world. After all, in developed nations, we largely live in a society where serious dangers are rare. There are no predators like lions or crocodiles that are going to threaten us. (This is not to deny the possibility of violence, especially in many urban areas. Yet, compared to generations ago, violence has declined dramatically. Harvard Professor Steven Pinker has documented how violence rates have decreased by more than 90 percent just in the last few decades alone!) Indeed, the research on positive psychology shows that prosocial behavior causes people to be happier. If we constantly see just the negativity in the world, not only will we be unhappier, but we will be less likely to engage in prosocial action. We will be more prone to feeling helpless, hopeless, and despairing. In other words, this activity demonstrates that one of the best things we can do to help others is to seek out and notice what’s good. And in the next activity, we seek to share that goodness with others:
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Spreading Goodness
ACTIVITY
A meditation spreading kindness and goodwill to ourselves, our loved ones, and even to our enemies REFLECTIVE COLLABORATION COURAGE COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To cultivate compassion, goodwill, and kindness for people, including those who are different from us
Overview Facilitation
TIME
15 minutes for the meditation; 10 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because it is important to provide practical, scientific-based exercises for overcoming hatred, bullying, intolerance, and antagonism
All the cultures and spiritual traditions of the world place a high value on compassion. This activity has been proven in numerous scientific studies to generate that state. Have everyone close their eyes. You can say the following phrases (or similar ones that resonate better with you), and have people in the room silently repeat them in their minds: May I be happy. May I be free of pain and suffering. May I be at peace. May I be full of love. Allow people to repeat these phrases to themselves for several minutes. Then you can ask people to direct these same phrases to someone that they love. It could be a family member, a friend, or even a pet! They should picture this person in their mind, and repeat in their mind such phrases as the following: May you be happy. May you be free of pain and suffering. May you be at peace. May you be full of love.” You can continue to do this for people whom you like, and then even for neutral people – people you usually don’t notice much, such as the people doing the essential but often invisible work of our society.
Advanced Version + Debrief
You can also have people do this for people they actively dislike. This might seem really strange. Why would you wish happiness for people whom you hate? Don’t they deserve bad things to happen to them? Especially if they have mistreated you, been unkind, and spread malicious gossip about you, wouldn’t it be natural to wish them ill? There are a couple of important responses to this:
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Spreading Goodness
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Advanced Version + Debrief
The first is that holding on to hatred won’t solve anything. If you have feelings of animosity, anger, and resentment towards other people, it certainly won’t make you feel better. The Buddha said that holding on to anger was like holding a hot coal, which you intend to throw at someone else. You don’t know if you will be able to hurt the other person, but you know that you will certainly get burned, as long as you keep holding on to the anger. In other words, it’s liberating for you to let go of negative emotions. As we saw in the previous activity (and in the Forgiveness activities earlier in the Manual), focusing on negative things is only going to make you feel miserable. If you care about your own happiness, then it’s valuable to do this exercise. The second reason why it makes sense to wish good things for people you dislike is more surprising. It’s about developing empathy and understanding for others’ situations. It’s unlikely that your enemies and adversaries think of themselves as evil people. In fact, they surely think that they are justified in everything they have said and done. (They probably even think that you are the irrational, evil person who is in the wrong!) And if we are to look deeper, it’s very likely that this other person is probably struggling with his or her life. He might even be deeply unhappy. It’s likely that the actions that he has taken towards you – which you consider to be unfair, unjust, and unkind – probably came from a place of pain. (Think about it: If someone were totally happy with his life, would he see the need to demean, abuse, or mistreat another person? It’s unlikely! People who lash out at others are usually people who are suffering and struggling themselves.) As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
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COLLABORATION
Teamwork Fostering collaboration by serving other people, to help them meet their full potential
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For people who plan to work for
dreams. Probably the most serious
a living, almost every job is going
indictment of the system is that the
to require getting along well with
vast majority of youths ― some 70
others. Teamwork is one of the
to 80 percent ― drop out of sports
most important qualities that all of
shortly after middle school. For many,
us need to develop. Yet it is rarely
sports become too competitive and
taught in any systematic, scientific
selective. In short, they stop being
way.
fun.
When young people participate in sports, we expect that they will learn the value of teamwork. Unfortunately this is not always the case. As New York Times journalist David Bornstein writes: [Y]outh sports has come to emulate the win-at-all-costs ethos of professional sports…. [O]ver the
Thus the importance of teamwork is lost. No wonder that people don’t learn how to play well with others. And it shows up after school is over and people enter the “real world.” Conflicts in the workplace are the number one cause of dissatisfaction on the job.
past two decades, researchers have
Therefore we offer a few activities to
found that poor sportsmanship and
begin to build teamwork:
acts of aggression have become common in youth sports settings. Cheating has also become more accepted. Coaches give their stars the most play. Parents and fans boo opponents or harangue officials (mimicking professional events). They put pressure on children to perform well, with hopes for scholarships or fulfilling their own childhood
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Rock Paper Scissors
ACTIVITY
Everyone engages in the classic “rock paper scissors” activity, yet, even when they lose, they join up with the team of the people who defeated them ENERGIZER COLLABORATION COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
GROUP SIZE
Beginner
Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To transform a zero-sum activity where there are winners and losers into an activity where everyone can work together towards a common goal
TIME
5 minutes for the instructions; 5 minutes for the activity
MATERIALS None
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many people are stuck in a winner-take-all adversarial paradigm, one which leaves most people unhappy
Overview
This is a simple and fun activity. In our experience, it works well with adults as well as with younger people. If the energy is low in a room, this is a way to change the dynamics. And it’s also a great way to build a sense of camaraderie and teamwork. Everybody works together.
Facilitation
Most everyone knows the game of “rock paper scissors.” Two people face off. On the count of three, they must present their hand in one of three ways: Rock (hand in a fist) Paper (hand flat) Scissors (two fingers out) In this traditional game, scissors will beat paper (because, of course, scissors can cut up paper.) On the other hand, rock will beat scissors (because it can crush them.) And for some strange reason that makes no intuitive sense, paper is more powerful than scissors. (We don’t need to overanalyze this! That’s just the way the game works.) Thus, the game is easy to play. If the two players play the same hand (e.g., if they both show rock at the same time), then they try again until one of them has triumphed. Typically in rock paper scissors, there can be only one winner. You could have a classroom of 100 people, and keep having people play against each other until you have a single victor and 99 losers. This represents the way that most people think about the world: a dog-eat-dog mentality, where everyone has to defeat each other. But in this teamwork version, everyone gets to be on the winning side. Here’s how it works: Divide the entire room into pairs. Have everyone play “rock paper scissors” against each other. But let them know the secret of this game: The person who loses will join the team of the winner. In other words, they will start cheering loudly for their new teammate to win in the next round.
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Rock Paper Scissors
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
If this sounds confusing, let’s give an example: Let’s say that Arjuna is playing against Betty, and Chris is playing against Dolores. Arjuna defeats Betty, and Dolores beats Chris. Now the two winners will play a new round of Rock Paper Scissors against each other: e.g., Arjuna will face off against Dolores. But this time Betty will be cheering enthusiastically for the person who just defeated her. She might chant, “Arjuna! Arjuna! Arjuna!” Meanwhile, Chris will also be chanting and cheering wildly, but on the side of Dolores. If Dolores triumphs, then she will move to the next round against whoever is winning on the other side of the classroom. Now Arjuna, Betty, and Chris are all chanting for Dolores and cheering her on. This keeps going until there are only two players left in the room, facing off against each other. At this point, the din in the classroom is epic. Half of the people in the room will be cheering on their teammate, while the other half will be cheering on their own colleague. Eventually one person will win the game, but everyone will be clapping, hooting, and hollering for them. Everyone leaves happy and energized.
Debrief
You can have a discussion about how it felt for people at the end of the activity. Most people are smiling, laughing, and feeling energized. (This especially works well when you sense that the energy in the room is extremely low, perhaps during a late afternoon session, when many people are sleepy.) You can ask the participants to reflect on how this game differs from the traditional “zero-sum” game, where the losers are relegated to the sidelines, and no longer contribute or participate. In this game, some people inevitably will be on the losing side (and let’s face it, this is a game mostly of luck; there’s very little skill involved in winning this!) But rather than being dismissed, their contributions – their cheering and chanting – are essential for the success of the game.
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Cooperative Musical Chairs
ACTIVITY
Like the children’s game of musical chairs, except everyone wins together LEVEL
Beginner
GROUP SIZE Any size
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
To help students understand that even the most competitive situations can be
Overview
TIME
15 minutes for the activity; 5 minutes for the debrief
MATERIALS
Enough chairs for everyone; these chairs must be removable. (In other words, you can’t do this in a lecture style classroom with the chairs bolted down!) Also, you will need a music player.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because many students instinctively think in “us versus them” terms; psychology shows that this division of the world into in-groups and out-groups comes very easily to humans. Yet it can also be destructive. And fortunately there are ways to overcome it, as demonstrated in this simple game.
This is another game that turns the typical competitive game on its head. Rather than having a zerosum mentality where one person wins at the expense of everyone else, here everyone has to work together to succeed at a challenge. Important note: Because of the nature of the game, which involves physical contact with others, you can allow people to opt out. Alternatively you could divide it into separate sessions of men and women, especially in cultures where it would be taboo for men and women to have physical contact.
Facilitation
In traditional musical chairs, people walk around a group of chairs while music plays. There are always fewer chairs than there are people. So for example, if there are 25 people in the room, you begin with 24 chairs. When the music stops, everyone has to rush to sit in a chair. Obviously one person will be left out. That person then is the loser, and leaves the game. In the next round, one more chair is taken out of the circle. Now 24 people are playing for 23 seats…. The game continues like this until there are just 2 people left, vying for one seat. Again, this represents a less-than-zero sum mentality. At the end of the game, there is 1 winner and 24 losers. Many people justify this game by saying that it reflects the real world: that only a few people can succeed, while most will fail. Yet there is another way – a far more transformative way, where everyone can work together to win. In cooperative musical chairs, chairs keep disappearing, but nobody ever is thrown out of the game. Somehow they have to figure out a way to get everybody sharing the remaining chairs. For example, in the first round, 25 people have to share 24 seats. That’s pretty easy. 23 people will probably have their own seats, and two people will share the last seat. But in each round, another chair is taken away. Soon 25 people are sitting on 23 seats, and then 22, and then 21… By the end, the participants have to figure out a way to get all of them on one seat!
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Cooperative Musical Chairs (Continued) Debrief
ACTIVITY
Similar to the cooperative “rock paper scissors” game above, this requires teamwork to figure out how to get all the people in the room onto one chair. Ask people how it felt when they were not trying to defeat each other, but instead when they were trying to succeed. You might ask whether this is realistic in today’s world. How might people apply these lessons to their own lives? How could they take adversarial situations and transform them into situations where everyone is on the same side?
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Iron Chef
ACTIVITY
Teams compete to cook the best meal with a limited number of ingredients ENERGIZER COLLABORATION COMMUNITY BUILDER
LEVEL
Beginner
GROUP SIZE
Ideally 15 to 25 (4 to 5 people per cooking team)
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
TIME
45 to 60 minutes
To help students develop even greater teamwork under pressures of time and scarce resources
Overview
Facilitation
MATERIALS
For this one, you need to be in a large enough space with cooking facilities for multiple teams. In other words, this will need to be done outside a classroom. But if you can get access to a large enough kitchen facility, this is definitely worthwhile – an extremely memorable and powerful experience. You also need lots of food – preferably exotic foods, which many students might not have tasted or even seen.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Because teamwork does not just come out of “trust falls” and Ropes courses; having people simulate conditions of stress (even in a fun atmosphere) teaches skills that are more practical for real-world situations
This activity involves a lot of time and resources to put together, but it’s also one of the most successful activities we ever lead. People love it; there’s a sense of great energy, excitement, laughter, and - most importantly – teamwork.
Ask people if they have ever seen the show “Iron Chef.” There’s a good chance that many of them will have seen it before. The idea of this activity is similar: People are going to work in teams to create an innovative meal with limited ingredients. Step 1: Divide everyone randomly into teams of four people each. Have each team come up with a name for themselves. (This may seem strange, but psychological research shows that this makes people have a sense of group identity and loyalty to their team.) Step 2: Give everyone the same ingredients, as well as cooking utensils. The more strange the ingredients you can find at the market, the better. For example, we often go to small, local markets to find vegetables and fruits that are uncommon in big supermarket chains. Here’s an important point: You won’t give them many ingredients that they might think are necessary to make a great meal: e.g., sugar, milk, eggs, spices, etc. They are going to have competitions to try to win those ingredients. Step 3: Tell the teams that they have only 30 minutes to cook up a great meal. They will be judged on three criteria: Creativity, Presentation, and (of course) Taste. They will immediately start cooking up their meals. While they do so, it’s a good idea to play music that is energizing and dramatic in the background. We often use a playlist of songs like “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor and similar songs. Step 4: After 10 minutes, stop the action. Make a dramatic announcement that there is going to be a competition to win a certain ingredient that you have withheld until now. Only the winners of the competition can earn the extra ingredient.
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Iron Chef
ACTIVITY
(Continued) Facilitation
There are many possibilities for competitions. In the past, we have used the following: •
A dance competition (similar to another game show, Dancing with the Stars)
•
A funny quiz (Whichever team gets the question right wins the prize; if more than one team succeeds, then multiple teams can win the extra ingredient.)
•
An idea for a slogan – This tests the creativity of the participants. For example, we did this Iron Chef competition using a product called Chirps – flour made out of crickets. (Some people may find it alarming to eat food made out of insects. But it turns out that this product is high in protein, is good for the environment, and happens to taste really good to most people!) All of the student teams had to come up with a marketing campaign to sell their fellow students on the idea of eating insects.
When judging these competitions, you can have the judges hold up their scores on a scale of 1 to 10, similar to in Olympics competitions. The team with the highest score wins the challenge. Step 5: Let the groups go back to cooking. Now one of the groups will have more ingredients to make an even better meal. If you so choose, you can stop the action one or two more times for additional challenges. Typically, we like to do three challenges, so that multiple groups have the chance to win ingredients. We do the challenges every 5 to 10 minutes. Step 6: After the final challenge, let people know that they only have 5 minutes to finish cooking, and setting up a plate for the judges to evaluate in terms of creativity, presentation, and test. At this point, we usually play, “The Final Countdown,” a song from the 1980s by the rock group Europe. It’s familiar to most people, and we blast it in the frantic final minutes when all the teams are urgently trying to get their masterpieces ready for the judges. Step 7: After calling time, the judges get to try each of the dishes. They will secretly vote on each category on a 1 to 10 scale. (In other words, a perfect score would be 30 if the teams made something that was super creative, was beautifully presented, and was delicious.) At the end, the judges announce the top 3 winners. It’s up to you as to whether you want to give out prizes.
Debrief
This activity is great for talking about things like teamwork. Was every member of the team involved? What did people do if they didn’t feel like they had any cooking talent? How did people solve problems with limited resources – limited time and limited ingredients? How did they exercise leadership? How did they get creative when they didn’t even know what some of the ingredients might be? Hopefully people enjoyed this activity, and saw just how powerful teamwork can be.
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This manual is still a work in progress. There is much that is missing, but this is just a first prototype. (See skill 6 on problem solving, in the discussion under the Marshmallow Challenge.)
Conclusion
Indeed, we recognize that we have probably
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made countless mistakes in putting together the initial draft of this work. (We celebrate this by announcing proudly: “We have failed!” – See Skill 3 on Resilience under the “Celebrating Failure” exercise.)
Overall, these are just a few of the activities for developing the core skills for success. We will be continuously adding to this manual in upcoming days, weeks, and months….
Bonus Teacher’s Manual
The 9 Essential Skills Courage Time Optimization
Having the courage to act according to your highest values
Strong Mindsets
Having the courage to think like an entrepreneur: acting boldly, taking risks, and having a sense of self-efficacy
Resilience
Having the courage to bounce back from failure, loss, and adversity
Creativity Innovation
Using creativity to create something useful and important
Thank you Thanks for being a reader of this initial draft. We hope that it has been useful to you. As we invited you to do at the beginning of the manual, we once again invite you to write to us with feedback, suggestions, improvements, additional ideas, and extra activities that have worked (or not worked) for you. Please feel free to reach out to us at info@ transformativeaction.org. With teamwork (and with the growth mindset – see Skill 2), we can continue to make this better and better.
Transformative Communication
Using creativity to communicate in a way that engages and wins people over
Problem-Solving
Using creativity to overcome the challenges that face us
Collaboration Empathy
Fostering collaboration by understanding others’ needs and perspectives
Prosocial Behaviors
Fostering collaboration by serving other people, to help them meet their full potential
Teamwork
Fostering collaboration through working with others towards a better vision of the world
Credits Written by Scott Sherman Designed by Kaveh Sadeghian
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