The Bentley User Experience Center recently planned and facilitated a two-day visioning and strategy workshop for a client team. The participants were C-suite team leaders. With fourteen client participants and four facilitators in the room, our goal was to keep discussions robust, focused, and creative. Activities needed to empower each team lead to contribute meaningfully to a unified strategy the group would define over sixteen hours of collaboration. Building consensus and inspiring out of the box thinking were key to success. We planned a variety of individual, small-group, and large group activities. To augment these activities and shake things up a little we used a set of physical props placed within easy reach.

Having these props on the collaboration table provided visual interest, sparked curiosity, and provided a low-key creativity boost to participants. The props inspired some laughter when invoked, and ultimately empowered individuals to interject and interact more freely.

Why Use Props?

Workshop attendees might be quiet or overly expressive, reluctant or too comfortable to interrupt, too eager to digress, too eager to rush forward, or otherwise feel at odds with – or thrilled with – the direction a given discussion is taking. We hypothesized that a set of props, each with a specific function, might help the group navigate individual inhibitions and impulses and enable the team to stay productive, focused, creative, and build consensus. We were on to something.

How We Used the Props

When participants arrived, they saw the props distributed randomly down the center of the collaboration table. Initially there were two yellow “penalty” flags, two mini life preservers, one magic wand, and a “Dive” flag. Later, as the evolving conversation warranted, we added a small toy person wearing a mining helmet, and some metal coins in reserve nearby. When participants entered the room, they immediately noticed the props, many smiled and commented that they were intrigued.

During orientation we pointed out the props and described their use as follows: We invited participants to use any prop at any time they deemed appropriate. Each prop had an intended function, but participants were free to use them differently. Using a prop was as simple as picking one up, pointing to it, or mentioning it out loud to the group. We referred to this as “invoking” a prop. The props’ functions were:

• “Penalty” Flags: Picking up, pointing to, tossing, or otherwise invoking a “flag on the play” pauses conversation, indicates some level of disagreement with the current discussion, or indicates a request for additional clarification
• Magic Wand:  The magic wand ends a digressive discussion (rabbit hole) and accelerates the discussion. For example, “Imagine this problem is magically solved. What would we do next?
• Dive Flag: The Dive Flag indicates either that the group is spending too much time on a given topic, or that a seemingly digressive “deep dive” on this topic is warranted.
• Life Preserver: Invoking the life preserver automatically “saves” an idea that is in the process of being discarded. For example, rescuing a brainstormed idea that feels important to a subset of the group for reasons they may need more time to articulate.
• Miner Figure: Invoking the miner indicated that a topic warrants further study, needs an outside team (consultant), or an external process to get more data to support decision making. Invoking the Miner means: “This topic needs further research outside of this discussion.”
• Coins: If the group uses the props too frequently or unproductively, facilitators could impose a “cost” for their use. Each participant could be given four coins to spend on props. Using a prop would then cost one coin, making the decision to use a prop dearer. Adding coins to the mix can also be part of focusing an overall discussion, say, on day 2 of a two-day workshop.
• Other Toys (not pictured): Our facilitators had a bag of random toy figures and items (shopping cart, mini laptop, Lego minifigures, etc.) that we could quickly add to the collaboration table to physically represent a topic, entity, or company division as the discussion warranted. This provided a visual shorthand for frequently raised concepts. Participants could simply point to a figure, pair it up with others, or otherwise use its physicality to represent an aspect of the discussion.

Did it Work?

Yes! Participants indicated that they found the props intriguing, fun to handle, and most importantly, they helped manage the discussion by defusing potentially awkward situations that would otherwise be challenging or impossible to address.

The magic wand was the most popular and frequently used prop. Participants smiled and laughed when waving the magic wand but used it to serious purpose and good effect to “free” the group from overly long or unproductive digressions. One participant stated that they “loved their little guy” (the Miner figure) and complained when it was temporarily moved and out of sight. The Penalty Flags were thrown (gently) a handful of times and appropriately paused the discussion in progress so that the group could clarify key points or reach consensus.

Overall, the props gave individuals a chance to pause, move the group past a sticking point, to give themselves time to think, to physically represent otherwise esoteric concepts, and to build consensus by letting participants present reactions without specific justification.

These props are by no means the only ones facilitators might use, but because each represented a specific way to counter a commonly encountered challenge to achieving group consensus, the props proved to be a solid set of interaction aids. These props were easily sourced from online retailers at very low cost, but different props could certainly be used to good effect.

What prop might you use to solve a common workshop problem? Which problem?