A tool in balance coaching is the being and doing brainstorm. You brainstorm in two lists:
- How am I being?
- What am I doing?
The combination of the two feeds each other. E.g. you might say I’m “being proactive”, and then in doing you could list some ways to be proactive (e.g. “make a todo list at the start of each day and review it throughout”.).
I experimented with this in a group context last week and it worked pretty well. It went as follows.
Step 1: Define the end state. This needs to be something everyone can connect with. In this case, we saw great momentum on another platform in the meeting immediately before, so that was our starting point – where this team was also like that.
Step 2: Explain the concepts, with examples. People need to know what we’re doing.
Step 3: Individual brainstorm. Give people time to form their own ideas.
Step 4: Group brainstorm. Start working through everyone’s ideas and building on them. Remember there are no bad ideas in a brainstorming session! Try saying, “what I love about that idea is…” and building on it.
Step 5: Theme. Organize things into groups with 1-2 being tags, and a list of associated doings.
Step 6: Choose 1-2 themes. We each picked our top three and explained why, then chose the two most popular.
Step 7…8…9…: Experiment! Define some team experiments, try things, and iterate.