After reading The Power of Moments by Chip Heath & Dan Heath earlier this year, I have been looking for opportunities to create powerful moments within the teams I work with.
One such opportunity occurred this week.
Our Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (TLI) team meets formally once a month to connect. Although we like to have fun mixing things up at each meeting – using different sharing protocols – our routine is pretty consistent with each member sharing their current work projects with the group.
As I began preparing for our meeting I was struck by how much each team member has been giving of themselves lately. There’s a lot going on in our small district at the moment and we’ve all been going a million miles an hour in our support roles.
It was the perfect moment for a “plot twist” – striking the normal routine of sharing and creating what the Heath brothers refer to as a moment of “Elevation.”
Hmmmm…what could we do that would “rise above the routine” and “make us feel engaged, joyful, surprised, motivated?”
I came up with this simple idea: Let’s take time to be creative and encourage one another!
I set the room up with blank paper and several different types of drawing materials. Fun music was playing as the TLI team arrived. This change of scenery already had everyone intrigued. Some were excited as they entered the space and others were skeptical but this plot twist caught their attention immediately!
After a bit of introduction and acknowledgement of the hard work being done, each team member drew a name out of a box. The task was to create a picture of the team member whose name was drawn using any materials of our choosing. A time limit of five minutes was given and at the end of our creation time the next task was to write a word or phrase to describe the teammate drawn. We then passed the posters around the table – each adding our own word or phrase to describe each of our teammates.
Our final step was to share our original drawing and read the wonderful encouragement left to our team member.
We laughed, cheered, and literally clapped after each poster was shared. Within a thirty minute period our bodies had relaxed, encouragement was given & received, and a new sense of energy filled the room.
A powerful moment was made. Can’t wait to build the next one!
So, I've been thinking... 