Described below is a quick and easy exercise that you can use
- As an introductory firelighter to wake people up, get them talking, create connections
- As an energiser whenever group energy seems to be flagging
- As an engaging stimulus to a particular conversation you want a group to have about something
- As a specific coaching intervention
The exercise uses our coaching cubes, or dice. For larger groups you'll need more than one box.
Directions to run a general All purpose Exercise: Step by step
- Let everyone know how long you want the exercise to last. This can be from 10 mins onwards.
- Mix up your boxes of cubes into a bag and ask everyone to pick one out.
Once every one has a cube...
- Ask people to pair up with someone with a different colour cube
- Ask each person to identify something they would like to think about, with their companion. To identify a topic they want to explore
- Person A briefly introduces their topic
- Person B rolls their dice and asks the question that it lands (encourage them to read it aloud, not just hand the dice over).
- They can then engage with the question in the context of person A’s topic
- If the question that came up doesn’t resonate they can roll again, or they can look at all of the questions on their dice and either person can pick one to kick off the conversation. Or they can roll the other person’s dice!
- Then they switch roles
- They can keep going, engaging with different questions, until time is called.
Variations
For Coaching
If you specifically want to use this exercise when you are developing coaching skills, then I would suggest that the person rolling the dice be clearly the coach. This means that once they have roled the dice and asked the question, they encourage the coachee to explore the question, remaining themselves in a clear coaching role.
For a specific workshop topic
If your workshop is focused on a particular topic, e.g. EDI working, leadership, quality improvement, performance management etc., then you might want to name the topic or question you wish the pairs to address yourself. They can then use the cube questions to kickstart their conversation, or to throw an unusual angle on the topic
For an introductory firelighter
While the most appropriate coaching cube for this exercise is probably the green one, which is focused on identifying good things happening for people, they can all be used although some questions might need to be contextualised so, ‘What is your secret dream about this?’ might become, ‘What is your secret dream (about our topic today)?’
For a group discussion
You could ask each group to pick one (or more) cube(s) from your selection and ask them to work with those questions
Or
You could pick on yourself and read it out for the groups to discuss
I’m sure you will find many other ways to use these cubes to create energy and stimulating conversation in your workshops