JJ Rogers’ Approach to Infusing Joy and Surprise into Facilitation at the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit
At the 2025 Facilitation Lab Summit, JJ Rogers presented an exciting session titled Radical Acts of Delight, where he shared innovative ways to bring joy and surprise into every facilitated session. As a product designer and UX expert, JJ’s approach blends design thinking with facilitation, encouraging facilitators to create delightful moments that not only engage but also inspire participants.
JJ’s journey into delight began in the world of user experience (UX) design. In UX, designers aim to delight users by exceeding expectations and reducing friction in digital products. But JJ’s understanding of delight took a deeper turn when he learned from his UX research colleagues that delight isn’t just about ease—it’s about two key emotions: joy and surprise. As JJ explained, delight is a blend of these emotions, each creating a memorable and impactful experience.
Beyond product design, JJ found this concept of delight in the field of facilitation. Drawing inspiration from the book Play by Stuart Brown, he discovered that delight could be defined as the anticipation of surprise, leading to a joyful discovery. The key, according to JJ, is to build that feeling of anticipation, creating the perfect environment for surprise to unfold. This surprise, in turn, leads to joy—the ultimate form of delight.
During his session, JJ introduced three Radical Acts of Delight that facilitators can easily apply to their own sessions to create engaging, enjoyable experiences for participants. These acts are not just energizers or icebreakers—they are methods that can be integrated into the core of any facilitated session to spark creativity and foster deeper engagement. JJ’s acts are designed to help facilitators overcome resistance to activities that may seem too lighthearted or “fluffy” for professional settings.
Here are the three Radical Acts of Delight that JJ shared:
Metaphor Cards: Metaphor cards were used to help participants look at their facilitation challenges through a new lens. JJ provided a deck of random metaphor cards, each one representing a different concept, and participants were asked to relate their facilitation challenge to a metaphor. For example, how could a beehive or a sandcastle relate to the challenge they were working through? This creative thinking exercise forced participants to make lateral connections, uncovering insights they may not have thought of otherwise. The drawing element came back here, as participants were encouraged to sketch their metaphor-driven ideas.
Drawing to Communicate: In many sessions, facilitators ask participants for written or verbal input. JJ’s first act of delight encourages using drawing as a tool to get participants to think creatively and express ideas differently. Participants were asked to use a phone app to draw prompts such as a pig, a highlight from the previous day, or a facilitation challenge they were facing. The goal wasn’t to create art but to engage the creative side of the brain and communicate ideas in new ways. This exercise not only activated joy and surprise, but it also deepened the level of conversation and enriched the ideas shared.
The Twist: This act builds on the element of surprise. JJ encouraged participants to design the “world’s worst meeting” by coming up with ridiculous or counterproductive ideas. This inverted thinking exercise prompted participants to step out of their usual patterns and think about a facilitation challenge in an entirely different way. This unexpected approach—combined with the fun of imagining the worst—helped participants unlock fresh insights and ideas.
Through these radical acts, JJ demonstrated how delight, joy, and surprise could not only engage participants but also create a more impactful and memorable facilitation experience. By blending creativity and humor with facilitation techniques, JJ’s methods encourage facilitators to step outside their comfort zones and embrace new ways of thinking.
JJ’s session was a refreshing reminder that facilitation doesn’t have to be all serious and structured. Sometimes, the most powerful moments of connection come from adding a little delight into the mix. By incorporating joy and surprise into your sessions, you can transform the way participants engage, collaborate, and create.
Watch the full video below:
Transcript of JJ’s Session:
Speaker 1:
Radical acts of delight. Working title was The Random Acts. Changed it a little bit.
For the past 10 years, I’ve been on a mission to bring more delight to my facilitated sessions, and today I’m excited to share some of those methods with you. So, that you can learn a little bit about it too.
So, as Erik mentioned, I started as a product designer. Well, I’m still a product designer. I work in user experience design, or UX for short, where we’re designing products and services, and mainly digital user interfaces.
And within the field of user experience, we have this notion, this concept. It’s everywhere. I cannot escape it. It’s been with me for years. It’s all about delighting the user.
It follows me everywhere, and if you asked me a few years ago how I would define this, I might make up some answer like, “It’s about understanding the user’s needs and trying to exceed their expectations,” or maybe, “It’s about removing the friction. So, it’s a really easy experience.”
But I’ve since learned a much cooler definition for delight. And I got this definition from working with some of my colleagues in user experience. So, within user experience design, we have … Some companies, if they have the budget and the technology, they have specialists that work in research. These user experience researchers focus on understanding the humans, understanding their needs, their wants, their fears, frustrations, and what’s really cool is they can study their emotions, and try and learn what’s going on in their heads, and using technology to read their emotional state as they’re using our products and services. It’s pretty cool.
There we go. What is delight? Now if you asked one of my colleagues, my user experience research specialists how they would define delight, here’s what they might say, “Delight is not a singular emotion. Delight is two emotions. Delight is joy coupled with surprise.”
Surprise and joy, that is what makes delight. And I love this definition. I love this definition, because maybe as a product designer, or someone who is always trying to solve challenges, this feels actionable. Joy on its own, sure, we can have fun, but surprise me with it? That feels like a challenge.
I recently ran into this definition of delight outside of the world of product design, and I was really excited, because it was in an area that’s more closely related to facilitation, what we do.
I was reading the book … Well, I was skimming the book, I read a portion of this book, I don’t know if anyone’s heard of this book Play by Stuart Brown. Okay. I’m seeing some nods.
So, in this book Stuart Brown talks about the stages that humans go through in the state of play. So, when we’re in a state of play, we go through these specific stages. And I was really interested in the final stage, the final stage in our brains is the pleasure state. So, that’s where the joy comes from.
Cool. But then right before the state of joy, right before that pleasure state, there is a key moment, and that key moment that he talks about is anticipation.
Anticipation. And I actually have the definition. He describes it as waiting with expectation, wondering what will happen, a little anxiety, slight uncertainty. Now that, there’s a limit. Right? That cannot be so great.
But that is what leads to surprise, that unexpected discovery, or idea, the shifted perspective, and then the joy that we find in delight. So, that anticipation leading to the surprise, leading to the joy. There it is, the definition right here within the state of play.
So, let’s play all the time. Right? No. We have work to do. We’ve got to solve that problem, work with that person. How many of you have been told you have to innovate?
When I think about the state of play, especially, in the workplace, in a professional environment, it takes me back to one of my earliest core facilitator trauma memories.
I was working for a design agency in Austin. We were fun and funky. And we always insisted on having our product, or our client kickoffs in person. We always wanted to do these discovery workshops in person. Either we’d fly to the client, or the client would fly to us. It was a really exciting time.
Most of the project would be done remotely, or distributed, but those first few days together is where we would lay those bricks of trust early. And in this particular instance, the client was flying in from California. It happened to be a Saturday, which is very strange. We never worked on weekends, but that was the only time we could really make it happen.
So, we’re all there ready for this day and a half, two day work of discovery and learning together, and planning out this project. We were gathered around a conference table like this. And the project manager stands up, “All right. We’re going to do the icebreaker.” Without missing a beat, the client stands up, “I didn’t fly halfway across the country on a weekend to sit here and play games.” Tension.
Well, I look over and some people are slowly looking down, but peeking through curious, “What’s going to happen? How is this going to be resolved?” I would love to tell you that we leaned into that moment. We folded. “Oh, yeah. We don’t need to do that icebreaker. No. No. We’re fine. We’ll just move on with the agenda.”
Not only that, on the first break, I get with my colleagues, and we start going through the agenda, “Take out that. That’s a little too fluffy. Ah, that’s extra. Team building? No. Connections-focused, joy-inducing fun?” Crossing it all off. It was a sad day.
Silver lining, we did not have a long-term relationship with that client. But I tell that story not because it’s … Well, it is … I’m over it, clearly. I tell that story … It’s a very violent reaction to an icebreaker. It sticks with you.
But because the resistance is still there. I still run into that resistance. Maybe not in the same form. It just comes in slightly different language. Like, maybe, “How do we be more efficient? How do we be more on task?” And maybe you’ve run into some of this too, “How do you move faster?”
And so, that is why I’ve designed my radical acts of delight to be used with any facilitated session. So, these are not simply designed to be relegated to a warmup, or an energizer, which are fun. Don’t get me wrong.
These are things that you can infuse into your core purpose, into whatever your go-to method is. When I started developing this idea, I had a list of 10, or 12. And I called them my hacks for delight. Right? Like, “Oh, yeah. This little hack here. You can just apply that in there. It’ll be great.”
What we’re going to do, because we’re going to practice today, is I’m going to show you three. And we’ll practice those three acts of delight that you can adapt to any of your sessions. Are you ready for the first of three acts?
Okay. All right. Our first act is going to be drawing. So, Sarah can participate too over there. She’s already doing that hard work.
Okay. So many of our days are filled with meetings and maybe Slack messages, or I think Microsoft Teams some people use, and while even your sessions, I’m sure the number of times you ask participants to provide input, it’s either written, or it’s verbal.
So, what we’re going to do today is practice drawing. We don’t just draw to create art. It’s about communicating differently, waking up your brain, using a different part of your brain for the creative thinking side.
And so, that is what we’ll practice. All right. So, I would like everyone to take out your phones. Did you know you’re going to draw not by using pens and Post-Its, but your phones?
Now I will say, if for some reason, we do run into technical difficulties, or this app is slow to load … And I did test it out, it does take a little time to load, by the way, so, give it some time. If you don’t have your phone with you today, you can still participate in this session. You can simply use the Post-Its and the markers at your tables in front of you, and you will still get all of the delight of drawing.
Is it loading? Okay. Fantastic. I see many of you have scanned it already.
So, you’ll see the prompt. It opens in the browser. Your first prompt is to draw a pig, and you will have about a one and a half minute to do that. I’ll get my timer going.
Okay. You’re putting the finishing touches on your pig. And we’re going to move onto prompt number two. So, you can simply hit done in your apps. You’re going to draw your top highlight from yesterday. Ooh. This one’s a little more abstract. How are you going to represent that?
All right. We are going to do one more drawing prompt, and then we’ll talk about it. You thought the last one was hard? You have 90 seconds, draw a facilitation challenge that you are looking to overcome.
All right. Wrap up those drawings. Time is up. Time is up. Let’s look through some of these.
So, this prompt is … We’re not going to really go into that. We’re going to explore it later. But I wanted to prime your brains to start thinking about it. That’s the only reason it’s in there.
So, I’m looking at some of your drawings. Wow. I see a lot of detail, some people. Look at this. We’ve got a champion. Someone’s celebrating themselves. Oh. I think I see a safety net.
We’ve got a cluster of Post-Its, but look at the detail and the color, and the lines. They’re used.
Oh, what else? Someone went to happy hour without us all. Okay. Let’s look at the piggies, because that’s really what I’m focused on here. You know my grandfather owned the pig farm. It gave me special powers. I can interpret the meaning of your pig. The way in which you drew your pig tells me how others see you, and how you see yourself.
So, let’s see, if the pig is drawn towards the top of the screen … That one is in the middle. If the pig is drawn towards the top of the screen … If it’s drawn towards the top of the screen, you are perceived as a positive and optimistic person by others.
Now if it’s drawn towards the middle like this, you have good space on the top and the bottom, you are perceived as a realist.
If it’s drawn towards the bottom of the screen, you may have a tendency to behave negatively under pressure. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Okay. Now the direction of your pig is very important as well. If your pig is facing left, you believe in tradition, are friendly, and remember dates and birthdays.
If it’s facing to the right, you are innovative and active, but you have a poor memory for dates and birthdays. And, of course, if it’s just facing towards the center, well, you are a direct person, and enjoy stirring the pot. How am I doing so far?
Legs are very important as well. If you have shown four legs, as quite a few of you have actually, you are secure. You stick to your beliefs, and you’ve been told, at least, once in life that you are stubborn. And that would be me.
And if you haven’t shown all four legs, so, anything less than four legs, you are living through a period of major change.
The ears are also very important. The larger the ears, the better listener you are.
And last but not least, the length of the pig’s tail correlates to the quality of your personal relationships. Like I said, it’s a family trait. Hope I got all of you.
Okay. Let’s see if I can do this. All right. We’re back in action. Can you take that? Thank you.
The reason I chose this app, and I met with the founder of this app too, is because they’ve done their homework on what drawing brings to the table. This app is designed for conference settings. So, that everyone can contribute. And they’ve done … Remember our UX researcher friends, those that run their quantitative studies and are trying to understand the emotions of people, they’ve used that same technology and they’ve found that using this app, or drawing, or doodling just happens to raise two emotions, your joy and your surprise.
So, right there is the delight. This is a screenshot I took directly from their website. I didn’t doctor it. But when I saw it, I was like, “Yes. That is why I’m going to use drawing as my first radical act of delight.”
Now I will give you a pro tip as well. So, how can you incorporate drawing into your everyday facilitated session? And, especially, for folks that are very uncomfortable, they’re new to drawing, it feels like a very professional workplace setting, how can you make that happen?
A pro tip is to combine what they’re more comfortable with, the short words or phrases, with the little drawing. So, have them contribute both, the short word, or phrase, and the drawing to just elaborate more on whatever they’re contributing to the conversation.
Now as a designer, yes, we do drawing all the time. My team draws prototypes, storyboarding, very purposeful drawing to visualize something, but this is them just contributing ideas to the meeting, just contributing to the conversation in a different way using Post-Its and drawing rather than just verbalizing.
Now depending on the contributor, you get all kinds, but at the top right there where you’re seeing the white finger there, she’s describing breaking up work into smaller pieces, and how she would like that work to flow, and be categorized in different ways.
So, you can see that there’s a lot more rich detail that now we can hone in on, ask questions about, and bring into the conversation.
Or my other colleague here with the pink Post-Its here contributed, “Remove logistical red tape.” What does that mean? So, he’s drawn, “Oh, these are specific tools that are impeding me, and there’s actually specific people that are blocking me,” that he considers logistical red tape.
So, there’s more richness to the conversation. And sometimes when you do compare an idea that’s communicated verbally, especially, in workplaces where the jargon flows, some ideas can just fall flat and contributing by drawing just gives it that much more richness and detail to go on.
All right. Without further ado, we are going to move onto our radical act two. This one’s perfect for anticipation, or building anticipation, and then a little surprise.
Now I trust most everyone is here, or most everyone here is familiar with The Wizard of Oz. If you’re not, it’s the sequel to Wicked. But in this movie, in case anyone just isn’t familiar, there’s a character of Scarecrow, and the scarecrow is pointing in a very particular direction.
Dorothy comes in on the yellow brick road, sees the scarecrow pointing that way, something happens, or some distraction, I don’t know, probably with her dog, looks back up, “Well, that’s funny. Wasn’t he pointing the other way?”
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do with our teams. We’re going to set them up towards our goal, towards our purpose, point everything in this direction, and then go this way.
So, I got this idea when I found myself using certain methods often, and I was really leaning in on these methods, leaning on them to do a lot of work, and I … “Why do I keep gravitating towards these particular methods?”
So, I don’t know how familiar you are with these. If you’re not, Tris, which we practice today, pre-mortem, or crapstorm. What all of these have in common is this idea of inverted thinking. So, you’re going towards the opposite.
I actually changed the activity a little bit today, because it was very similar to Karen’s. But, hopefully, that adaptation is even better. So, yeah. If you’re not familiar with this, Tris is a liberating structure. You’re trying to come up with the worst possible outcome. A pre-mortem, I think it comes from Gamestorming. I used it a lot at my design agency. You’re trying to imagine something died, something failed, why did it fail. So, you’re really exploring that failure before you explore success.
And crapstorm is just, “Let’s get all the bad ideas out on the table. Get the bad ideas out,” and it brings in a little bit of silliness. And I think that’s why I was gravitating towards it, because the lightness that it brings in in the beginning, hopefully, carries over when you do go into the direction you want everyone to go into.
It also forces your participants out of their typical cognitive patterns, and if you have participants where there is a strong fear of criticism, or rejection of their ideas, this is a great one to start with. It’s a safer exercise to get started.
All right. So, we’re going to start, and we’re going to do a little twist. We’re a group of facilitators. What is something we can design? Oh, I know. We can design the world’s best meeting. We’re all here. We have so much experience. Let’s do that together.
Let’s design the world’s best meeting. Let’s design the world’s worst meeting. And we’ll go the other way.
This prompt is a little broad. It’s pretty broad, and as experienced facilitators, I think you can hone in on very specific aspects of, “What makes a meeting poor? What makes facilitation poor?” As we already did in the last session.
So, I’ve pulled out some of the nuggets that maybe I’ve heard in the last activity that we did with Karen, and we’re going to explore those in a solo activity to start with.
Okay. So, everyone get your Post-Its and markers ready. I’m going to do the first one with you. I’m going to show you a series of pre-written prompts like what you see above me. And you’re going to answer them. These are inspired by Karen’s session.
Now I already did the twist part. So, you don’t have to twist these. You’re simply going to answer the prompts. Using markers and Post-Its as a solo activity, I’d like you to generate ideas, as many ideas as possible for each prompt, writing one idea per Post-It.
Now, like I said, I’ll do this first one with you. How might we provide unclear communication, and really create that confusion among our participants?
We could whisper the instructions like the Telephone Game, and go around the table until everyone has the clear instructions. We could get really silly, and give directions using whale noises.
All right. So, you get the idea. We’re going to move fast, we’re going to go through four prompts. You’re going to have two minutes per prompt. Again, one idea per sticky.
Are you ready? And away we go.
All right. Moving onto prompt two, ah, oops. How might you avoid conflict, and difficult conversations altogether?
All right. Onto number three. How might you create a space that encourages silence and non-participation? How can you ensure there is no participation?
Okay. Let’s move onto the last one. Cutting this one a little short. How might you ensure your personal opinions influence the group’s decisions?
Okay. What we’re going to do is some table sharing. So, for your table sharing, I want you to look through your pile of ideas. You have so many stickies in front of you. That is a mountain.
And I want you to pick two. Now I want you to pick two of the most twisted ideas, the Cher-worthy ideas, the most audacious that you feel like contributing to your table.
So, once you have your two Post-Its selected, hold them up in your hands, and that signals to your table that you’re ready to share. When everyone at your table has their two up, then you can go ahead and start sharing. We’re going to have about 10 minutes to share at your tables.
Speaker 2:
Across all four questions, or two-
Speaker 1:
You can pick two across all four questions. Great clarity.
Now we’ll probably have time to share more. Just being honest. But I want, at least, two per person. So, everyone has an opportunity to contribute. And when your table is ready, begin.
All right. How was that? It didn’t take long for the laughter. The indicators of delight were there.
Okay. I’m going to twist the cap on this radical act. I want to ensure you’ve been given the opportunity to practice the actual twisting part of taking something, and then what is the opposite prompt?
And so, what we’re going to do to practice that is do you remember the third drawing prompt that I gave you? The challenge, what facilitation challenge are you looking to overcome in 2025?
So, I would like you to take two Post-Its, just two, lay them side-by-side, and we’re going to write our facilitation challenge for 2025.
So, here’s some examples. It could be really simple. Maybe your meetings aren’t starting on time. You want your Zoom participants more engaged. Or something loftier, creating a safe space for experimentation and learning.
Now to twist it, you can twist it any way you want to, but you’re really trying to find what is the opposite of that goal? So, here is the opposite. You can just usually change one word.
Or you can be a little more specific, if there’s a specific maybe aspect you want to change. So, create a safe space for experimentation becomes demonstrate it’s not okay to make mistakes.
This is your goal. You can do as you wish to twist it, but really trying to find what is the opposite of that?
So, I’ll give you not a lot of time, just two minutes, and I want you to write down your goal, and create a twisted version of your goal.
All right. We’re going to move on from the twist. Thank you for playing that. Actually, before we move on, I do want to say the reason that I love the twist is because, and I think I said this earlier, ultimately, when you do move the group towards the direction you want them to go, we went this way, and this created some lightness, it got a little silly, but, well, one, the conversations are more richer, because you can draw on what they learned when they went that way, but also all that lightness, all that trust that you built among the tables carries over into the next exercise.
All right. Let’s move on to creative connections. Now the two Post-Its you have at your table, the twisted opposite version, I don’t care about that anymore, you can throw that away, crumple it up, move it somewhere else, I want you to focus on your facilitation challenge for 2025 for this next activity.
So, creative connections. I first learned about this, or experienced this, in art school. Or maybe from Bob Ross. I don’t know what came first, but the idea of happy accidents. “Oops. I splattered the paint here,” and, “Oh, it’s really cool.”
Like, you can look at something more objectively, and go, “Oh, yeah. I actually want that now.” Or, in my case, I was more graphic. So, I’d be accidentally aligning graphics, and I’d realize I created something way cooler than I ever planned.
And so, that’s what we’re going to practice today, creative connections. It comes from this concept of lateral thinking. I Googled lateral thinking, I read a lot of descriptions of lateral thinking. It’s a hard concept to understand.
The easiest way that I found explaining this to my team was explaining a person digging. So, if you imagine … And, again, it’s the difference between … So, lateral thinking versus logical thinking is if you imagine someone digging a hole, they’re using their logical brain, and they’re connecting ideas that are very closely connected in their brain. It’s taking the shortest neuropathway. They’re things that already go together and make sense. And they’re digging that hole deeper, and deeper, and deeper.
Now lateral thinking is choosing not to dig deeper. Choosing to dig over here, and see what comes up, and then choosing to dig over here, and see what comes up.
Our brain doesn’t like to do that. It’s illogical. They’re not as closely connected in our brain. So, we have to coax it to do that, to make these connections that don’t typically go together.
And so, one of the ways we’re going to do that is … Oh, let me tell you an example I did with my team. This was fun. We used Tarot connections.
Speaker 3:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
Picking Tarot cards, and, again, this wasn’t just for ideation. This was just a team conversation around team dynamics, and issues that came up. But we used Tarot. There’s a GPT Tarot AI reader.
And you can even input the subject matter you’re talking about, and you get a pretty good reading on the Tarot card you drew, and the subject matter. And we use that as inspiration. It started different conversations. We thought about different areas we maybe never would have taken the conversation down before.
We are going to practice this today. Not with Tarot. Sorry to disappoint. Not with Tarot, or not using GPT AI. Instead, we’re going to use metaphor cards. And I have these at your tables in envelopes. These metaphor cards vary. Some are nouns, are some, like, professional roles, some are actions, all sorts of random metaphors.
And we’re going to help, we’re going to use these metaphors to help solve our challenge, your facilitation challenge that you have in front of you today.
So, you all have your personal facilitation challenge. What you’re going to do is take that challenge, and try and relate it to one of the metaphors, these random metaphors that you’re going to select. And you’re going to allow that.
Each metaphor card does have a little bit of a description. So, if you aren’t familiar with that thing, you can use that to help guide you in understanding what that metaphor card is, or you don’t even have to use it. Maybe you have your own ideas about what taking care of plants means to you.
Not only will we write our idea, we’re going to draw our idea too. We’re going back to drawing. Now the first time I saw this, the first time I was truly stunned actually by using metaphor cards, I was working with a nonprofit, and the CEO, or founder of the nonprofit, she was having trouble with her training program, just a heavy subject matter, post-partum depression, and wanted to just rebuild her training program, knew there was a problem there. So, that was her challenge.
And she drew a metaphor card, and got taking care of plants. And it was really amazing to watch her work, and explain this, but she pulled the metaphor card, and she came up with an idea.
She drew three potted plants, one little potted plant with a sprout, a medium potted plant that just needed some watering, and some maintenance, and then a bigger potted plant that needed pruning, or something.
And her idea was these levels of training. “Oh, well, we’re going to start with this really simple foundation training just like when you’re potting a plant, and you need to add the soil, and prepare the groundwork to get it to grow.” And then you know what? “We need a regular maintenance training. So, that we can bring in all the new information that we’ve learned recently, and really reinforce these ideas.”
And so, that’s, like, just watering a plant weekly. But then every so often, about once a year, we need a big reset. Things change within the organization, so, just like repotting a plant, we’re going to have that big reset training.
And just like that, she just rattled off her new training program inspired by this metaphor. And I was just like, “Who are you? Did you have this idea before?” “No. I just thought of it from this metaphor card.”
So, it’s pretty fascinating. Now not every idea is going to be a winner, and that is the point. So, we’re going to go through some rounds where you’re going to be able to choose different metaphors to help inspire your idea.
All right. Are you ready? So, we’re going to set it up like this. You have your challenge next to you. Now I’d like you to take your metaphor cards, and spread them out into the middle of the table. Like, a goldfish pond. Cards face-down. So, everybody can just choose one. Like, a goldfish pond.
All right. Everyone, choose your first metaphor.
All right. Now with your first metaphor, you’re going to use it to come up with an idea to solve your facilitation challenge. You will write your idea on a Post-It, but you will also draw it.
All right. We’re going to go pretty fast here. You’re going to get two minutes for a prompt. Your first two minutes starts now.
All right, everyone. Pass your card to the left. Pass it to the left.
And your two minutes on this new metaphor starts now.
Okay. Two minutes is up on that idea. For your next one, pass your card to the left.
Okay. Wrapping up this round, we’re going to do one more round of this. For this one, throw your cards back in that fishpond, and go fish. Pick any card you want, any card you want, and this will be your last round.
Okay. Pencils down, drawings down. Let’s debrief a little bit. I’m so interested to learn a little bit about your ideas, and, well, your facilitation challenge first of all, and then how these metaphor cards inspired a creative idea.
Were any of these ideas unexpected? Hopefully. Anybody have any click moments, or ahas?
Speaker 4:
Over here.
Speaker 1:
Yes. If you are compelled to share one idea, raise your hand.
Speaker 5:
First of all, I’d like to say, “Thanks, Skye, I appreciate that.” Putting me on blast over here. I did exclaim in the middle of this, I was like, “Oh, shit.”
I’m a notorious hater of cards. I think they’re weak and lazy. And so, I was coming into this with like, “Man, what is this nonsense?” To be fair, you’ve been the best of the whole thing, by the way, but this exercise. And your stupid-ass cards gave me, like, four ideas that I did not think I could generate.
And also I thought my problem was similar to others, which is facilitation I think is undervalued. It’s, like, where the magic is, but you get paid more for strategy, and reports, and all this. And I saw other people say that.
And so, I was like, “There’s no way this is going to work for that challenge.” And it seemed to have generated some things I didn’t think I could do. So, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:
Awesome. Very cool. Thank you.
Speaker 6:
So, my challenge was … Is this on? Oh, my challenge was pretty generic, full sessions of engaged people. And the different cards helped me break out of the container that I thought sessions needed to be in to think differently about what is the user looking for? Because the cards were all about giving the user more agency over how they interacted with a thing.
And it was a real good flip for me in thinking about just what does a session mean even?
Speaker 1:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Right behind you.
Speaker 7:
The Duolingo app helped me think about actually gamifying my client’s pathway through what I’m offering them. I’m really resistant to structure, and I want to play and be in the creative divergent space. And so, actually gamifying it, like, having a Candy Land-like thing that they move through is something that I’m going to do.
And then I want to mention the alarm clock. Convergence excellence, like, excellence in convergence thinking is something I want to embody this year. And I’m just going to set an alarm halfway through the session as my convergence alarm-
Speaker 1:
[inaudible 00:42:35].
Speaker 7:
… and it’s like, “Hey. It’s time to start whittling down. We need to get out of idea land, and put some stuff on paper.”
Speaker 1:
Great. Awesome.
Speaker 7:
There you go.
Speaker 8:
I love this, because I’ve done creative problem solving force connections, which is a group … Or it can be a group, or individual activity, but there are not all these prompts.
And what I really appreciated about the three different prompts is I didn’t take it at face value and go in a convergent kind of thinking. This created divergent thinking for me to get me into a different frame of mind rather than simply a, like, “Let’s play.” It was, “Let’s play and …”
Speaker 1:
Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 9:
I really like this too, because sometimes you need something sticky to get people excited. So, that they remember, and so forth. By using this metaphor, you can frame it at the beginning of the workshop, and they can visually see like, “We’re going to start with a lot of little baby ideas, and then get bigger, and then weed, and then really come up with these big ideas.”
It’s just something to visualize. Like, the different sections of a workshop potentially.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for sharing.
Speaker 10:
I’m stuck in the messy middle. Over here on your right.
Speaker 1:
Messy middle? Okay.
Speaker 10:
My problem is making more clearer lasting decisions in an executive leadership forum. And my anti-pattern is just talk and don’t make decisions, and we’re stuck there right now.
What was interesting with the cards was I was trying to map … Like, I had a beehive, and I had a sandcastle, and a couple of others, and it was interesting to try to figure out, “Well, what is what?” Between the metaphor and my problem space. Like, in the sandcastle case, I was like, “Well, okay. Maybe the decision is the sandcastle,” which was a natural conclusion.
But then I’m like, “Oh, but then destruction.” So, the ocean taking it away is actually the communication, and the rollout, and all that. So, that was an interesting decomposition.
For beehive, I’m like, “I’m not sure.” I happen to be a beekeeper. So, I’m way biased on this one. I’m like, “Who are the drones and who are the queen …” But it was just interesting to try to use the idea spaces and the metaphor to map them to the problem space, because that brought in a whole bunch of other things I didn’t think about in the problem space. So, helpful.
Speaker 1:
Great. Thank you. And I use this as a solo activity. Primarily, because this is your challenge, and you’ve very familiar with it already. This is much more successful, if you can really understand the problem space. At least, in my experience.
And so, if I had you all just do one problem you weren’t as bought in on, or had the background knowledge, the ideas would have been a little flatter.
I think we had … Right there.
Speaker 11:
The metaphor helped me, I guess, because, visually, I was able to come up with specific behaviors related to that metaphor. And I’ll give you an example.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 11:
Like, one of my cards was Uber ride-sharing app. And something on the card prompted me to write, “Request on demand.” And it was like, “Hello. I need a website.” Like, “How would people even ask me to facilitate something if they don’t know where to reach me?”
So, it was, like, that’s a very specific behavior, and then it might even lead to more behaviors I could do to get closer to that. So, I like the metaphor. It’s, like, it took the onus off me being the creative thinker, and just letting me think through the lens of Uber, “What are they doing that is replicable?”
Speaker 1:
I like that perspective. A couple more or … Whoever.
Speaker 12:
I got one over here. I, specifically, really liked drawing the pieces, because it shifts your mindset. I think if I were to do it again, I would almost draw it first, and then start putting words to it, because I think that takes your brain to a different space.
And, yeah. It helped me get to some solutions here, specifically, with the beehive, and the different compartments that are within it.
Speaker 1:
Awesome. Yeah. I agree with you there about the drawing. Yes.
Speaker 13:
They should have pushed-
Speaker 14:
I guess my question is how do you create these-
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 14:
… prompts?
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 14:
Because they’re very valuable clearly.
Speaker 1:
Well, I stole some of them. Yeah. I don’t know. Through participating in, I don’t know, Design-A-Thons, and things like that, there’s a couple of them I remembered, and then I just took the themes like, “Oh, this is an app. What are some other apps people are familiar with that are unique?”
So, then I created more, or, “This is a role or a job.” I also sometimes use ChatGPT. “Come up with prompts.” Usually, they’re very generic, and I have to edit a lot but …
Yes. In the back.
Speaker 15:
So, I’m going to try and connect three talks together. So, bear with me as I try and land this triple axel. So, I started off with a fear from Skye’s talk, which is my goal, what I want to tackle in 2025 is confidently leading a session without my more senior team members there. I can lead a session within there, fine, but I get nervous if I’m the most senior person in the room.
And so, linking it to the museum habit, or the museum card, I was thinking about the only way that I’ve been able to establish a habit for working out is by taking a picture every time I do it, and that’s, like, the museum.
And so, I’m thinking with this, “What if I had this area of all of the places where I’ve gotten nice feedback on my facilitation?” So, that, number one, I can show that to clients, and, number two, I can show myself evidence that I am actually a competent facilitator.
And just because the senior people aren’t there doesn’t mean they’re gone.
Speaker 1:
Love that. Love that. Thank you. All right. We are going to wrap up there. Thank you, everybody.
So, in closing, and as you practice these delight-ers, I started with something easy, drawing, and then moved it into some more advanced ones like the twist, or the metaphors.
But I want you to think about how these can be applied to any of your facilitated sessions. It doesn’t have to just be even for idea generation.
Now I want to leave you with this, thank you for showing up to delight your participants, especially, when it feels like there’s a lot of separation and conflict. What you’re doing to bring people together, lift them up, that is truly a radical act.
Thank you.
JJ’s Radical Acts of Delight offered powerful tools for facilitators to make their sessions more engaging and memorable. Whether you’re designing a workshop, meeting, or retreat, his approach to creating delight will help you foster a more dynamic and participatory experience for all.
