Creative Doodle Games for Trainers, Coaches, Facilitators - Fun Games for Serious Business
Forget the Box Doodle-Based Activities for Business and Multi-Language Working Groups
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A Quick Word of Advice for Conducting Doodle-based Training, Workshops or Meetings When introducing doodling to a new group, make sure you keep the time icebreakers or energizers tight for the doodling. Also remind them that they can use the odd word or phrase in their doodles—make sure they understand that doodling is not an anti-word medium. You will have some in the group who are not comfortable doodling (who may feel like they do not have the skills or aren’t “good enough”). To help offset this, for the icebreakers try to make the time quick for the drawing (you may even decide 5 minutes for some of the exercises is too long) so the people who are naturally comfortable with their artistic talents won’t have time to produce something that looks like Rembrandt (depending on the personalities in the room, some could find that intimidating!). The time pressure will help make the unnatural doodlers more comfortable and the super-duper doodlers less competitive. People can also often be quite competitive when they first start these sorts of sessions; I’ve found that once you get through the first one, the group understands that it’s not about doodling the best technically, it’s about creativity. This will be understood by all in the room once you’ve gotten things rolling. If a lesson plan mentions putting the doodles on the wall, if you’ve space please do, it allows for referral throughout the session or meeting and can spark some ideas that in traditional meeting/workshop formats can sometimes get lost or be forgotten. If you can put them on the wall, encourage people throughout the day to doodle away on them – they may want to add bits as they pop up – being encouraged to return to the doodles will also help them to continue to explore the ideas that pop up as they appear. Doodling is about achieving clarity of thought and some of the exercises in this book are mini-doodle meditations and are not seeking representation, they are more about contemplation. If a session plan doesn’t call for specific representations remind the participants that it’s okay for the doodles to be totally abstract or random, it is up to the doodler to then talk about what they were thinking about as they doodled. Finally, when group doodling is required – make certain that the group know it is a COLLABORATIVE doodle – everyone should have a pen in hand and everyone should be helping to address the issue/task given. It is not about one member “doing” the flipchart for the group (which is what people are used to and comfortable with). Make certain you work the room during group sessions and that everyone has a pen in hand and is doodling! The Most Important Thing! Stress to everyone that all doodlevision exercises are about widening our vision, gaining new perspectives and seeing things in ways that language alone cannot convey—it is not about being fantastic artists. Doodling is about creative, spontaneous ways of getting a message across without the worry of being technically correct, proportionate or perfect. Why the doodlevision Way? The doodlevision Way will help you and your organisation par down tocore meaning and message in an engaging and fun way. How many of us have sat in meetings where people get tangled up in language to such a degree that by the time you walk out, you’re less clear about the issues and strategies than when you walked in? Who hasn’t walked out of a long meeting or workshop intended to motivate and clarify with less purpose, understanding and passion? The doodlevision Way is not just about getting back to the core meaning—it’s about putting the fun and passion back into you and your organisation. doodlevision is about losing all the words and getting back to the point of it all – the big (and little) PICTURE – dump the complicated statements, convoluted messages, matrices and spreadsheets and give everyone what is needed now more than ever, a bit of doodlevision. Time to give your educated, terribly clever and wide-vocabulary mind a bit of a holiday… Lay down your keyboard, smart phone, tablet and submit your “self” to a new way of creating and understanding. From here on out it’s going to be about the way of the marker, the way of the magic marker….
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About the Book
Humor and innovative engagement can bring new life, commitment and energy to groups that are losing their steam. We all remember childhood fun in creating visual representations of thoughts and ideas, as children we were all experts at this way of “seeing” the world and things around us. As we grow older we are trained to see things more verbally and, as a result, our vision of situations has become more narrow. Words are limited after all, but by engaging your group in more visual activities through directed (and non-directed) doodling, a whole new perspective can be gained. The doodlevision games and exercises put fun, creativity and humor into business situations and creates an environment where possibilities that may have previously been unrecognized or unanticipated to come to light.
About the Author
For nearly 20 years I have been designing and running workshops, meetings and seminars from Budapest to Belfast. My love of doodling was initially sparked as a means to work with cross cultural and language barriers and to convey complicated concepts in a clear way for non-native English speakers. Through these doodling experiences I realized that that the multi-cultural groups grasped complicated concepts and situations more creatively and more concretely than my standard native English-speaking clients. Gradually, I realized that greater clarity and creativity can be found in all subjects and with native and non-native English speakers and I began to work with doodling more and more. I now incorporate doodling in all of my work—I doodle in meetings, when designing sessions and even use it as a form of quiet meditation to unwind after a challenging day.