by Paul Z Jackson | Dec 17, 2020 | Blog, Facilitation, Improvisation
Many of us have fresh experiences of working from home. And while #WFH will remain a trendy hashtag for a long time yet, some of us will be making the journey back to shared offices. Wouldn’t it be great if we could hold onto the best elements from our domestic professional arrangements, along with the most valuable aspects of being face-to-face in person again?
by Paul Z Jackson | Dec 17, 2020 | Blog, Facilitation, Improvisation
When we are not face-to-face with each other in real rooms, we can lose people’s attention very easily. Participants drift away mentally – and who knows what happens when the camera is turned off? So the quality of input drops and the work suffers. Yet there are really simple ways to engage and sustain people’s attention on a topic…
by Paul Z Jackson | Sep 29, 2020 | Blog, Facilitation, Improvisation
As a facilitator, your attention is dragged in at least three different directions – towards the content, the process and the people.
It’s your responsibility to look after all these dimensions. But, for a whole range of reasons, there are times when your participants are no longer on-board. No matter how clever the…
by Paul Z Jackson | May 26, 2020 | Blog, Improvisation, Musings
Many of us are discovering new possibilities in lockdown and also wondering what the future might look like. We’re questioning the ways that we have been used to working all these years. Whether work simply stopped or was conducted exclusively from home, there was a sudden and unavoidable disruption.
by Paul Z Jackson | May 15, 2020 | Blog, Creativity, Improvisation
This week a group of us re-watched, via a Facebook Watch Party, one of the most impactful talks ever given at an Applied Improvisation Network (AIN) Conference. It was Pablo Suarez speaking about adapting what we know (i.e. improvisation) to the field of disaster preparedness.
Pablo, from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, was with us to…
by Paul Z Jackson | Apr 1, 2020 | Blog, Creativity, Improvisation
If you are stuck with a problem or want to generate new ideas for a project, here’s a great activity to prompt fresh thinking. It’s also a handy way to banish writers’ block. Here’s what I wrote in a recent workshop, led by Trevor Day for the AMED Writers Group. Trevor provided a selection of objects for us on a table.