Lauren Elizabeth Pearl

My favorite unconventional way of inspiring creativity isn’t to switch things up or widen the view; it’s to shrink it further. If you’re struggling to brainstorm creative ways to growth hack with $30k, change the constraint to what you’d do if you only had $100. Need to get to profitability in 6 months? What if you needed to do it in 5 days? Shrinking down even further narrows options, can inspire more practical answers, and makes going back to your original constraints feel easier.

Listening attentively can be a game-changer when dealing with stakeholders who might be hesitant about your ideas. By genuinely hearing their concerns and seeing things from their point of view, you let them know that their thoughts count. This helps establish trust and creates an opportunity for fruitful conversations. When you actively listen, you can tackle their resistance head-on, find common ground, and devise solutions that consider everyone's needs.

The best timing for feedback - especially critical feedback- is as quickly as possible, in private, as soon as the receiver is ready.

Feeling stuck while collaborating as a group? Get up! If you've been stuck in a conference room conversation all day, and the conversation is starting to get stale, this can be an amazing tool for revving up the group and jump-starting innovative thinking. As a facilitator, ask the group to move their chairs to a circle next to the conference table. Or conduct an activity that puts them into small groups around the room. Or one that encourages movement like pointing, pairing, etc. By changing the visual and physical elements of the participants' experience, you can spark new ideas, unlock collaboration, and wake up the room.

Offsites are a wonderful opportunity to bring remote colleagues together and reignite the bonds that are harder to foster over Zoom. Often considered a nice-to-have and a fun opportunity for the team to blow off steam, offsites are now becoming an essential tool for fostering communication, alignment, and company culture in an increasingly remote working environment. While many workers agree that remote work is here to stay, most also agree that it is still not perfect. Employees can feel isolated, burnt out, and they miss out on spontaneous conversations that used to happen in the office. That's why it's now more important than ever to bring the team together during the year at offsites, and to get the most out of those moments.

Understanding the goals of a group you're facilitating is essentially to leading the discussion. If you don't understand the team's desired outcomes, you're likely to end a meeting with participants feeling like it was a waste of time. To set these goals, it helps to talk to all the meeting stakeholders before the conversation. - What are they hoping to get out of this moment? - How do they want to feel when they leave? - What would make this meeting a success? Gathering these collective desires - and understanding where the align and conflict - is Step One to crafting an impactful conversation and aligning on details like next steps and deadlines.