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Moving Forward

Chapter discussion guide

This is an outline designed to be rolled out to Culture First Leads to inspire a December event that is easy to run and is fitting for closing out 2020 and looking ahead to 2021. It has also been designed in a way that it can be repurposed at different times throughout the year and not only to be seen as a “holiday” or “year end” event.

This outline was developed by a small group of leads including Gary Ware, Lauree Akhtar, Sarah Herold and Sonja Montague MacKay and was built around a 90 minute framework.

The welcome (5 mins)

Five minute section at the beginning of the event to allow for people to show up, get acclimated and settled in. During this time the leads will welcome participants as they arrive. You can simply welcome individuals as they come in or you could run this interactive session during the welcome:

While participants are coming in, share your screen to show a Sli.do word cloud.

Slido is a virtual tool that allows for polling and listening to audience members. To do this, create a free account and build a word cloud template, using the prompt question:

If you had to summarize 2020 in one word, what would that word be?

This will allow people to see where others stand, provide for light connection and something for the facilitator to discuss as people are arriving.

The connection (10 - 15 minutes)

Find & Share

Moving from the welcome, it is now time to allow people to connect and get to know one another a bit better. To do this, we will use the find & share exercise.

As a facilitator - the biggest key here is to manage time to keep session on track.

Instruct each participant to find an item that is relatively close to them that is meaningful to them and to either go get that item or be prepared to share via camera. Then the facilitator will lead a round where everybody has the opportunity to share their item and discuss why it is important or meaningful to them.

The work

We now move in to the work round, which is the main crux of our event, this will be broken into two sections:

Focusing on 2020 - (in times other than new years, focusing on what is behind us)
Focusing on 2021 - (in times other than new years, focusing on what is ahead of us)

Section 1

Start by instructing participants to get out two pieces of paper.

Ask them to take out the first piece of paper and for (x amount of time) write out thoughts following this prompt:

What do you want to let go of from 2020?

After time is up, have them take out the second piece of paper and for (x amount of time) write down thoughts based on this prompt:

What do you want to hold on to from 2020? (a behaviour or practice)

Once this is complete, put participants into smaller breakout groups and instruct each group to divide time allowing for the group to go around two times giving each person an opportunity to share on each of the prompts. (Note: if your event is smaller, you may decide to keep everybody together and use the whole group as the breakout group. Otherwise decide on group size, probably between 4 and 6).

After allotted time is up, have each person return to the main group and have everybody go get a bowl or cup of water. Then when back, have each person take their list of “leave behinds” and put them in the water as a way to release these. This would normally be a fire ceremony but for safety reasons (we are not outside) water is a good substitute. This is a releasing ritual and the leads can set the scene, inviting people to close their eyes and take a few breaths and focus on releasing 2020 and place their paper in the water to dissolve.

Finally, have a quick group discussion / reflection. Use your judgement on timing based on what is available.

(Suggestion for transition) Movement transition - use the “Follow Me” exercise where music is played and you have the group follow the movements of different people (called on by the facilitator) and then have people pick their own person to follow without sharing; this creates a fun chain reaction. Do this for 3 to 5 minutes as a way to lighten the energy, have a bit of fun and switch gears for the next section.

Section 2

Facilitator has the group reflect on question #2 from the previous exercise while asking these three questions:

Why is it important to hold on to this?

What does taking this into 2021 mean for you?

Do you need support from anyone with this?

What is one step you can take to bring this into reality for you? “Optimize for the start not the finish” James Clear

Then send attendees back into the same breakout rooms as before with the instructions to go back around addressing these questions with one another. Each person can use their time to discuss all three, they do not need to go around in three separate rounds.

Return to the main group after time and then instruct each participant to enter their “action/step” in the chat box but “do not” hit return. Then when the facilitator thinks everybody is ready, they have everybody hit enter at the same time (chat bomb).

Once this is complete, the facilitator can use the responses to simply share or if time permits, can ask people to speak a bit or share.

Close (10 to 15 Min)

For the close, return to Slido.io for another word cloud question. This is designed to be a book end to the first question that we opened with. The question is:

“Enter one word to best describe how you are feeling now”

Again, based on timing, you may want to have a quick conversation or simply allow everybody to see and reflect.

At this point, you can ask if anybody wants to expand a bit and share high level takeaways or thoughts, hopefully you still have a few minutes to do this.

Then wrap up by thanking everyone attending and sharing about any upcoming events and how they can stay involved.

Note: Please take a screenshot of the before and after word clouds from this event. We would love to compile these and share out with the larger community. You can also use these to support a post following the event as we believe that they will show a powerful distinction.

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