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Facilitating Creative Breakthroughs

Shannon Tipton1h 1min

Shannon Tipton

00:00

Recording on here, and we'll get the recording on here. There we go. Yeah. So one any special plans for Thanksgiving? While you guys all start to get in in the chat, let us know. And also, if this, if you are new to a learning rebels Coffee Chat, please let us know in the chat so we can give you the warm welcome that you deserve. I love seeing who's new, or maybe if you haven't been for a while, reintroduce yourself and share you know your plans for Thanksgiving. What are you guys going to do? You hang in with family. Is it a friends giving is it I'm going to sit in front of my TV and binge watch Thanksgiving, which perfectly acceptable, by the way, younger brother's house, okay? And then go to the parents French silk pie. There's a blast from the past. Mm

Shannon Tipton

01:02

hmm,

Shannon Tipton

01:03

French silk. I haven't had that long time, which is essentially a chocolate cream pie.

Maureen

01:07

I'm bringing my parents with me. I'll go collect them from their retirement community, and then I will drive them over to my brothers. They can't drive.

Shannon Tipton

01:15

Oh, gotcha headed to Virginia. Like Clint is full, yes, I tell you, Thanksgiving is Christmas without the presents, which I think is makes it a better holiday, almost 1,000% yes,

Maureen

01:40

yeah. But even though I'm going to my Bible, I will pick up my own Turkey and everything, because I still want, like, leftovers, you know, like, you know, go to someone else's house.

Shannon Tipton

01:49

That is it Thanksgiving, all about the left and for me, it's all about the turkey sandwich the next day, exactly, yeah, and on the day, it's all about the sides. It's like, I'll eat. I eat all the stuffing. I eat all the veggies. Oh, good old fashioned yellow cake. Oh, that sounds good. We're not going traditional for dinner. You know what? I used to do the same thing. It's like, let's think of something different to do. You had those traditional sorts of sides that were always on the table, but the way that we prepared the turkey was always up for whatever recipe I read in Bon Appetit that month, you know? So it was just kind of one of those things. We're not even doing turkey this year. Not even doing turkey. Oh, you've

Shannon Tipton

02:30

got Rubble lasagna, Caesar salad and cake lasagna.

Shannon Tipton

02:35

I love that, although I don't think you're the only one who does a lasagna for Thanksgiving. I think a lot of other people do that. It's

Shannon Tipton

02:42

new for us, but there's only three of us now, so it doesn't matter. Oh,

Shannon Tipton

02:46

strong substitute, strong substitute. So is brisket? HERBIE, brisket also strong substitute, yeah, Connie, I do lasagna for Christmas. Yeah? I think that's, I don't know. I hesitate say it's an Italian tradition. Obviously, lasagna is Italian, but I do know a lot of people who do lasagna for Thanksgiving

Maureen

03:07

also better the second day after it's settled, right?

Shannon Tipton

03:10

Absolutely, absolutely, oh,

Connie

03:15

we do fish for Thanksgiving salmon. Yep, we'll have salmon with either brussels sprouts or or asparagus and some yams. Yeah? So we don't do a traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas. There's always a a brunch and and then a charcuterie, because people are just kind of munching and in and out and doing thing. So dancer tradition for Christmas.

Shannon Tipton

03:42

I love that. I love that. And I think that this conversation ties in nicely with what our topic is today, which is about, you know, creative thinking. So when you think about the holidays coming up, creativity is the is the thing, right? Because I know there's a lot of tradition out there when it comes to the holidays, but there's also a lot of, hey, let's do something new, and let's be creative. And also, I think within our jobs, it's that time of year where maybe you're thinking about what you want to do in 2025 or maybe you're just kind of, I'm looking for something different to do because I'm tired, you know, I need to stretch my brain. So there might be a few reasons behind wanting to do something differently. And if you want to do something differently, then that's a lot of times requires that your participants or your audience also, you know, they need to be on board with that ever different thing that you want to try to do. And so this is the conversation I want to have today, which is about, how do we help our people as well as ourselves? You know, have a more creative. Mindset when we need to pull that out, there's always a time for, or there's, there's times for, you know, status quo type of thinking, perhaps especially if it works, you know. So if you're you've done the same thing, and you're doing it over and over again, maybe because it works, it's an activity that works, you know? So you don't want to throw that one out with the bathwater, but maybe you want to think of different things to do. So how do you get yourself in that mind frame of doing something differently, right? And so what I'd like you to do is think, think like a turkey. So what I'd like you to do is we're going to do several exercises here today, and I think we're going to have a lot of fun with it. So the first thing that I would like you to do is to have a moment with yourself and think about when it comes to sitting down at your laptop and planning something creative, whether it's a creative activity or it's creative writing or it's something a creative engagement in an E Learning Program. What do you do to set yourself up for success? Do you do something with your environment? Do you put on certain music. Do you maybe start with one task that works into a creative task? So I'd love to hear, for you, from you in the chat, what is your go to? And I'll, and I see Maureen, so I'll, I'll let Maureen talk while you guys think about this and putting it into the chat. So what is your process? What is your process when it comes to creative thought? So go ahead, put that into the chat now. And Maureen,

Maureen

06:49

I use mind mapping. Tony Buzan, Mind Mapping, so, because I don't think in a linear way, so that allows me to just kind of put maybe the central idea and just get stuff out of my head and onto paper, and then then things can kind of flow. And then sometimes, then I meditate, okay, yeah, I'm like, what's there? Because then it allows it to be still and percolate and come up with some ideas, but it's I used to tell people it's difficult to be creative on demand by myself. So you know, it often involves just bouncing ideas, then off of other people as well, and brainstorming together. I like the chat GPT too to brainstorm Cynthia's message.

Shannon Tipton

07:45

Yep, I do too, and I appreciate and Hello, Karen, it's good to see you. I appreciate the cleaning of your desk. First, I find sometimes I've got to clear out the clutter around me in order to start that creative thinking process. So I am all for that, for sure, and chat. You go for a run. I like that, you know, clear your brain for sure. But me, that's not for me. If you see me running, call the cops, because I'm being chased. So that's my theory on running. But absolutely, everybody's got a different thing here, and that's really what I'm curious about. Coming to groups like this. Thank you for that, Douglas. Yeah, I think we each stimulate each other. Cleaning my desk involves putting stuff away, reading all of my sticky try to read all my sticky notes, then I get caught into a rabbit hole. But you're right. Sometimes you collect these ideas somewhere, and now you are, you know, kind of collating those, right, and helping you to get some thoughts. Yeah, pull out some good resources, doodling, etc, yes. Now what I'd like to do with you right now is, let's do an activity that's going to clear our brains. And I think this is a great way, and especially for those of you who are on our last coffee chat in Chris's group, she talked about, you know how to bring mindfulness to you, how to be more connected, right? And I think some of the exercises that she talked about in her group help to bring that creative thought to the forefront. And so here's what we're going to do. So we're going to do a a blast chat. And how that works, for those of you who haven't been here before, is I'm going to do something, ask you a question, or show you something, and I'm going to ask you to put your thoughts into the chat, but write your thoughts in the chat, but do not hit send. That's the rule. So you're going to do whatever it is. I'm going to ask you to do. You're going to put it into the chat. Do not hit send. I'll tell you when to hit send. Everybody understand the task, and you don't have to have your camera on. So thank you for that, Denny, for mentioning that. Learning rebels rules. There are no rules. We don't care what you're wearing, we don't care what you're eating, we don't care what's in your coffee cup. That is your story to tell if you want to be on camera. Be on camera if you're not on camera because you're afraid of what's in your background or what you're wearing, or you're having a bad hair day, we literally do not care, so we encourage you to have your cameras on just for the sake of being able to share ideas with each other. But if it doesn't feel comfortable to you and it's not your thing, that that's okay, all right, so we got that out of the way. Okay, so here we go. We are going to play around with Rorschach. So if you're familiar with the Rorschach test, you know, usually it's a psychological test. I am not your psychologist, so let's get that out of the way real quick. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to use Rorschach to stimulate your brain, to stimulate that side of the brain that you may not always use. So I'm going to share my screen, and I'm going to show you an image, and I want you to put into the chat what you see in that image. Obviously no right or wrong answers here, so I want you to put what you see in that image into the chat. But remember the rule. This is the one rule of learning. Rebels do not hit Send until I tell you to everybody understand. Give me a happy face. Give me a reaction to make sure that we're all on the same page. We're all good, excellent. Okay, so let me share my let me do this. And I'm going to share my screen. I'm

Shannon Tipton

12:05

okay, you guys, are you ready? Let's do it.

Shannon Tipton

12:16

Okay, so real quick you're putting your thoughts into the chat.

Shannon Tipton

12:27

All right, everyone, it said,

Shannon Tipton

12:39

lungs, turkeys, giving each other a high five, two people playing patty cake. Oh, we got two Patty cakes. There we although we got Elvis playing patty cakes, clapping elephants. That's awesome, Santa or the devil. Nice. I I love it. Okay, all right, let's do this again. I'm going to select another one, and we're going to do this one more time. That one? I had another one in mind. This one. Okay, we're going to do the same thing again. Put your thoughts into the chat. Hold on. Don't hit the send just yet. Ready and go.

Shannon Tipton

13:53

All righty, Thank you, Karen, for that break, and let's see it. What did you see lizards on a rainbow? Two iguanas, otters, watercolor of big cats, animals walking. More lungs. Somebody's out there seeing lungs. We see a lot of lungs, someone's X ray image, okay, just pretty colors. That's all right. Whatever you see is whatever you see. Now let's see here most common responses, a pink four legged animal, some other animal, other than a cat or a dog, and we got that in here. I say you see whatever you see, watercolor of big cats, two bears climbing up a rock wall, iguanas, Rainbow, vertebrae, skeleton, pelvis. Okay, so. All right, do you guys want to do this one more time? All right, let's do this one more time. Let me stop. Let me find a good one for you guys in the chat, you tell me, how is this? What are your thoughts? How's this making you feel? While I find the other one that I want to show you?

Shannon Tipton

15:22

Play. Playful, happy. Oh, okay, let's do that. One worried where you fall. Am I ready for a rubber room yet? I don't know. All right, here we go. I got one more than for you, same rules apply. Ready? Here we go.

Shannon Tipton

15:54

And get send coral reef, a party. Sea horses, oh, sea horses, sea horses. Oh. We see a lot of sea horses, blue fairies, sea life, spiders on dragons. I love that. Debbie, more, sea creatures. So it's funny. It's like we, we almost had it, I won't say a consensus, but a lot of you, you know, saw a lot of sea creatures. I kind of saw a butterfly at first, when I first looked at it, like a watercolor butterfly. But you guys tell me now, if you were to do something like this in your class, be it virtual or even live in person, what do you think this does to the creative brain? I'm

Shannon Tipton

16:57

going to stop sharing. I'm going to come back. Anybody want to volunteer? You can speak on up, yeah, it sets it free. It kick starts it Erica.

Erica

17:12

I think it could help it, but I think that you have to be careful about your audience. I could see some audiences like I work in higher ed, if there was a faculty, I'm not sure I would do this with faculty, because faculty would they like to push back on everything, and they would maybe say, like, what's the point? Why are you wasting my time so well? Oh, yes,

Shannon Tipton

17:37

for sure. I think every activity that you do has to connect to an overall goal, you know, and so an activity like this, if you are wanting to stretch people's minds, so it's it's a classroom, Perhaps that is about innovation or creative thinking, or maybe it's a meeting about problem solving, and you want people to release their brain before you start talking about whatever problem it is in front of you. It's like, okay, we want to get rid of the cobwebs that happen to be inside your head. And this is the activity that we're going to do. Right activity for just having an activity we we know this is bad. We have to be sure that it's connected to something, and that's how you can connect it. Just like what we're talking about today is about creative thinking. So this applies to what we're going to do, yeah, brain drip gym. I remember that. I do remember that brain gym for business. I need to find that again. I haven't. I haven't talked about that in a while. Now this opens, this the conversation up. You know, when it comes to having a group where you need them to be in a creative mindset. What do you do? How do you get people in that frame of mind to help them think creatively and to help them think maybe beyond the boundaries of the box, so to speak. What is your go to? Technique? We use find a picture. Yes, yep, I like that.

Shannon Tipton

19:33

You said years ago, yes, brain chips been around for a while. I don't think that's new. So anyone want to share, let's want to share, and let us know. What sort of techniques do you use to open up the brain? Share.

Shannon Tipton

19:52

Sure you can. Thank you.

Stacy

19:54

So I worked with the group that worked with individuals with developmental disabilities, and. Into working with these team members. A lot of times they just thought, well, you know, these people sit around and watch TV and, you know, we feed them and help them and and my purpose was to help them realize that everyone has potential, and help them see that potential and also help put the shoe on the other foot. So in some of the courses that I taught with them, I to try and get the shoe on the other foot. I would get cupcakes for them, and without using their hands, they had to get the wrapper up the cupcakes and eat the cupcakes and not use their hands. And also, you know, that also helped them, because the cupcakes have icing on them. So it was a thing of, oh, I'm going to look silly because I have frosting on my nose, but it's like the people that we deal with, some of them have food on their face, and it doesn't bother them, you know? So we did things of that nature. I would try and get them out of the comfort zone by not using technology and not just Googling a restaurant or googling a grocery store, but actually go to the grocery store, talk to people, find out what their services are, what they can do for you. The same with going to a park and finding out what the services of of a metro Park are. You know, do they have a tram? Do they do tours? You know, is a ranger willing to come in and give a demonstration and maybe bring animals or, you know, first skins or something. So just helping them to get out of the comfort zone and just and work with individuals and help to realize that these individuals do have a purpose, and they're very interested in doing things of certain natures, if you will, certain skill sets.

Shannon Tipton

21:33

I love that. I love that. That's a great way to break into problem solving, because a lot of times we think about a problem solving, meeting. A couple of things happen, right? So you end up either in an echo chamber where everybody just agrees with everybody, and let's just move on, you know, or maybe people are stuck. They're stuck for ideas, and they're all kind of sitting there staring at each other. And the key here is to break them out of that, and to break them out of that. Sometimes it requires like Stacy, that's a great example of, okay, here's something we commonly do now we're going to do it differently, and the fact that it's a cupcakes even better. You know, I'll take that all day long.

Stacy

22:20

The cupcakes was fun, because everyone reacted the same that they literally would just stare at the cupcake before. And you could see their minds thinking, Can I use a fork and put a fork in my mouth? You know, what can I do? And the first person would go and get it, and that would just set the ground for everyone else, like, oh, they did it. And yeah, they have a bit of icing on their nose or on their cheek. And let me do this too, and it looks fun. So it was definitely a lot of fun, very challenging, and a lot of fun for

Shannon Tipton

22:48

people. I love that. I love that, okay, based on that, anyone have any other sorts of ideas that they do or not, ideas but techniques that they use in order to bring this creative thinking up front and to break them out of that, we're just here mode.

Shannon Tipton

23:17

Hi, Irby, yes, I can hear you.

Urbie

23:19

Yeah. You know, a long time ago, I did some work for Pearson schools group. They develop interactive media in the K 12 space. And at the time, I was watching my then four year old daughter, and so she, more often than not, she'd be over my shoulder, and she would give me perspectives and ideas, particularly the things that dealt with when they wouldn't work, or when I made a really bad assumption, and it just coincidentally happened that she was a member of the audience, you know, right? And so to this day, I will engage someone who has no idea what I do or what I'm doing, because again, invariably they'll say, Hey, did you think about this? You know, I have grandkids, so I refer, refer to them a lot. A couple of them I actually have on my payroll that when I do a bid for a private contract, you know, include them, as you know, talent that I've hired, you know, for for their skills. And I think sometimes our expertise, especially if we've been doing this for a long time, it can cloud our thinking and kind of have us go, like on a stove pipe kind of thing, you know, where we don't, we don't look outside, you know, the other day job interview, and the interviewer asked me how, how I would modify a certain curriculum so that it would be applicable to an entirely different audience. And so what I think they expected me to do was to go down the line while you're doing now, Austin blah, blah, blah, right? And it said, I said, you know, I would take the content, what I had, and I would pour it into something like chat GPT, and ask it how to do it. And so my hour long interview became about eight minutes. And. Then it starts a job on the ninth so I'm pretty excited.

Shannon Tipton

25:04

Yay, good. That's a great use. And I think there's a lesson there, right? It's using the tools in front of you, whatever they may be, you know, to promote whatever creative thoughts that you're looking for absolutely and last week, we're training Franklin COVID class. Oh my gosh. I used to train Franklin COVID stuff, and I haven't done it in an age, but it always used to be a lot of fun. Instead, had the Small groups create skits to show what quadrant they were in. See, now that's a different way of thinking about it. And Cynthia, I would be interested in knowing that when you did that activity, did you get responses that were perhaps out of the norm of some of the other classes that you had taught? Yeah,

Cynthia

25:50

they they were very apprehensive at first, and kind of gave me a hard time. But then with instead of the gallery walk, when they were actually had to create skits. It really changed their way of thinking of those. So they had to create, it's gullible judgment, I'm trying to think of them now off the head, but they had to create a skit where they showed gullibility. And so it, it put them in a whole different state of mind than just saying, Oh, this is the definition of gullibility. So it was a lot of fun. And at the I had feedback, and several of them said the skits were a blast. And these are leaders in our district who don't often do things like this. So it was a lot of fun.

Shannon Tipton

26:34

I love that. I love that. And again, it goes to when we say a lot of times you know to know your audience, that that's a okay. We know we know that know your audience, but I think also we put ourselves into our own creative prison, if you will. When we say, know your audience, and then we assume, or not really, I think assume is too light of a word, but we know our audience, and then we think they won't do x, y, z, because of who they are and the jobs they have, right? So Cynthia, great example of that. So you've got executives, and a lot of times we would say, Well, I'm not going to do that with leadership, because they're going to think it's a waste of time, and that's just not who they are, and that's not their personality. So I'm going to do something different, you know? So kudos to you. And going, you know what? I'm going to do this, and I'm going to explain the why behind it. And I think with this particular group of people, we're going to be able to get in and make it work. So don't put yourself in your own prison because of what you assume about your audience. You never know really. You know baby steps, obviously, but, but you know, I think that you guys can be wise about that. So thank you for sharing that any What else have you guys done before we move into another activity here real quick. What else have you done with your groups to open up that creative mindset and actually, let me ask you this in the chat, just yes or no or just Yes. How many of you have written or facilitated programs around creative problem solving, or problem solving in general, or you know how to be more innovative, etc? So how many of you have done that design thinking, Yes, Thank you, Karen, yes. Why design thinking? Okay, so those of you who are in this So, Karen, I'd love to hear you know what you're doing with design thinking. What sort of creative elements are you plugging into your class? I know you, so I know you're being creative.

Karen

29:02

Am I off mute? I am no, yeah, great. Nice to see you. Shannon. I know it's one of the first times I dropped in. It was just the email came at just the right time. Oh, good. So for design thinking, mostly I'm trying to teach instructional designers how to use design thinking sort of as an overlay on top of Addie. Okay, so and that it's not a linear process. Mostly focus on the empathy portion. I like to teach how to do an empathy map, which is just a real simple little exercise that I do in most of my classes, and we try to put ourselves in the shoes of whatever audience we're looking at, and see how they might be thinking and feelings, what they might be seeing and doing, hearing, mostly to get to the pain points. In other words, what's keeping these people up? Right? Right? And then, how can the content, whatever content that is that we're teaching we're trying to write or design around, how can that ameliorate the the fear, the bad stuff, right, right,

Shannon Tipton

30:19

right? And do you have them play around with that empathy map, like, do they do a sample one? Because I used to do that too, and I used to say, Okay, well, we'll do a sample one of a, you know, a 16 year old girl doing XYZ, you know, or a 32 year old man doing XYZ. So we kind of play around with a sample one first,

Karen

30:36

yeah, one of my favorite ways to do it actually, is face to face, because I give everybody a stack of sticky notes. I draw it on the whiteboard or on a sheet of paper, the diagram, and I have everybody add one idea, okay, and stick it in. So I mean, I could do about myself. Sometimes I do design. I do a map like that myself, if I'm stuck, but I think it's really fun, because you get to hear other people's perspectives, right? Like your exercise with the Rorschach, some people just they say things that I never imagined.

Shannon Tipton

31:16

Absolutely it's like a Crazy Eights exercise. You know, so crazy, eight exercises, where people there are eight blocks, you fold up a piece of paper into eight blocks, and you draw as many as you can about the idea in those eight blocks, and then you just keep passing it around until everybody's eight blocks are all filled up. So it's kind of that's cool, yeah. So it's kind of like that, but your sticky notes are more of a live representation of that, you know. So you put those sticky notes up there and you're just building on those ideas, you know. So, so thank you for that. I love that. It's a great way to kick that off. Maureen,

Maureen

31:55

so this is a icebreaker that's been used in in our design thinking sessions, and it is to have people, um, think about kind of their superpower, like, what is it that they bring to this session, or what makes them and to draw that out, okay? And so you can draw it. It's like you can have stick figures, whatever. It's not a, you know, it's not about artistry, and part of the debrief is also that's going to be the most uncomfortable thing you're going to need to do all day, like, you know, because it's like, you're already, like, getting, like, the worst, like discomfort out of the way, right? But it helps to in introductions, then to say, Here, here's what I do, and here's the superpower. And so it's a great way to kind of advance thinking from the get go, as opposed to name, rank and serial number kind of thing. Awesome, right, right? But the drawing is to also then get, you know, because then you're going to be using the the Sharpies and the sticky notes all day. So

Shannon Tipton

32:59

here's how you use them, and we want you to use them. Yeah, yeah, I love that. And the whole purpose is to help people think beyond their normal perceptions, especially if they're coming into a class, let's just say that it's design thinking or problem solving, so they come in with some sort of preconceived notion of what that class is going to be like. And if you can open their brains from the very beginning, then you've kind of shattered that preconceived notion. So it's, it's more than an icebreaker. It really is a, I don't know maybe it's a brain breaker. It's, we want to set you up to help you think differently, because that's what we're going to do today, and it doesn't matter the topic either. I don't think you know. So we're going to help you think differently about instructional design. We're going to help you think differently about cyber security. We're going to help you think differently about XYZ, because people are bored. When they get bored, we know this. When they're bored, they're not learning. And so something like cyber security has every probability of being dull as dirt class, you know. So then if you can help them think differently and help yourself think differently from the very beginning. Then people then become more open to absorbing that learning, you know, so it's all about, what can we do to put that twist on it, to encourage creative thinking? Now, again, before we move into an exercise, one of the other question that I want to ask you is, what are the things that you try to keep in mind, you know, so that it doesn't go pear shaped, right? So what are some of the so one of those might be, I try to keep my audience. In mind, you know, so I want to be sure that I'm not offending anybody. I want to be sure that my audience is with me. So are there other certain caveats that you try to keep in your mind before going all ballistic with something creative? Yeah, we encourage people to withhold judgment, right? We encourage them this is a safe space, right? We tell them what the time is. We give them some general ground rules, maybe, you know, and maybe the ground rule is, there is no rule except for, be nice, be kind, yep, and withholding that and withholding that judgment for sure, anything else, yeah, well, yeah, definitely, maybe with prototyping, um, and absolutely, I see your idea here, Irby, and to build on that, to put people into that space for prototyping, I think again, we have to let them know that it's okay, you know, to do whatever you're going to do with that paper napkin, right? And then to link it to the topic, right? People need to see that link so they don't think that you're making them play musical chairs for the sake of playing musical chairs. You can absolutely say something. Irby,

Urbie

36:20

yeah, so a while ago, I did some work for a law enforcement agency, one of the largest in America, and initially they wanted to develop some new curriculum for their basic training academy. And after meeting with the SMEs for a while, I learned, you know, you guys have a lot of expertise. I bet you you guys could develop the training. And then, from then, from then on, going forwards, I was basically the instructional designer that made sure they, they fought, adhered to things like adult learning theory and so on. But sometimes I think it's okay, maybe even desired, to let go and let let the client run with it, you know, in which, because I've always, I've a lot of people have problems with, you know that doubting me, you know that's for the team. But if you put it on them, and they have the capabilities, you know, by all means, let go.

Shannon Tipton

37:09

Yeah, I love that. You know, we can put it into their hands. They're smart people, you know, maybe somebody, if you got a subject matter expert that's going to be in your training class, maybe reach out to them beforehand and ask them if they have a favorite thing that they like to do. Or maybe you can ask them, Is there a certain point that you would like to make in this class? Is there something important that you want to really put a pin on? And then maybe think about a creative activity around that to help people get that point. So there's a lot of ways to bring people into that conversation, all right. So now we're going to do something real quick, and it is again about kind of this message about divergent thinking, thinking outside of the box, thinking of different ideas. And we've all, we've probably all in some point in time, if you've done any sales training, you've done the exercise of, you know, sell me this pen, right? So Sell me this pen. What? What would you say to sell me this pen? Well, I want to kind of do a riff on that. And you may have heard of it, probably have, but we're going to take this and we're going to do it. I'm going to put you into breakout rooms. So again, I say this always whenever we do breakout rooms, don't be afraid. Breakout Rooms are okay. They're okay. You're only going to spend a few minutes in the breakout room, and then we're going to come on back. So please stay with me when we do this, I'm going to put you in a breakout room for three minutes, for just three minutes, and what I want you to do is I want you to think of as many ways that you can use a paper clip. How many different ways can you use a paper clip? Or what other things can a paper clip do besides be a paper clip? That's what I want you to do, and it's a rapid fire three minutes. You need one person to keep the notes, so just decide on that real quick. When you go into the room, who's going to write this stuff down, and then you're going to come on back, and we're going to share our results, and then we're also going to build off of some of those aha moments. All right. Oh, I lost three people. Three people said, I'm out. Okay, alright. So here we go. Let me, is there going to be smaller rooms? There we go. All right. Are you guys ready? Do you understand the assignment? All right, let's go. I'm.

Shannon Tipton

43:35

All right, welcome back, everyone. Okay, how Did we do so, those of you who were the note takers in the chat just put down for right now. Put down the number of ideas you generated. Oh,

Maureen

43:50

sorry. Oh, that's okay. I went too fast and just copied the whole list. Okay. Oh,

Shannon Tipton

43:54

you're dad's. That's perfectly okay, because you kind of anticipated overachiever, overachiever.

Maureen

44:02

Apparently we're underachievers because we only we had 11 ideas, opposed to 1919,

Shannon Tipton

44:11

1817, but still great ideas. You got more than 10. So I think you guys did great in three minutes and the over under? Well, I not going to say what the over under is. No, I'm not here to make people feel but let's just say usually I get over 10. That's, that's the norm. I'll put I'll put it there. And you guys did great. You're in the normative. Now share with me. And so somebody, if you want to come off and talk while the others are writing, what was there an idea that made everybody go, Oh my God, that's the best idea ever. Or something that made you laugh really super hard. Or your favorite, maybe you as the note taker, you had a favorite out of all the. Ideas. Put that into the chat for me and somebody from one of the groups, if you want to open up your mic and share with us, what was your experience like in the group a wine glass marker. I love that. Ew. I love that. If you had colored ones fixing bras, yeah. Oh, and there is not a woman out there that has not done that at some point in time. Fix your zipper, for sure. A cat toy. I love it. Pop a pimple. Somebody's watching. Mr. Dr, Pimple Popper. Is that how you say Pimple Popper? Back scratcher. I love this. Okay, somebody come up, Mike and share with me how your room went. Some things you could do with but you shouldn't, right? There are some things you shouldn't do with paper clip well,

Maureen

45:52

we talked about extending the campaign to bring Clippy, the Clippy back. Oh, is that right? Microsoft, yeah,

Shannon Tipton

46:03

Clippy. CLIPPY is out there with all this AI stuff. CLIPPY is out there going, hey, yeah, oh OG, here it

Maureen

46:11

is, available in like teams, like as one of the gift gifs or whatever there are Clippy, yeah, sure. Clippy collection.

Shannon Tipton

46:19

So what was your group like Maureen?

Maureen

46:23

Well, we were awesome. Now, everybody contributed, you know, and we tried to, you know, we talked about even, like MacGyver can fix lots of things, like, there's lots of possibilities, but, you know, it was, it was probably the more practical uses of it, and not, not far, far out of the box, but, yeah, we just, well,

Shannon Tipton

46:50

I'm going to have you with me, though, when it comes to, you know, picking a lock, you know. So we're going to, that's,

Erica

46:58

that was actually somebody else. I'm not going to. I was about to call them out, but maybe they don't want to be called out. I'm curious to find out more about that as well. It's locked.

Maureen

47:07

If you've ever had kids where it's like they lock themselves inside of, like a room or something, or the indoor on top of the the door dam, but you can just hit it in there and it just like it can unlock those. It's not for a heist or anything. It's to, yeah,

Shannon Tipton

47:26

yeah. Okay, and so now talk to me. Let's see Jason, what was your room experience like? How did it go? You know, I'm gonna pick on you at some point,

Shannon Tipton

47:38

I was writing frantically.

Shannon Tipton

47:43

So there was a lot of lot of ideas going on there. Yeah. I

Cynthia

47:45

mean, we had 18 so that came. That was good, but we kind of built off of each other as well. And debated a little bit because somebody said, Well, you can't use paper clips as earrings like, come on, what happened in the 80s?

Shannon Tipton

48:01

Yes you can, yes you can. And so they,

Shannon Tipton

48:05

they said, Okay, put earrings down.

Erica

48:09

They were clearly not a part of the punk,

Shannon Tipton

48:11

punk movement, right? Yes, yep, they were using paper clips. I say they, but I don't think I was paper clips, safety pins as earrings, yeah,

Maureen

48:23

absolutely, yeah,

Shannon Tipton

48:27

no, it's just the day Douglas. All right.

Shannon Tipton

48:35

All right, so, so talk to me. What was what do you think now? Because I didn't tell you this, and I do that on purpose. So what I'm trying I am not going to look at Douglas in the chat. Okay, what was the method behind my madness? Why did we do that? I

Shannon Tipton

49:07

people like, I don't know Shannon just be crazy because it's Friday. That's as good a reason as any rapid fire. Brainstorming, yes, perspectives open up the variety of avenues to explore. Thank you for that. Heather and Cynthia,

Cynthia

49:25

thank you. Thinking about things differently,

Shannon Tipton

49:29

yes, thinking about things differently, getting everyone to contribute. Yeah, it's time bound, right? And, and in person, I would do that exercise in two minutes rather than three, you know, but there's always that 32nd lull when you get into the room as to who's doing what, and what are we doing, and blah, blah, blah, you know, before you get down to it, yeah, it gets you to So, yes, because of that. It gets you to drop your constraints. It's like, oh, we've got to get to work, so let's do it. And it takes out the but why? And don't you think, and maybe we should, and that's not a good idea, or that is a good idea. It just gets you to the point faster. Out of curiosity, anybody list holding papers together, maybe. But when you think about our process for creative thinking, it's important to show people what that means. You know, we say this a lot as L and D people, we say, be creative, be innovative, think out of the box. And there are a lot of people out there that go, I just don't know what that means. I don't know what you want from me. What do you want from me? And an exercise like this shows people what you want from them. It's another way of showing the expectation around creative thinking and around being a little more innovative or thinking outside the box, or being more original. So you're helping them down that path. And so again, it doesn't matter what topic you're trying to address. So let's say we're in a safety class and we're trying to get them to think of new ways of telling people to watch where they're going to prevent slips, trips and falls. Okay, so now we put them through a couple of exercises like the Rorschach or this paper clip exercise, and hopefully now their brains have melted a little bit so that they can think a little bit more creatively around the topic at hand, yes, and it is, you're right. Erica, it's a low stakes activity, you know, to really take inventory of people, right? And so then it kind of helps you. I To me it's kind of as a dual purpose. So in person, you can see which groups are struggling and which groups got it on. And that might those people who are struggling may need that extra push, you know, to help them think more innovatively. Yeah, there are more some are more creative than others with paper clips. Absolutely right. There's no but there's no right or wrong answer here. It's just helping people with that process Erica,

Erica

52:24

yeah, I was just gonna say, I think it is a good reminder that maybe, you know, sometimes we've, I think, become now, ingrained to believe that ice bake icebreakers are pointless, or maybe like a quick little activity into the breakout room before you do the heavier lifting work is wasting people's time. But I think if we are cross applying what we're talking about and sharing today, and then we make sure that we anchor it well within the work that we're doing with our groups, when you remove the stress, I think of the heavy thing that has it's at hand, especially if there is a big log jam, and that problem solving session is going to maybe bring up some tensions, and you know, polarities and viewpoints, if you take them out. And I think this is Karl Knapp approach when he talks about training sometimes, and that's why he did that zombie game, the sales game. I know that there's some argument around, is that or is that not appropriate, but I can see in something like this, without making it too fantastical, you can allow people then to be like, Oh, I can say a lot, lot of different things, and no one's going to judge me on it. So then if we cross apply and say, Okay, so now we set the ground rules, and like, you know, we're gonna rough, hold judgment. All ideas are welcome, because we're not making any down selections. That's exactly like what just happened in our paper clip, you know, brainstorming session here. And so bring these, bring that energy, bring bring that mentality to now when we're going to do this, you know, this heavier lift, or, you know the work here on the topic at hand? Yeah, yes,

Shannon Tipton

54:07

exactly. It's, it's a great we're walking the talk type of thing, because I this is what, this is what the rest of this class is going to be about, or the rest of this meeting, this is what it's going to be about, about us, you know, finding these different ideas. So you're absolutely right, Erica, and I think it does set the stage really well. As you guys are still giving me paper clips ideas in the chat, they're handy for keeping your hair out of your face. They are. They definitely are. And a mom back in the 70s and 80s would have used that technique for their little girls, right? Yes, Douglas for you, especially. No, that

Shannon Tipton

54:52

one was Jason.

Shannon Tipton

54:56

Oh, that was Jason. I was like, I thought, I thought Douglas was making a joke. Kind of himself, but yeah, or Jason, both of you, yes. So all of this being said now, now that we're at the almost at the top of the hour, I would love for you to put into the chat, or for someone to come off and let me know whether or not some of the conversations that we've just had, how are you going to use this conversation to help you develop programs that might encourage a little bit more of a free thinking type of exploration, or the next classroom that you have, or the next virtual call that you have. How are you going to use some of this? Did it help you? So I'm Betsy. Thank you for that. Using skits, games and interactive activities is helping us make required training more interesting. Well, yeah, there's that for sure. You know, people come into the class again thinking that something is going to be boring or Yuck, and then we're going to prove them wrong. So how are you going to is there a technique here that maybe triggered a thought for you that you're going to try out? Yeah, try to incorporate more icebreaker activities. And I wouldn't think of them as icebreaker activities. They're more of a here we're going to set the stage. This is what we're going to do, you know, type of activity. And I think the reason why, yeah, brain opener activities, yeah, there we go. Erica, yeah. I think a lot of times people shy away from activities, just not unlike when I asked you, don't go away. We're going to do breakout rooms. And as soon as I said that, like, I said, three people, boom, boom, boom. It's because they've had bad experiences with breakout activities, and they're like, I don't want to be any part of this, because every time I do it, it goes wrong, or it's boring or it has no purpose. And the key here is to keep reminding people that, yes, this has this is going to have meaning trust the process here we go, you know. And in the past, when I used to do breakout activities, people still fell away, but more people fell away than they do now, and I think it's because we've built trust, you know, in this group, and then so your job in your you know, when it comes to activity building, is to build trust that you're not going to be making them play musical chairs for the sake of musical chairs. Yeah, awesome. Okay, so we are at the top of the hour. Uh, here's what's coming up. Our next Coffee Chat on December the sixth is all about you. It usually is all about you, anyway, but more so now, because on the sixth, what we are going to be doing is we are going to be thinking creatively again about where 2025 is going to go with learning rebels. And so what I would like is for all of us to get together and we're going to have a discussion about what sort of challenges did you experience in 2024 that may overlap into 2025 that we can have conversations about that are going to help you. You know, so are you looking to have conversations coffee? Chat, conversations about a virtual training, about AI, about design thinking, about career building. What is it that is on your hot plate? As far as I need to do this in order to improve myself, because I, as always, I want to be sure that we're putting topics in front of you that are relevant, that are helpful, that are useful. And that's the whole purpose here, you know, not, and to build this community. Keep building this community, to have this warm place for you guys to have conversations with each other. It's a safe place. And I hope you guys, you know, have all seen that throughout the years. And this is we are going on our fourth year of doing this. And I think that, I think that we, we've, we've built something really special here in the four years that we had. And then so not so the next Coffee Chat is about, what are we going to do in 2025 the coffee chat after that is our annual holiday party. What? What? So we have our, our Christmas party, coming up with our gifts for the trainers that you love, or gifts for the people that you love. And so we will be doing that activity again. That's our fourth year of doing that particular activity, where we have our holiday party and we built a collaborative list of of interesting gifts, and we give each other ideas for, you know, the holidays. And I'm looking forward to that. Eggnog shots. Bring it. Yeah, for sure. Again, whatever's in your coffee cup, that's your secret. Although, during the holiday party doesn't have to be a secret. You can, you can bring your rum filled eggnog if you want to, and brag about it. All right. So thank you everybody for joining me once again on this learning rebels Coffee Chat. I'm Shannon Tipton, the owner of learning rebels. You can find me on LinkedIn and all the other places. If you have suggestions, you guys know how to get a hold of me, just send me an email, let me know, and these resources will be posted on the website where you can rehash this conversation along with the transcript and everything else. So I hope that you guys all have a wonderful Thanksgiving that is next week. I cannot believe it. So we won't see each other before Thanksgiving, but have a wonderful holiday. You know, be with people that you enjoy, people that you love, and surround yourself, you know, with kindness. That's my advice for you, and I look forward to seeing you next time you.

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