Activities

This activity is a practical way of looking at identity and narrative by exploring our daily rituals and routines. It uses a basic storytelling technique and elements of improvisation and performance. It can also be a way into looking at different kinds of communication.

This exercise aims to help participants explore different work styles and energy preferences. It is based on the work of Carl Jung and is simpler than many of the other personality preferences (e.g Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) but is not better or worse – just different. As with all these types of exercises it is about preferences rather than putting people in a box. We all have some of the aspects of the different shapes but tend to have a leaning towards or a preference for one in particular. Using the shapes and colours is a way of exploring energy more than personality type. What sort of energy you bring to your work.

Leaders are made, not born and how they develop is critical to organisational success. We all have the potential to lead, at whatever level and responsibility is appropriate. Recognising this and developing others within the organisation with a range of skills and attributes is a key quality of a good leader.

This activity encourages participants to think more about the values that are important to them and imagine where they might be in the future. It encourages them to think about who are the important people in their lives; who do they admire and why?

Participants practise communicating with each other WHY they do what they do, clearly defining what the social mission of their social enterprise (or idea for a social enterprise) is.

A simple but potentially powerful activity that uses storytelling to support people to share some of who they are and the experiences they’ve had. This exercise is especially useful with groups that may not know each other very well or may feel uncomfortable talking directly about their personal lives, such as survivors of violence.

To build on the idea that there are lots of ways of communicating and expressing ourselves, this activity explores how we can use our bodies to tell stories. Participants create images (‘statues’) of words, feelings, people or ideas that are then viewed and interpreted by the rest of the group.

This activity builds on the existing activity in the toolkit. The group creatively look at the significance and influence of what they are carrying with them in terms of their own culture baggage – be that history, religion, occupation, politics, national character etc.

Introduces participants to the idea of assumptions and explores how our assumptions drive our behaviour as individuals and as social enterprise leaders. Encourages participants to hold their assumptions lightly. All participants write down three things about themselves, two of these are truths and one is a lie. They then move around the group sharing and trying to guess which is the lie. The debrief focuses on the assumptions we make about others and how holding these lightly can help us to discover more.

Participants move from side to side of a room exploring where they believe social enterprise fits on three dimensions of a spectrum. This is a useful exercise that prompts participants to make choices and explore the concept of social enterprise together.