In this stage, the main question is whether you have succeeded in moving the group toward the desired outcome. If the answer is yes, you can move into creating action steps and assigning responsibilities. If no, what additional questions were raised? You may need to repeat the cycle with a new approach and possibly a new opening prompt.

As the facilitator at this stage, ask questions of the participants that help determine if they have made progress.

Suggestions include:

• Are we ready to take the next steps?
• What moves us toward action?
• Did we surface new questions that need to be asked?
• Do we need more information?
• What implication does this have?
• What are the next steps or applications?
• What choice can I make today that will impact the future?
• Are we ready to move on to concrete action steps?

I had to quickly clarify that I was speaking from seeing the place on TV, in movies, online, and in books. (For the record, I have been to parts of Italy, just not the northeastern piece.) Her face fell slightly. Why? Because she knew it just wasn’t the same.

People form connections all the time. Sometimes it’s over common knowledge, or maybe some common understanding of a situation. But most often, it’s based on shared experience. Have you ever been in a long line at the store, or maybe waiting for someplace to open, and the crowd starts interacting and having fun with each other? That’s a connection based on experience.

Or perhaps when, after a long delay of sitting in an airplane, when the captain comes on and says you’re finally about to take off, and everybody applauds? Another connection based on experience.

It turns out that it really doesn’t take a very deep shared experience to bring people together (at least temporarily). And even those temporary connections are a bit deeper than those formed through merely shared knowledge.

Around the VisualsSpeak offices, we think about this all the time. Because we know that when people go through a VisualsSpeak facilitation together, they often form bonds that last for years. Even when we hold workshops in a city and attendees don’t know each other beforehand, they often leave with new friends. With teams in conflict, we have seen firsthand how the experience of VisualsSpeak is really magical.

But there’s no way to really simulate it. Sure, we try — with our Online Icebreaker Sample and with videos and case studies — but it really isn’t the same. Simply sharing the knowledge doesn’t give an accurate perception of the experience. And it certainly doesn’t convey the value.

If anybody has insights on how to do this better, we’re always on the lookout. Otherwise, we just keep encouraging people to get a Starter Pack or an Icebreaker Kit and try it themselves (after all, we do offer refunds, although we’ve never had a single person take us up on it). It seems to be the only way to convey the real magic — the magic of experience.

In the meantime, I’m calling my travel agent.

In this stage, you are asking participants to begin making choices, focusing the conversation and deciding how to move forward. This can happen through conversation, or you can use other sorting methods like sticky notes or index cards.

As the facilitator at this stage, ask questions of the participants that help gather the information from the conversation and think critically about it.

Some suggested questions you can use to help narrow the conversation include:

• What are the steps?
• What is the new story?
• What do we want?
• What is the priority?
• What pieces are missing?
• What are we choosing?
• What is the most important piece?
• What are they key points?
• What can we do to be more effective?
• What is most important?
• Can we live with our choices?
• What are the consequences?
• What factors influence our next steps?
• Where can we find alignment?
• What can help us focus?

In this stage, you are asking participants to begin making choices, focusing the conversation and deciding how to move forward. This can happen through conversation, or you can use other sorting methods like sticky notes or index cards.

As the facilitator at this stage, ask questions of the participants that help gather the information from the conversation and think critically about it.

Some suggested questions you can use to help narrow the conversation include:

• What are the steps?
• What is the new story?
• What do we want?
• What is the priority?
• What pieces are missing?
• What are we choosing?
• What is the most important piece?
• What are they key points?
• What can we do to be more effective?
• What is most important?
• Can we live with our choices?
• What are the consequences?
• What factors influence our next steps?
• Where can we find alignment?
• What can help us focus?

“Who?” I can almost hear you asking. Feinberg is a guy who takes on huge challenges. He administered the fund to compensate 9/11 victims. He was tapped to be the pay czar for the big financial institutions immediately post-bailout. As of Monday, he’s running the BP oil spill compensation fund.

These are all massive projects, and they’re all projects where you’re guaranteed to be highly disliked by many people (even if you’re admired by others). Agree or not about the politics and the personalities, it takes chutzpah to step up and take that kind of project on.

Of course, I admire others in my day-to-day life who do the same thing, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. The co-worker who, after yet another weekly meeting, takes the leader (who happens to be her boss) aside and offers suggestions about how to make the meetings better — or to eliminate them altogether. The customer service “escalation” person, who has the job of calling the most unhappy customers of their company to help solve their issues. The brand-new internal learning facilitator who starts with training the executive leaders.

These are also things that take guts. Part of that courage is knowing that you’ll make it work — you’ll figure it out. It’s not confidence, exactly (you realize it COULD go horribly wrong), but maybe optimism. Even if it bombs, it’s still a chance to learn, and it will be better the next time.

I find a lot of this kind of courageous optimism in the VisualsSpeak community. For many audiences, the idea of evoking ideas through images is new. Spending precious time with an immersive image-based toolset? Unfathomable.

But the folks who try out the VisualsSpeak tools press on. They get it. They know that it may seem weird or uncomfortable at first, but within minutes, people will be immersed and engaged. Even the reluctant will be hooked — or at least intrigued. We talk a lot about the “magic in the room” that happens with VisualsSpeak, and part of that magic is the way it just turns people around.

So in addition to the big, globe-changing risk takers like Feinberg, I have to add the VisualsSpeak community to my list of people I admire. Because day in and day out, they’re trying something that may seem hard at first — and they know how great it can be.

But there’s always the lobster problem. (And as one who enjoys a good crustacean with butter, the phrase “lobster problem” doesn’t come easily.) That is, incrementalism can also work against you. Sit in some water and turn it up a degree at a time, and you may not notice until it’s scalding. (Or, in the case of the lobster, until you’re dinner.) Eat an extra 100 calories a day, for instance, and you’ll have gained nearly 20 pounds in a year.

This all began to occur to me when I had an accident with my smartphone. I won’t go into detail, other than to note that in this case, the phone was the only thing that was smart.

The net result was a phone that didn’t work very well, and either needed to be repaired or replaced. I opted for the former, and now it’s en route to some repair facility, and I’m without a device for a week or so. And that’s when incrementalism slapped me upside the head.

I realized I had adjusted to a New Normal. One in which I was connected, I had access to news and information constantly, and I could do a crossword puzzle at a moment’s notice. Sure, most of these are frivolities, more or less. But it’s what I’d become used to. And isn’t much of what we consider “normal” frivolous anyway?

What is our New Normal in the workplace? What are the things that we don’t even consider until they’re gone or changed? Maybe it’s the presence of a particular coworker, or the position of an office or cubicle. Maybe it’s the pattern of spending twenty minutes of every hour dealing with e-mail. Maybe it’s dealing with a dysfunctional team.

Sure, there are lots of parts of the New Normal that are great — things we want to keep. Maybe it’s connectedness, maybe it’s a culture in the workplace, maybe it’s not having to go to a weekly staff meeting. But in order to know what to keep and what to fix, you have to surface what you otherwise take for granted. It’s like a fish talking about the water. Not always easy to do.

Of course, we have some tools to help do that, by using images to step back and see the whole picture. But regardless of how you get there, you may want to give it some thought: What’s your new normal? How has it changed in the last few years?

The VisualsSpeak•mini tools are different from the other tools in two ways.

First, each tool is focused on a specific outcome. For instance, team building! The Building Great Teams toolset is laser-honed, with activities and images specifically chosen to help teams form, build, grow, and aim for peak for performance.

Second, each tool is in two parts: a Facilitator Guide and a Participant Set. The Participant Sets are designed for individual use, so each person gets one. That’s where the set of images is, so everybody gets their own image set. The tools are also designed so that participants take their sets with them at the end of the session–for later follow-up. This way, the improvement and change can be continuous over time!

The path to get this tool out the door has been long, with research, testing, and refinement all along the way. We hope you’ll be as excited to use them as we are to make them available!

Learn more about VisualsSpeak•mini: Building Great Teams on our website.

After years of living through bad icebreakers (“Let’s play Annoying Personality Bingo!”), we decided it was time to help people with icebreakers that actually…work!

So, after lots of research and testing, the Visual Icebreaker Kit was born. In addition to 36 carefully-selected images, you’ll find sets of icebreakers that specifically focus on different outcomes, depending on where the group needs to be:

• Making Introductions
• Building Trust
• Conducting a Mini-Assessment
• Sparking Engagement
• Getting Alignment

Plus, there are additional exercises to use as energizers or as reflection prompts! All of this is in a small box that is easy to transport and quickly use at any meeting, training, or facilitation–whether or not you’re using the other VisualsSpeak tools.

As you can tell, we’re pretty excited. You can learn more about the Visual Icebreaker Kit on the web site.