Tool: Elephant in the Room (warm-up)

This exercise is a whole ton of fun! It can be a great break exercise, but it also serves a purpose, quite a few actually:

+ Helps to take the mind of the current issue.
+ Introduces a little bit of fun.
+ Taps into the kid-like approach.

This exercise can be used at any moment if you want to introduce a short creative break or illustrate the idea of creativity.

 

Elephant in the Room
 

• Tool goal: sprak creativity, loosen up the atmosphere
• No of participants: 1 facilitator; groups no limit
• Time needed: max. 15 minutes
• Supplies needed: A4 sheets of paper

 

Walkthrough
 

• Each participant receives a piece of paper (A4 works best, it really shouldn’t be smaller).
• Holding the paper, ask the participants to put their hands behind their backs.
• The task is to tear out an elephant from the paper, without looking.

* This is not easy, and usually, what comes out are strange blobs with uneven edges, but that’s perfectly ok! It’s fun to try and do it best you can!

 

As a result…
 

• Your participants have a break for any brain-heavy stuff they were doing.
• It can give inspiration and steer any ideation into a new direction.
• Usually, because you can only get a vaguely-shaped blob, there is laughter and everyone relaxes.
• It activates different part of the brain, so more power is generated.