Best Practices and Insights for Facilitating Creativity, Alignment & Organizational Results

In April, The Grove was thrilled to announce the addition of Trent Wakenight to its consulting ranks. For the past twenty years, Trent has helped to form and lead executive and work teams through vision and strategy development, change management and team-building processes, employing many of The Grove’s visual tools and methodologies in the process. He is already well versed in our core workshop offerings, so look for him in one of our workshops in the coming months. Following are excerpts...

During this past year of isolation, video-conferencing platforms have become a crucial way to stay employed and stay in touch, but they are increasingly leaving us overwhelmed and exhausted. Stanford professor Jeremy Bailenson has been studying the phenomenon of Zoom fatigue and outlines the four causes in a new study. We briefly describe the causes below and provide some of The Grove’s best practices for lightening the mental load of virtual meetings.

EYE GAZE AT A CLOSE DISTANCE 

Sta...

We recently caught up with Erin Gordon, who will be leading the upcoming Digital Graphic Recording Intensive. She talked about her professional journey in visual practice and shared helpful tips for those starting out.

How did you get into this field?

I was a consultant—on paper—for the majority of my early career. I enjoyed the partnering piece of my projects but quickly learned advising didn’t work. My curiosity led me to other ways and methods to best be a thought partner with my cl...

Author: Mike Tarbell

Many leaders are striving to anticipate what the “new normal” will look like in 2021. We are seeing some emerging trends and predict that the health and safety, political, racial, environmental, and economic dynamics of 2020 will lead to some talent, retention, and succession issues that leaders must plan for in 2021 and beyond. COVID-19 has accelerated the need for a renewed focus on talent retention and succession, as turnover will most certainly increase in the y...

Author: Tiffany Forner 

In November of 2020, The Grove put out a call in our community to submit artwork that answered the question, “What does democracy mean to you?” We knew this may be a complex question to answer, and we were hoping for a variety of responses. What we received was a wonderful array of interpretations from around the globe. We’d like to thank our contributors for helping us ring in the new year with creativity, community, and a thoughtful appreciation of democracy.

Author: Tiffany Forner

Need an idea for the virtual office party? Do a virtual gift certificate exchange using a digital whiteboard like Mural. It’s a nice way to keep the holiday party vibe alive and support some smaller retailers at the same time. Below are some basic instructions for setting up the game. The idea is very similar to a white elephant gift exchange. Look up the basic rules for a white elephant if you are unfamiliar. When the party commences, the game “facilitator” will need ...

Author: David Sibbet

Coro has been a pioneer in experiential-leadership education since 1948. Well-known graduates, such as Senator Diane Feinstein and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, started their careers at Coro. As COVID-19 hit in March and shelter-in-place restrictions began, Coro centers across the country faced a challenge going virtual and asked The Grove for help. Coro needed to transform a high-engagement, face-to-face way of working to a virtual setting. They were also accustomed ...

Clients and colleagues are reaching out about the work challenges they are facing in this unprecedented time. The following represents some of the questions we are hearing and the approaches we are taking.

1) How do we help facilitators and meeting participants get comfortable with virtual meetings?

 We’ve found that facilitators who were comfortable with large conference rooms, large sheets of white paper and colorful markers at their disposal, are having various reactions to the swi...

Teaming in virtual space is challenging all of us, but recent Grove experience with teaching our Team Performance System online has left us excited and optimistic that real jumps in learning can happen in this format. In a recent certification workshop conducted for a client, participants expressed their sense of improvement in relationship building and team productivity through the use of high-engagement online activities.

Our certification workshop focuses on some key takeaways. We want ...