The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Critical thinking and Problem-Solving in the Workplace

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 32

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In this week's episode of the Social Media Takeaway, I'm joined by Miriam O'Donoghue, an accomplished facilitator and trainer with over 40 years of experience. Miriam is a certified LEGO Serious Play facilitator, a Tony Buzan Licensed Mind Mapping Instructor, and a certified Six Bricks trainer. She brings a wealth of expertise from both public and private sectors, specializing in creative problem-solving and team facilitation. Tune in to hear Miriam share her innovative techniques for boosting team morale, increasing engagement, and navigating workplace conflict. She also offers plenty of fun solutions for team activities. Whether you're dealing with tough conversations or just looking to energize your team, this episode is packed with practical advice and fun ideas to help you succeed.

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Louise McDonnell:

Welcome to the Social Media Takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonnell. And this is the show for business people who want to learn how to use social media to drive more sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, please make sure you hit that subscribe button. And if there's anything in this show or any other episode that you think a friend, a family member, or maybe a group that you're with, what it would benefit from, please make sure that you share the podcast with them. You're going to find us on all the leading podcast channels. And if you want to watch back, you can find us on our YouTube channel. So today I'm delighted to be joined by Miriam Donoghue, and she is an independent facilitator, trainer, and consultant with over 40 years of experience across both public and private sectors. And she specializes in teaching powerful techniques for idea organization, problem solving, and promoting innovation. She is a lead facilitator trainer with Or for the ICA UK, she is a Lego serious play trainer and facilitator. She's a Tony Bazan licensed mind mapping instructor, and she's also a certified six bricks trainer. You're very welcome to the show, Miriam.

Miriam O'Donoghue:

Thank you so much, Louise.

Louise McDonnell:

It's great to have you here. So do you want, like, that's a, that's an amazing lineup you have the Lego series play you're also ICA UK certified and you're Tony Bizan, licensed mind rapper instructor and Sixpix trainer. So do you want to maybe tell us how you got into all of this? Tell us your journey, how you come to be here today.

Miriam O'Donoghue:

Well, as you just said there, I'm more than 40 years in education and in working with companies as well. So yeah, it's a long story. So I'll give you a really short version of it. Otherwise we'd be here all day. But I started off as a teacher back in the 70s and I know I'm aging very well, but you know, I started off in the classroom and that's where I actually got my love of just working with people. I worked in inner city Dublin, so I had to pull out every trick that there was to try and keep those students engaged and motivated. But as my career progressed, I suppose I moved into management, moved into senior management. And moved in and out of the organization that I was working for. I was really lucky that they gave me the opportunity to be seconded. And I had multiple secondments over the years. I worked in teacher education. So I was head of a department in a teacher training college. I headed up national support services. I was director of the curriculum development unit and so on. So that's a really kind of tight, short version of it. But I suppose towards the latter part of that particular career, because I reinvented myself in 2019, I started to work more and more with adults. And I suppose looking at professional development needs and supporting people who are working with adults. And the key issue there was really around adults coming in to as learners. You know, coming in with all sorts of challenges, lack of confidence not feeling, you know, that they were good enough, a bit of that imposter syndrome thing, I shouldn't be here. Like nobody before me has done any of these kinds of courses that I'm doing at the level that I'm working at, but also coming in with so many challenges, you know, of trying to keep down jobs while they were attending college. family issues like baby up all night crying and coming into, class like half asleep, you know, and so, so many things. So my job really was how to really engage those learners, how to motivate them, how to make the whole learning experience so exciting and, and so doable. So I started to look at. Different ways of facilitating groups of different methods that I could use, different tools, different resources, gamification, and all sorts of things like that, that I could train the teachers in, who could then go and I suppose implement those in the classroom with their adults. At the same time I was kind of, I suppose, every, every good trainer, every good facilitator needs to be fed themselves. Okay. So it's not all about giving. So I was out there looking at, okay, what are the new methodologies? What's culling edge that I need to learn? I started to look at the corporate world, what was going on in the corporate world. Because remember all of these teachers that I was training to work with adults, those of course are going to be in the corporate world eventually. So it made complete sense. So I trained as a Lego series play facilitator because I could see that Lego series play was being used quite a lot in the corporate world. Back when I did my training in Lego series play, it was just taking off. Of course, now it's huge, absolutely massive. I trained as a scrum master and I don't think you said that in my, my, in the introduction. scrum master, why did I want to work or, or train as a scrum master? Because what attracted me there was the whole principle of doing these retrospectives that you need to look back in order to be able to look forward. So great for reflection on, I was able to adapt that to work with people. The clients that I was working with. So since then, I've run all sorts of training around retrospective work. I was many years ago, I was trained by the ICA UK. Now the ICA is not the Irish Country Women's Association. It's the Institute for Cultural Affairs. And I trained with them many years ago. I have to say their methods probably had the most impact on me in terms of the way that I was able to use them. There's hardly a day goes by that I don't use one of their methods. Particularly one that's called the focus conversation around how to have really good conversations with people. And I suppose as I was coming to the end of my career, as it were in the education world. So to speak, I decided that wouldn't it be great if I could actually train people in these methods. So I became, as it were, an apprentice. With ICA UK, I was mentored. They don't run a training program to train you to be a trainer. You have to serve your time, as it were, go on your trainers journey. And that was, that was great because I got to be with lots of trainers and to see how they were doing it. And eventually, needless to say, I got signed off as being competent to be able to train others. The other one you mentioned there, the mind mapping around the same time. I thought. Wow, you know, I've been using mind mapping in my own practice. Wouldn't it be fantastic to be able to actually train and certify people in mind mapping? So off I went to the UK to train with Tony Buzan, who is the guru, the leader of mind mapping. In fact, he was the inventor of mind mapping. And I did that in 2018. And wasn't I so lucky and so blessed because in 2019 he passed away. So I'm, I'm very privileged to have been trained by him and I now am able to certify through Tony Buzan International. Another person that really influenced me around that time and I'm bringing their methods into my work is Edward de Bono lateral thinking guru. And I use so many of his tools. Again, I got to meet him a few years ago and in Malta and an amazing influence on me and, and my practice. And again, he passed, he's since passed away. So, you know, I'm very much of the mindset that you have to seize the moment. You have to go after your dream, whatever it is you're trying to accomplish in terms of making it, in my case, making a difference to people. I go after it. So I'm constantly, on the one hand, giving in terms of running training sessions, running facilitation sessions. And as you know, Louise, from my travels around the world and so on, I'm also seizing the moment. And I'm going after opportunities where I can grow as a facilitator and a trainer. Just to finish that story, in 2019, I retired from my official day job as they, as they called it. And I thought, you know what, I'll just keep my finger in here. Because I've always been so busy. And I thought, there's no way I can retire and just stop. When I retired in 2019, I was just doing a few little bits. It was all very nice. And then COVID hit around March of 2020. And I thought, oh, this is it. I've set up this new company now. I'm offering facilitation and training and it's going to go down the slummy. Nobody's going to want me now. Well, was I wrong? That phone started to ring and it wasn't just people from the education world that were phoning me. It was people from the corporate world. Sometimes I really didn't know how they found out about me. But for two years, I sat on this seat. And I trained people online. I didn't even know what Zoom was at the time. And the way I overcame that is I went online and I searched for everybody that was, and anybody that was offering a free anything on Zoom. Okay, doesn't matter what the topic was and I signed up for it and that was so I could see how they were presenting their craft or, or their expertise online and I watched and I learned and within a very short space of time, I managed to get online doing things like a Lego series play, which a lot of people in the beginning thought, you know, How can you do something as practical as Lego series play online, but you actually can? And lots of other things that I was doing. So that's a really kind of longer than I, than I intended, but it's kind of a story of how I got to where I am now. What's lovely now is that we have a nice balance between online training and in person, because obviously, A lot of the companies that I work with now are eager to offer in person training again. You know, it's kind of a, it's, it's a, there's a bit of a balance there, really.

Louise McDonnell:

What I'd really love you to do in this podcast, if it would be okay, Miriam, is like I'd love you to kind of talk about the kind of problems that you help organizations solve. And even if you wanted to give, like, Examples and kind of link it back to the different methodologies. Cause I know when people sometimes hear, you know, like a serious play or mind mapping, but they're not too sure, like where it fits in. So just to remind you, so what kind of problems do you solve? And like, what are the methodologies that you use then to help solve those?

Miriam O'Donoghue:

Oh, first of all, Louise, I use lots of different methodologies, and I think that's really important to say that I'm not, you know, pushing any one methodology because I think what sometimes happens is you go on a course and you're really impressed with the training that you got and you go Lego series plate, amazing. I'm going to be able to use this now for everything. And it's, you know, that saying when you have a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. Okay. And that's what you've got to be really careful. So I'll give you a few examples now, but with each of those, I've used different approaches. Okay. So you have to very much pick the methodology and pick the process to match the scenario that you're going into. So I suppose let me just give you a few examples from recent experiences because they're kind of fresh in my mind. Okay. But so one example is an organization that I went into a couple of months ago and they were needing to clarify a job brief. Now this might sound very like sort of normal scenario that it should have been very easy to do it, but actually this job brief was probably not as detailed as it should have been. And what had happened is, it was quite a large organization And certainly there was over 100 people with me on the day that I went to work with them as a group and lots of them had this particular role that was certainly quite a, good percentage of the people that had, had this role. Now, the problem with it was that everybody was interpreting this brief in a different way. Okay, so some were taking a very light touch to it. Others were taking a, much, as some would interpret it and say, taking far too detailed an approach to it, doing too much in the role. So it would have been very easy for the manager, the leader to say, they're going to rewrite the job brief. But actually this, Scenario was causing a lot of angst. There was unions involved, you know, there was a lot of unpleasantness there. And the, I suppose the leader felt that the manager felt that it was better to bring somebody like me in to actually ask to give the voice to the staff and ask them, well, what do you think should this role entail? What do you think are the tasks that everybody should be doing? So that when we came to the end of the session, as it were, we That we would have like a, a job description, a more detailed job description based on the experience of people who were doing the job, but also people who were on the receiving end of the job, which was very important. So you were getting both perspectives. So what I used in that situation is I used a combination of methods. So I used what's called a focus conversation to have a, discussion, just first of all, around what was already happening, you know, the experiences from both sides, from those who were both in the role and those who were on the receiving end of the role, as it were, and also asking them to talk about other stakeholders that were being impacted and held by this particular role.

Louise McDonnell:

When you go into have that conversation, if something like that is causing a lot of angst in an organization. I can imagine that like that angst is probably playing out that like, probably not a very pleasant place to be that maybe there's, you know, conflicts there so. When you walk into the room and there's like, I can imagine walking into a room of a hundred people and they're probably all in different camps and all have different opinions. Like what do you do then if you have somebody who's like just a talker and they're talking so much that, you know, that you can see there's other people in the room that are nearly disengaged because they think what's the point, like what happened? Like,

Miriam O'Donoghue:

I suppose there's a couple of things that you need to do. as a facilitator, you know, when you're going into that situation, you you need to be very well prepared. Okay. And I would have been really well prepared in that situation where I would have had all of my questions worked out. I would have known how I wanted the room organized, how many people I wanted in each group, how I wanted the groups mixed, you know, to ensure that there wasn't any one camp sitting at all a table. Now all of that is done as part of the scoping meetings that take place beforehand. And then the follow on meetings. So before I ever get to that scenario, I have had two or three meetings with management beforehand. So I really understand what I'm actually going into. Now it can be quite stressful going in, you know, because you don't know what's going to happen. You can have as much planning as you want done and you feel or hope that you've been told everything, but then. There can sometimes be something that you haven't been told about that suddenly surfaces in the group. So as a facilitator, you're trying to stay very calm. And what I also try to do is a little bit of, of visioning as I'm going in, where I actually say, I'm putting on my armor. I know that might sound a little bit ridiculous, but I'm putting on my armor. I am protected here. I know I've done my preparation. I know my processes work, my methodologies work, and I'm going to trust those. And I'm going to do the best that I can do here. Do you know?

Louise McDonnell:

And so is it fair to say that the processes that you're taking people through, make sure that everybody's involved?

Miriam O'Donoghue:

So, the processes that I use, for example, we started with the focus conversation and we moved into the consensus workshop method. I know that those processes are going to allow for all voices to be heard. Now, 100 people, you can't have 100 people all voicing at the same time, but you can structure that so you can have voices in the small groups, you can have feedback coming from the groups, you can have different ways of the ideas being presented to you. I use what's called a sticky wall, I get all of the ideas written down and up onto the wall. We do clustering and so on. At every stage of the process, I'm asking the group, you know, do we have clarity here? Is there anything that needs more clarity? Are we okay to move on here? You know so I'm, constantly looking for their permission to move to the next stage. I'm keeping them informed of what's happening. At all times, as the facilitator, I am neutral. So I'm not showing any biases. I'm not coming down on the side of either, you know I am totally neutral. And that is so important to maintain that stance as a facilitator. I have to trust that the expertise is in the room and my job is to extract. that from the group to get their ideas. Okay. But also like by following those processes, what I'm also allowing is that there is time for emotions to come out. As we call them, the emotions can be the elephant in the room. You can get to the very end of a session and then there can be somebody who goes, but, You know and you need to build in time for those emotions. If you build in time and you have questions that allow for those emotions to come out. So what really challenged you here? What did you struggle with? What were you surprised by? What disappointed you? Do you know, you, we can use. the language of emotions without saying the word feelings, which can be a little bit of a barrier when you use that word with some clients. So we use other words and if we can Structured conversation and the process such that we allow for those to come out before we start getting into the analysis and the connections and the solutions and the final resolve. And it's really important to get us through to the final resolve and the outcome, you know, because so many of the sessions that we go into. Or you hear about people going into, I hope it doesn't happen in my sessions is that they say, Oh, sure. Look, it just keeps going around and around and around. We get nowhere. We never decide on anything. Oh, are we back here again in this meeting? Sure. We were talking about this only two weeks ago. Sure. We're sick of talking about this. Sure. We never make any decision here. So it's really important that we go through a staged process. And that's one of the things that um, the ICA UK, The group facilitation methods. They're, they're participatory. They give people 100 percent voice. They take you through a stage process where you have a shared awareness and you have a shared agreement at the end of that process. So we got in that session that I was talking to you about, about that role, we ended up at the end of three hours. It took with that group because it was a big group and there was a lot going on in that group. We ended up with the basis of a job description, as it were, at the end that was. What wasn't being imposed upon them because they as a group had all agreed that this is what the job spec now needed a little bit of tidying up a little bit of polishing with language and another group was going to go on and take that and do a little bit of work on it. But they now had license to do that. And the manager then had the license to actually be able to bring that back to the group and say, okay. i the job spec for the group.

Louise McDonnell:

And so would it be fair to say, Miriam, that Unless that you've been a trained facilitator, and you're working through a methodology, you know, you could have somebody who goes in and thinks they can facilitate the room, but if they haven't had the training, that's when you don't get the outcome.

Miriam O'Donoghue:

Yeah, I think you do need to be really clear about your methodology. You you certainly wouldn't take on a scenario like that going into the lion's den, as it were, without feeling that you've got a really powerful methodology behind you, that you know it really well, that you're really well planned, and that you're experienced. I mean, I wouldn't have taken on a scenario like that in the beginning of my facilitation. journey. I would have gone for simpler things, you know less contentious, let's put it like that things. So because you've got in that particular scenario, you've got also people that you need to manage. you've got people who want to, dominate you need to manage that you have people who want to have the last say on everything. You've got to manage that. You've got the quiet people who are afraid to say anything. You've got to manage that. Do you know, there's so many things at play and you, the more you do it, the better you get, but you're never perfect at it because there is no two sessions that are ever perfect. The same.

Louise McDonnell:

And so would it be also fair to say that you can apply, like, just even when you're talking with the people that want to have the last say and the people who want to just say too much and the people who don't want to say anything. Would it be fair to say that you could even apply that methodology even to managing teams or managing meetings. Like in work, out of work, family meetings, whatever it may be.

Miriam O'Donoghue:

Yeah, absolutely. Like you go into a meeting and it's very common, you know, for somebody who's chairing that meeting. They might say, let's give this 10 minutes, let's have a brainstorm on this. Let's have a quick chat about this. And then there's silence, right? And then somebody comes in and fills that silence. And great if it's filled in a good way, but sometimes it's gone off already before discussions even started, it's gone off on another tangent completely. If that discussion, however, you know, you know, you've only got 10 minutes for it or or hopefully a little bit more you can have your questions structured. It doesn't mean that you have to slavishly stay with those questions. But it means that you're giving a structure to the conversation. What that means, what that says to your group is, Hey, Miriam's done a bit of planning here. You know, so rather than think, Oh gosh, you know this is this is going to be too structured or whatever. If I've got my questions, right. It will facilitate the conversation. It will facilitate the flow of the conversation. And we will use that 10 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever in a much more efficient way, a much more creative way. We get better ideas. it'll be more fruitful, more inclusive than if I had just thrown out a topic to the group to discuss.

Louise McDonnell:

I'm really intrigued about the Lego Serious Play. Can you tell us an example of how you used that recently in an organization?

Miriam O'Donoghue:

So recently I used it for a merger. So this was two organizations that were merging and where there was a lot of, how would I describe it, mistrust. Okay. It was like them and an us sort of scenario, you know, and suspicion. So in that instance, we used it actually to help the participants. To get to know each other better. there wasn't a huge agenda other than to try and build confidence to look at maybe things like the cultural differences, their values, their beliefs. And we use that to, first of all, identify common areas. Do you know what are the commonalities between us all? And the, and there was huge areas of commonality, but then what were the potential areas for friction or misunderstanding? And then looking at moving it on, we looked at strategies for how they were going to integrate. As a group, you know, how is that sort of how are we going to bridge that gap as it were? to do that, we used Lego. Okay, now it's not using Lego in the way that children would use it to build the sort of models, you know, that they build with instructions or the free play that they might have. This Lego series play is a very again, it's a structure. It's a facilitated process where you give out a brief to the group where they, they, they build. And then, as I said, they're not, they're just putting bricks together to represent their ideas and then they share and then we reflect. So I just have one here actually from the very similar. It's not the same, obviously, as what was built in the session, but just to give you the idea of, you know, the red and the blue brick there representing the two organizations. And there you've got the the bridge, as it were. And this would have been similar to what one of the people one of the participants built. And it's the idea of trying to meet in the middle and having some victory there. I don't know if you can see it. Yeah, yeah, we can see it. If you're on YouTube, you can see it if you're not. Yeah, yeah. No, you can see it perfectly, yeah. Yeah. And what this does actually is, even though it's just a very simple scenario here So when somebody is sharing their ideas, what they're actually doing is they're pointing to, and they're sharing this little model. this can be really powerful in a scenario where people are afraid to talk, you know, they're afraid to share their feelings, to share their frustrations, their worries and so on.

Louise McDonnell:

just to clarify, because let's say, I'm sorry, just for anyone, including myself, who's never done it. So you would've given like broken people. I gave a little, I would've given a little brief. Yeah. To, and they, they would've built this

Miriam O'Donoghue:

is it. And I, so I might say you know, to and we would've led up to this now, so we wouldn't code into this, but it might be just you know, build a little model that allows you to talk about some of the worries you have. About this amalgamation. So what the BRICS are doing is they're metaphorically representing some of those challenges. Now, there may not have been any, figure on it at all. It might just have been a little you know just the bridge and it might have been, for example just the little flag, you know, so it doesn't have to have a it's whatever allows the person to talk about what they need to talk about. But what's lovely about it is that they can talk about this model. What they're really talking about is how I feel. It's a model. Takes the attention away from them and it allows them to talk a lot more freely and then as they're talking about their little model, new ideas are coming to them. And we call this thinkering. And it's when you're thinking. with your brain, thinking with your hands. So you're tinkering with your hands, building the bricks and you put the two together and it's a tinkering process, which means that actually putting the bricks together, it's unlocking your thought process, your thinking, and it allows you to share. So what we would do in that scenario is we would have small groups at each of the tables. They would build and then they would share what each of them would have a chance to share what they've built. So what it's doing is it's giving 100 percent voice to people. Everybody builds, 100 percent building, 100 percent of people are sharing. Okay, so there's no spectators. Everyone's fully involved in the process, and then we can have a discussion about maybe some of the similarities that we have in terms of concern. Some of the differences that we have. I mean, it depends on the topic, obviously, or the question that I've posed. We can also. For example, write little cards, we can label these, we can bring them into a joint model that might show our general concerns, or maybe some of the solutions that we have to those concerns and so on. So I. Take people through a facilitated process of building on their own, then building as a group and so on. So the idea is, it's just to help us to think differently and to support that thinking on that sharing. So it's, it's a really lovely process. And for anybody who loves that tangible sort of experience, you know loves building with their hands. You do not need to be a good Lego builder. You just need to be able to put some bricks together. Okay. And we do a few little warm up exercises just to get those fingers moving and getting the sort of the brain engaged, you know, but wow, is it powerful in terms of what can come out. Okay.

Louise McDonnell:

I can imagine. I can imagine it's like, first of all, it's like a breath of fresh air. It's completely different from what people are probably used to. And I love the fact that it's so inclusive and that it gets the creative juices flowing. Brilliant. Fantastic. So anything else that, you see happening within organizations or any other methods that you use to help to solve other problems that you commonly see. Yeah. So what.

Miriam O'Donoghue:

One that I'm just planning for actually that's taking place in a just over a week's time is again, it's a merger, but it's actually needing to write a mission statement. Now, mission statements and vision statements, you know, We've all been there and they can't, it can be a bit of a dry experience sometimes. And so if you can come in and surprise the group and do it in a slightly different way in this instance, I'm going to use the consensus workshop method. I'm going to have my sticky wall. And for those of you that don't know what a sticky wall is, it's like a big parachute, a rectangular parachute that I place up on the wall. And it's It is sticky and we're going to use this to identify the values that people feel should underpin the mission statement, because as I said, we've got two organizations coming together. Each has a mission statement, but we need to come up with a new mission statement to meet the needs of the new structure as it were. And that As well, you know, takes a bit of thinking about beforehand because we need to have the right people there. We need to have the right stakeholders there. So it's not just about the internal stakeholders. It's about the external stakeholders as well. And if you can get everybody into a session like that, then it's really inclusive. And then people aren't kind of going afterwards. Now, where did that mission statement come from? You know, that they, they actually feel part of that process. So that's just another 1, you know, that I've been or that I'm planning with at the moment. Yeah, another one is low employee morale you know, where you're trying to get the group find a process that will help them to be able to express freely their feelings. That can be a tricky one, you know and looking at what might be the root causes to some of those feelings and problems. And then looking at, I suppose, the, our resolve at the end of that would be some solutions. To improve the workplace culture. And again, that can be done using different facilitation methods. I mean, another one I love to use is the game for solutions. And this is where, you know, we're up moving around the room. We have a grid drawn out on the floor with masking tape. we have teams of people working their way through the grid. And we have different questions for them at each stage of the grid. And that can be really fun and engaging. It's not dissimilar to a brainstorm. Okay, but the difference is that it's got a bit of gamification added to it. And so many of our participants prefer to be up and moving around. Wanted to be a little bit competitive sometimes maybe. You know, there's all sorts of things that motivate people. And again, it's down to the time of the day as well. Like if you've got a group in an afternoon session, it can be sometimes a little bit tricky to engage them. I know people are tired as we come to the end of the day, they've had their lunch, whatever. So something like Game for Solutions is brilliant and great fun. And you can get some great ideas and outcomes from it. I also use lots of tools. so I just brought one tool with me, which is little squishy balls. So one thing I should say at my, in person sessions, I often have fidget you know, because years ago I can remember, like, being in sessions and you'd see somebody doodling. Don't know if you've ever had this experience, Louise. Somebody doodling and you're kind of going. Or I would have been going in the past because I didn't understand what was going on. Are they really paying attention? Do you know? now, of course, we know that because we, we have groups we need to be able to be aware of that, some of our groups are participants and so on. We need to allow for people to be able to move, get up and move around. Be able to engage with and pick up fidget toys if they need to, whatever. So I always have fidget toys built into my sessions and I have them on the tables and I can use them for check ins, you know, and I might have something here like this is somebody who's feeling pretty happy. Okay, I have one here. This one is really chilled and cool, feeling very cool, probably a bit too cool. This is somebody who is maybe a bit concerned about something that we're going to do. And this is how I can read the room. And this is somebody who just feels like they don't have the Maybe the freedom to express what they want to express yeah. Just worried about, Expressing. So I'll often use these as maybe check in. I'll have a set of these balls at each table and I'll ask people, you know, so at the beginning of the session, so pick up a, a ball. to represent how you're feeling right now. And use it if you, if you feel comfortable to do that, use it to maybe share if they don't know each other. And sometimes they don't know each other if they're coming from different organizations and they're, they're coming together for the first time. Use it to introduce yourself and maybe say a little bit about how you're presenting today. And again, it's the idea of It's okay to talk about the ball, rather than me being sort of having to talk about myself, even though I'm really talking about myself through the ball. But you know what I'm saying, it's not as intimidating. And you know, people love things like this. Anything that helps as it were to break the ice. Sometimes when I'm going into contentious contentiousness, Where I know it's going to be a bit contentious. I'll bring in my smelly markers. For any of you that haven't come across smelly markers and you only probably know about these if you have kids, but, you know, you've got apple smells and peach and all sorts of things. And I'll say nothing about the markers, but I'll get them maybe to write their name. Or just do some very quick little thing writing at the beginning. And the next thing you'll hear somebody in the group going, There's a smell off these markers. Mine smells like strawberries. And the next thing you have a ripple effect. Yeah, I got pineapple. Yeah, mine smells kind of weird. I'm not sure what it is. Here, have a sniff. Do you know what this is? And what it does is it suddenly just. Breaks the ice as it were, or melts the ice that the, that just any little bit of, of anxiety that was in the room is suddenly, you know, it's just become a little playful sort of few minutes, do you know? Yeah, yeah, excellent. And it's little tools like that, small little things that help greatly. so anybody that knows me knows that I always come in with a suitcase of tricks. I don't use them all, but I'm a great one. I do have a plan, but I'm a great one for pulling something out when I need to. So if I know that there's, and I'm sorry I haven't got it here, but if I know there's not something that's not being spoken about, I have this stuffed toy, which is a fish. And I'll take the fish out and I'll say I'm, I'm sensing there's a bit of a smelly fish here. So there's something not being spoken about. And I might just throw it into the room and I might say something. You know what they say about a smelly fish? It's just going to get stinkier and stinkier if it's not addressed. So what is it that we need to be talking about here? You just need something to break that tension in the room. I'll sometimes take out my Scrabble tiles. And I'll give each group a little bag of Scrabble tiles, and I'll ask them to start thinking and to brainstorm with the Scrabble tiles. Now, it's harder to do than having a straightforward brainstorm, but what does that do? It makes the groups work harder to come up with words that they can make from those Scrabble tiles. And the fact that they do that, they may come up with ideas with words that trigger new ideas that they hadn't even thought about. So it's all about triggering, you know, I'll use my story cubes or another one. You know, where you have little, little the little story cubes and I happen to have one here. Okay. So this little one, I'm just showing you one side of it. I don't know if you can see it's a magnet on that one. There's a bit of a fire going on there. And I'll often throw the story cubes down or give each group a set of story cubes and I'll say to them, okay. So. This is what we're talking about. So we might be talking about low morale or, or whatever it is. Pick an image, you know, so you've got nine, usually there's nine story cubes in a box and each cube obviously has six sides. So you never know what like nine scenarios are going to come up, what images are going to come up. And I'd say, okay, pick one that just stands out at you. That allows you to talk about what you see as the connection between that image and the problem that we've got. Again, you've got to put, it pushes it a little bit, pushes the boundaries a little bit in terms of that topic, but you can end up getting a perspective on that topic or a side to that topic or that problem that you never actually had thought about before. So, What I'm using are little triggers, as it were,

Louise McDonnell:

and Miriam, like, I have to say I suppose the overarching message I'm getting is that it's fully inclusive, that it's hearing every voice. yeah, it's getting every idea and it's encouraging people to think a little bit differently and to think laterally and outside the box. and I'm also hearing as well that. you should follow a process in order to get the best possible outcome and I know that's what you do so well. So Miriam, if people wanted to find out more about you I know you're running a lot of training courses this autumn, but I know even if you're listening back on this in a few months time, Miriam is always busy and running courses. How can people find you Miriam?

Miriam O'Donoghue:

Probably the easiest place to find me is on LinkedIn or on Facebook, you know, but yeah, you can email me if you want me to send you any brochures. Maria Mod donahue@gmail.com. Lego Series Play dot, ie. there's loads of ways of of contacting me.

Louise McDonnell:

So on Linked under Miriam Madonna, who on Yeah. Facebook and Instagram. Under Mary Madonna, who. Training and facilitating survey

Miriam O'Donoghue:

training and facilitation, and then you know better than I do. Louise.

Louise McDonnell:

And it's miriam madhu.com, isn't it? It's mim o donahue.com or ie. Will get me as well. Oh, I looked at, well, and, and of course you have all, all bases covered. how could I not suggest otherwise? Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. All that I mean it, all I can say is, you know, anyone who is working either in a small team, or even if it's in a voluntary committee, or even if it's in a, like in an organization like a golf club, or, you know, I'm just sitting at different clubs and societies, or your workplace. You know, there's so much there and so if you want to get better from your teams and from the people that you work with, definitely check out Miriam. And thank you so much for coming on and, and sharing all your advice.

Miriam O'Donoghue:

Thank you so much, Louise, for the opportunity.

Louise McDonnell:

You're welcome.