I did an experiment last week. Some of you knew about it and were cheering me on from a distance (thank you!)
Clarity Therapy has always been a one-on-one (or one-on-few in a small company) exercise. And that works wonderfully – digging into a company’s or person’s wiring; figuring out specific potential market opportunities; crafting succinct go-to-market messages – good stuff.
But I’ve always wondered about the first part – figuring out “wiring,” or DNA-level characteristics. Could that be done in a group format? The market/career opportunities and messages – that has to be individualized “therapy” – but could facilitated instruction and group discussion help people figure out more clearly how they are wired?
Some of my local friends, many of them from our church, decided to be part of an experiment with me. About thirty-five folks gathered for a 1 1/2 hour exercise in group Clarity Therapy.
To make it even more of a challenge, the age and experience range was vast – young people from age 15 all the way to retirees in their 60’s.
We arranged the exercise in these 4 divisions, with the bulk of the time spend on “Wiring”
I broke “Wiring” into 3 groups of characteristics, with three attributes under each group (attendees were to pick in which direction they lean for each attribute, to try to better understand how they approach life and work at a DNA level):
(I think in the future I need to refine this part, and narrow it down to 6 or 7 attributes).
Overall, the exercise went well. Feedback has been quite positive thus far. It may have been a bit too ambitious and high-level for some, and a little bit radical for others – but my purpose is to shake up the status quo about how we think about work! I believe that the most valuable part of the evening was having people break up into small groups and discuss how they view their own “wiring,” and what sorts of job roles they (therefore) would or would not be ideal for. One individual I talked to this morning realized that he, in fact, is not an extrovert as he thought – but an introvert! Which tends to explain a whole set of feelings and behaviors in life.
I think I could condense a subset of this workshop into a one-hour exercise; but ideally, it could also easily be structured as a 3-hour highly-interactive group exercise as well.
As with everything you try out for the first time, plenty of tweaks will need to be applied. And there’s clearly no way a group exercise can provide clear career direction for an individual. But if we can become more aware of our tendencies and strengths and makeup, surely that can help us make better decisions in the future about where we “fit.” So, hopefully, in that sense, we realized some value. Future decisions will be the ultimate litmus test!
