3 Responses

1. Self Awareness Activity

   One exercise I use based on influening, personal awareness and personal branding is the following:

    

   1

   After participants have introduced themselves or have been in the training room for around half an hour, run this exercise.

   2

   Hand out a sheet of A4 and ask them to put their name on the bottom of the paper.

   3

   Once done, ask the delegates to pass on to their collegaue on their left. 

   4

   They then have one minute to list three words that describes their initial impression of that person. If they cannot think of three words, put in as many as they can. (That in itself could be a discussion point based on why has this person perhaps not made an impact). The three words must be writiten on the first line and then they folder the paper over the words so other collegaues will not be influenced by what they see.

   5

   After one minute and the paper has been folded, all pass on to the next person to their left and so on until the penultimate person before it gets back to the original delegate.

   6

   Before handing back, discuss this is people’s initial perceptions based on their first impressions and the impact they may or may not have made. This allows discussion about various issues such as how quickly we make decisions about other people, how we see them versus how they see themselves, the need for self awareness when meeting new people and so on.

   7

   Finally allow the sheet to be handed to original person and give 30 – 40 seconds to digiest. In the main, people do tend to focus on positive or nice traits observed and the feedback can often be a pleasant suprise.

   8

   Once theey have had a chance to look throuhg, ask to identify common words that might have cropped up. That is how they have presented themsleves to their collegaues intentionally or unintentionally but none the less, that is how they are perceived. Are they pleased or do they need to rethink behaviour and self awareness?

    

   In certain events, I have buyilt this up after a day or so by repeating but slightly differetn by asking two things you now respect about this person and one thing teh indiviudal may want to consider as this may develop their impact. Kind of use with caution.

    

   Hope that gives food for thought.

    

   Alec

   Skills Channe TV

2. if you can

   get the names of the people before the event and look them up on Facebook, LinkedIn etc

   download some of their entries (and the entries of people who MAY be them and put these onto slides

   Share and discuss

   rus

3. Analogies

   Have you tried using analogies? For example, if I were to describe my impact on others as being like a particular cosmetic, which would it be and why? This then opens the door to ask the question, "What would you like your impact to be?"

    

   Hope this helps,

    

   Chris