Last September at the UXSG 2016 conference, I attended a mini workshop called Improv.e UX — Improve your soft skills with Improv, conducted by Raffaella Roviglioni & Alessio Ricco.
Nevermind the title of the workshop, at first glance, I thought it was a typo. Anyway, I had a lot of fun. I’m sure most of the participants at the workshop too. The session involved a lot physical activities. However, I will sum up 3 main takeaways in this post (Well, I am sure other have more takeaways, feel free to share it with me 😀). Here we go…
During the workshop, making mistakes and saying the wrong thing is totally acceptable. Because that is exactly the point, it is okay to make mistakes at work. Alessio said that most of us naturally try to avoid failure at work (worrying about their credibility). People tend to associate silly mistakes with negativity. “Failure is not the end, it’s an opportunity to learn.” When we look at each failure as a learning opportunity, we will be better with future attempts. As Stanford professor Bob Sutton and IDEO Partner Diego Rodriguez often say at the d.school, “Failure sucks, but instructs.”
“People tend to associate silly mistakes with negativity”
A new study by Daniel Gilbert (who wrote a great book called ‘Stumbling on Happiness’) and Matthew Killingsworth, confirms something we’ve all suspected: most of us are on Autopilot mode nearly half the time. It is easy to get distracted when listening because we can listen so much faster than the speaker’s pace, and we get impatient, then our minds start drifting away. Try take some time to process and digest the speaker’s main points before replying them. The effectiveness of listening can ultimately contribute to the quality of the team’s relationships. which is the main drive for workplace success.
“It is easy to get distracted when listening because we can listen so much faster than the speaker’s pace..”
In the game titled, Paint a Picture, we learned that as a the best way to foster collaborative learning and generate new ideas is to always build on others’ ideas instead of criticising them.
I remembered from one of the IDEO U’s courses I took where Brendan Boyle said that during brainstorming sessions, always defer judgement, and “we try to use and instead of but…”. During ‘Paint A Picture’ activity, we went with the flow and voluntarily contributed our ideas to create a ‘picture’. So much fun!
“…the best way to foster collaborative learning and generate new ideas is to always build on others’ ideas instead of criticising them…”
Communication is the key to the success of your organisation and teams. At times, when we noticed our team members made mistakes, we should quickly stand up and guide them to the correct path.
We learned this lesson by playing the ‘Dolphin’ game. Instead of sitting quietly and be non-reactive to our Dolphin, we collaboratively help it to reach its goal.
We need to erase the mentality of “It is not my job, why should I care” attitude. Overall, rich and open communication is vital for the building the value of trusts in a team. Again, the ‘Dolphin’ game shown us that everyone makes mistakes and that it is no biggie, let’s fix it and move on! Here are more photos from the session. Big thanks to Tai Woon for taking the photos! 😀
Thanks UXSG 2016 Organisers for hosting the event. Again, thank you Raffaella Roviglioni and Alessio Ricco for conducting the workshop, I was not aware that soft skills can be taught with such fun and engaging activities. Sorry again for being late to the workshop. 😎
This post was originally published on Sep 20, 2016