Our goal in putting out a Navgati newsletter was to be mindful as content creators. To make these newsletters of value to you without adding to the burden of stuff you need to process.

So here’s what you can expect from the Navgati Curiositea newsletter (if you’re wondering about the spelling of that, take a look around the rest of our website).

  • Always focused on bringing you some new learning that you can act on right away
  • Always backed by evidence – either from research or from our own experience
  • Never more than once a month
  • Never more than 5 mins to read

Make history with us today and read on to get a taste of what we mean when we say always actionable, always relevant.

Presenting the very first edition: Three creative exercises to help your team work better together

Exercise 1: Values-Shvalues

Useful if:
You want the values of your org/team to be more than a bunch of complex English words in a report.

What is this based on?
The universal truth that stories are the most effective way of encoding messages. We’ve found that while a shared understanding of values is crucial to building culture; values documents tend to be heavy and tough to relate to. A story circle approach can help people internalize the values at a far more visceral level.

How to?

  • Get the team warmed up in any playful manner (eg in smaller groups ask them to share a favourite childhood memory of theirs)
  • Put up your organization/team values; divide the team into groups and get them to share stories about their lived experience of the values using these questions
    • Tell the group about a time when you/someone else demonstrated one of these values.
    • As a manager, share a time when you did something to encourage your team to live the values
    • What’s an example of where you struggled to demonstrate one of these? What comes in the way?
    • What systems/processes could we put in place to make it easier to live this value?
  • Keep rotating people across groups so they learn from a range of experiences.
  • Close by asking people to share one commitment they’d like to make to the rest of the team to bring the values to life

Exercise 2: Picture this

Useful if:
You want your team to reflect on the strengths and limitations of the group; we’ve found it very useful to do this as part of a visioning exercise or before embarking on a difficult project.

What is this based on?
The fact that the language of images appeals to humans at a far more fundamental level than that of words. So, when you ask people to pick a picture that represents their answer to a question, you’re likely to get a much more nuanced and layered response.

Where to find pictures, you say? Go to navgati.in/metaphorically-speaking for a diverse set of high quality images we’ve helpfully put together.

How to?

  • Get the team warmed up – ask the group to go to the link above and pick a picture that represents a strength of theirs. Get them to talk about this in smaller groups (why the picture and what the strength is)
  • Ask them to pick a picture that represents their answer to “What is one signature strength of ours as a team?” Draw out responses by asking questions like
    • What do you see in the picture? What connections are you making to the question?
    • Share an example of where you saw this strength play out
  • Keep consolidating the strengths on a flipchart
  • Repeat the same steps for “what is one area for us as a team that we must address in order to grow?”
  • Close by identifying next steps to either leverage on the strengths or work on focus areas

Exercise 3: This is my life

Useful if:
You want your team to get to know each other and to develop comfort with vulnerability

What is this based on?
Ever since the pandemic, it has been difficult to build work relationships that go beyond the transactional. And even the most highly streamlined teams feel the impact of not having human connection sooner or later…in our experience with facilitation, we find that most issues with conflict or lack or collaboration boil down to not recognizing our shared humanity.

Getting your team to know the person behind the role or the black screen on Zoom can be a surprisingly simple and enrichening exercise.

How to?

  • Get the people you want in a room.
  • Order something yummy to eat (samosas and jilebis seem to set just the right mood)
  • Explain the context
  • Get everyone to pull out their phones and look up their camera roll. Ask them to pick three pictures that represent
    • A cherished relationship they don’t often talk about
    • Their most prized possession as of now
    • A picture from a holiday they’d like to go back to
    • A happy memory from the last year
  • Have one person at a time pass their phone around as they talk about the picture; invite the others to ask curious questions
  • To debrief, just ask people to share how they felt sharing their stories and listening to those of others