Wrap-Up

I had planned to write this immediately after finishing, but as I was writing, it felt like it was still too fresh and was focusing on the final chapters of the book rather than the entire work, so I waited until now to come back to it.

The book started out strong for me mainly because of the way it laid out its thesis - the need for relationship-based activity - their importance in developing connections and enforcing team building, and it that respect, I think the book succeeds. The activity discussion was a mixed bag for two reasons:

1. The writing of the book - regimented and overly structured - was unnecessary to the point of distraction. In the final chapters, I found myself becoming derisive of what I was reading and not putting myself in a place to accept the material and had to pause. I feel that this book was written from the perspective of someone physically presenting the information as if it were part of a seminar. In that environment, I would not have been so distracted and it would have made more sense to say provide a mock speech.

2. Some of the exercises, and some of the discussion was aimed at the K-12 set, which is not my field. Topics such as how to interact with parents of children made it less relatable.

If there's anything I would recommend for this book, it would be the first two chapters - the discussions of how relationships and tension can impact learning or even's one social harmony was written well, and what I found most interesting, was its dwelling even on the mundane interactions - the idea that those can be just as powerful as an intimate conversation over time was rather eye-opening and is probably the thing that will stick with me most going forward.

While there are exercises I found helpful in this book, particularly the STEW process in Chapter 3 and the Truth Letter in Chapter 5, I think many of the exercises are merely variations on a theme and hence come off as filler.

My final suggestion is to read those first few chapters, but after that,  skim the exercises and find what is relevant to your audience.

Chalets 11 & 12: Closing thoughts

This book ends on something of strange note to me. Chapter 11, called "Sequencing," is simply a list for each chapter as to how to order the exercises so they build on one another.  To me,  it's unnecessary because he addresses these suggested orders in each chapter.  Annoyingly,  the sequencing is chapter structured,  so there's no sequencing of activities between the chapters (say an exercise in chapter 3 followed by an exercise in chapter 7),  which could be quite powerful.

Chapter 12 is about energizers and is for those moments where people are getting fidgety. There's 12 energizers total, which are about a page long. They mostly consist of stretching and doing/saying something,  like touching the walks of the room,  or chanting a phrase like "stretching is good!"  It's a very repetitive chapter,  though I don't think getting movement going for a few moments in a classroom environment is a bad idea. I just think the way the material is presented comes off as extra fluff. 

Remember how I said he offered scripts in his exercises. Here's an example.

 

I'll make one last brief post summarizing my thoughts on the book,  but spoiler - not impressed. 

Chapters 10: Content Delivery

Chapter 10 is the last of the chapters that contain exercises, so I'll dedicate a separate post to it before discussing the (very brief) final two chapters.

Mendes draws a strange parallel to the discussion and the activities that follow in this chapter. He mentions how sometimes we get behind schedule and, as a result,  conduct a large data dump of information to make sure everything gets covered. 

I've been in this situation,  and in the beginning,  I'd try shortcuts,  but eventually I learned that it didn't matter if I got through the information. It mattered that I provided information in the most understandable form possible. 

Mendes' approach though, is to make group projects out of it. But I don't see how that is a time saver. They are merely group projects. There is certainly something to be said about allowing learners to teach and Mendes provides 5 exercises that do just that. A couple of these are fairly pedestrian; for example,  doing a group presentation or breaking of into teams/duos to go over what's been discussed. One that stood out was providing a piece of information to each group such that once the groups each share their information,  the entire group gets the big picture. 

That said,  it doesn't resolve the issue at hand mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. I think exercises that encourage interaction should be a staple of being a facilitator though. 

Chapters 6-8: Contending with Emotions

These chapters contend with exercises that are driven on dealing with expressing emotion. 

I'll try to give the tl; dr version of the chapters here. Chapter 6 begins with an overview of the brain - a very biological overview. Mendes discusses the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions like fear and rage, and the left pre-frontal lobe  which puts the brakes on impulse control. In highly emotional contexts, the amygdala provides emotional context to the experience. The exercises in this chapter essentially involve diving a classroom into groups of three or four and providing an object as a "talking stick." The groups are a listening group rather than a discussion group. They are given a prompt in which to discuss their emotions on a particular topic. 

Chapter 7 is about finding positivity - spending five minutes writing or discussing a success you had that week, or pretending a movie is being done about your life, and you give a 90-second synopsis to the director - all of this is within groups, followed by reflective debriefing. I think the most interesting exercise from this chapter is "speed teaming" - a quick way to build a team - everyone in a group spends 30 seconds telling everyone something  (non-work/non-school related) about themselves. Then they are given a limited amount of time to come up with a team name and a ritual for celebrating. 

Chapter 8 is about developing interpersonal sensitivity, and there is no way in technical training I would touch either of those exercises with a ten foot pole.  The second exercise in particular is asking people to take sides on a controversial topic (there is too much homework in school, for example), and is meant to be a way of enforcing respect toward conflicting points of view. Mendes does mention this needs to be done within an environment where people are more comfortable with one another, but that is rarely my situation. 

 I will say that my initial enthusiasm for this book has waned as I have gone through the book. The exercises in the book are described in inordinate preciseness down to providing scripts for how you might introduce them. I know the writer has done seminars on this sort of thing, and I imagine that these lessons work best as a lecture and not so much as a reading. At least then, you would see examples of these exercises in action before trying them on your own. 

I am trying to get out of my technical training mind with this book because I don't know if I will always do technical training.  So, I could imagine I may have experiences where some of these would come in handy. But for right now, most of the exercises in these chapters have little correlation to what I do. 

Chapter 9: Quotes

No, you didn't miss posts for Chapters 6-8. Those will come next week. Just had a moment last week where I skimmed through the book looking at what was to come and saw this short 3 page section, so I read ahead.

Mendes suggests an icebreaker of presenting a quote and having people discuss what that quote means. This chapter lists some of his favorite quotes - that's it. He doesn't discuss the quotes in detail.

I think in technical training, it would be relevant to include a quote about tackling the unknown since often a training session comes with migrating from a different software with which they were accustomed, or starting a new job. After a little internet searching, I like this one:

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Roosevelt felt that confidence was gained by attacking your trepidations instead of avoiding them - you can say if I made it through that, then I can make it through the next challenge.

Any quotes you might use as an icebreaker?

Chapter 5: Writing Process

I rather liked this section because it was geared towards individual reflection, which seems like something I might more likely incorporate into my current position.

An overview of exercises with my thoughts:

1. Solo What's Up? - As in the pairs of chapter 4, give students an allotment of time 2-3 minutes to write down their current state of mind. Variations could include ranking their day on a 1-10 scale, or drawing a picture. I don't think I noted before, but in the pairs set-up there is a discussion period that follows where each partner states what they learned of their companion. The solo what's up does not seem to involve such a reflective period and is more personal.

2. FortunatelyUnfortunately - Write a paragraph where each sentence alternates starting with these words. "Unfortunately, I didn't get my house clean yesterday. Fortunately, the kitchen is sparkling. Unfortunately, there is still work to do in the bathroom. Fortunately, the bathroom is small and takes less time to clean..." The idea is to bring balance and perspective to issues the student might be facing.

3. Projection City - Write a paragraph from the perspective of an object in the room. From my plant on the windowsill - "The flag outside shows that it is breezy and cool, but it still looks pleasant. Too bad that guy at the desk isn't looking up to even notice the view..."

4. A Matter of Choice - Write five sentences that start with "I can't." And then another that start with "I don't"  this is another exercise that seems to promote more reflection - many of the "I can't" statements may be more a choice than an inability (unless it's the physically impossible - "I can't walk through walls." It's an exercise that is meant to be about choice-making and responsibility.

5. Truth Letter - I won't go too specific with this as it is long, but I will say this was the most interesting and potentially rewarding exercise. It is basically writing a truth letter that addresses the six stages of an upset," or negative experience, such as an argument.  The stages - anger, hurt, fear, remorse, want, and compassion - are prompted by phrases - "I'm sorry that..." for remorse, for example. The letter is six paragraphs addressing each stage.

Mendes cites a study where this process was useful with recently laid-off employees. Those who wrote truth letters found jobs quicker than those who didn't. The idea is that processing and understand the emotions in a negative experiences also allows an emotional and healthy release.

I found on a personal level the truth letter to be something most applicable to myself,, more for processing my own emotions. I'm trying to determine how this might be applied in an academic setting, however, as it is so deeply personal. Of these exercise, #4 seems to have some applicability to technical training in that I occasionally have clients who are hesitant about change or a new process - it might be something that could be adapted to those fears.