TrustTalk™ best practices

Andrea Mayfield, of The Bordley Development Group, described this way of using TrustTalk with a group:

"We had them go through all the cards in the deck – not just by one category. They were to pick out the cards that intrigued them in some way for their team. Then they got in partners and talked through their selection of cards – looking for the theme that the different selection revealed for their team.

They thought it was very interesting when they looked at the cross-section of the cards vs. just by category!

One said that she had a new team forming, and she was going to use them for formation discussions. It is interesting that they have a lot more ideas about how to use them when you don’t say that they are for a trust issue – but leave it open for any organizational issues. Then they come up with Team Formation, a Respect issue etc…but it is the word trust that gets people squirrelly…"

Kate Trygstad of Creative Facilitating (www.creativefacilitating.com)shared a great idea with us. She and a partner used TrustTalk™ in an offsite.

• "I created a wheel with the six categories of trust on a flip chart—actually I created two, one for each small group.

• We had the small group members randomly draw cards from the several categories.

• In my small group we entered into oral discussion about the questions and wrote some combined responses on sticky notes and put them in the appropriate categories on the wheel.

• In my colleague’s small group he had people read only one of the questions on the card and each person who was so inclined wrote a response on the sticky note and put it on the wheel.

• When we brought the two groups together we combined the notes on one wheel and talked.  Where people could anonymously post responses, there were many."

"Another idea based on this is for a group to use one or two cards every two or three weeks.

• Post them on a board with a big sheet of paper for each.

• Invite staff members to anonymously respond with sticky note messages to each card.

• Then take the cards and pages into the meeting, talk about the responses, and talk about the suggestions on the back.

• This method should appeal to the people who take a little longer to process things and to those who are reluctant to say some things out loud. It might also invite some conversations out of the hearing of the manager, and the more people talk about their dynamics, the better."