Module 3 / Unit 4 Creative approaches for better hybrid inclusivity

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empowerment
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www.prosper-project.eu
Creative approaches
for better hybrid
inclusivity
Module 3 / Unit 4

post
pandemic
empowerment
programme
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the
author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European
Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be
held responsible for them.
Post Pandemic Empowerment Programme © 2023 by Die Berater/
European E-Learning Institute/ BUPNET/ CATRO/ Momentum/ Smart
Revolution/ Eurotraining is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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Introduction
For leaders and managers, it is crucial to master and apply different creative approaches in the daily routine of
their teams if they want to build strong teams and retain talented employees. This will help them to bring
out the best in each team member, activating the unique potentials of each and making them work as a team
so that the total result exceeds the sum of individual capabilities.
As the World Economic Forum reveals, approximately 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025, as the
adoption of changes in technology and the way we work and interact. They pointed out 10 skills of the future
that people need to develop, to be flexible and competitive. And 5 out of 10 of these skills are connected
with complex problem solving abilities, including:
● analytical thinking
● innovation
● critical thinking
● analysis
● creativity, originality, and ideation.
That’s why in this Unit we will introduce to you the concept of creativity in the business and how to develop it
in your team. We have selected for you some of the best creative methods to generate creative ideas by
using the power of the whole team, which are also easily applicable in a hybrid environment. You can use
these methods to unite your team and to offer them both great experience and the power to use their
potential and strengths, which often are not possible to be used in the working place.

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Self Reflection
Before we dive into the Unit, think of the following:
● How good are you at the following skills of the
future from 0 to 10, where 0 is the lowest and 10
is the highest result?
● How did you develop these skills?
● Do you measure these skills of your employees?
○ If yes, how good your team members are
regarding these skills and what is the skill gap
that needs to be covered?
We hope that after this Unit you will be inspired to
make certain steps toward developing the problem
solving skills in your team, and especially the
creativity, originality, and initiative!
Problem solving skills:
● analytical thinking and innovation
● complex problem solving
● critical thinking and analysis
● creativity, originality, and initiative
● ideation
Self-management:
● Active learning & learning strategies
● Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
Working with people:
● Leadership and social influence
Technologies use:
● Technology use, monitoring and control
● Technology design and programming

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01 Running creative sessions in hybrid environment
02 Icebreakers for better hybrid meetings
03
Creative methods for approaching problems and new
situations
● Design Thinking
● Mastermind
04
Brainstorming techniques for better hybrid experience
Table of Contents
05 Self-Assessment
06 Transition to next module

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KNOWLEDGE:
Learning Outcomes
SKILLS:
BEHAVIOURS:
You will be able to encourage your colleagues to use creative approaches more often
in a group environment to get better ideas and to feel more connected with the
others.
You will be able to select proper tools and apply them in a group environment.
You will learn the main concepts of the importance of problem solving skills and applying
creative group methods to enhance a sense of belonging in your team.
ATTITUDES: To be willing to apply more creative approaches in your daily routines.

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Running creative
sessions in hybrid
environment
01

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1. Running creative sessions in hybrid environment
One of the important skills for the managers and
team leads is to be able to organise, inspire and
conduct effective team sessions to boost creativity
and generate new ideas for certain
topics/problems.
It is not necessary always to be a problem to gather
your people for a group discussion. It is even
better to train the team in less harsh situations, so
to enhance their confidence and the desire to
participate actively and share freely. This is also a
good way for people to better know each other
and to connect through their strengths, different
points of view, mindsets, values, knowledge, etc.
We offer you here some ideas on how to improve
your skills to run successful team events for
generating new ideas, using creative but
structured approaches.
Brainstorming should be collaborative and fun! So, be
sure to:
1. Prepare for the session:
a. You need an agenda & time frame (be sure
people can participate and the time chosen
is not in conflict with major tasks of the
participants or other company events). Be
sure to include:
● small talk time and socialising
● warming up with some icebreakers to help
people feel more comfortable and curious to
participate further
● time to describe the problem/situation and for
questions and short discussions. Be sure to have
a shared understanding before you continue
with the session
● time for work, summary, and next steps
● time for feedback and take outs of the session!

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b. you need a shared space - physical or virtual, with
proper tools to connect and participate equally.
Be sure to make people feel welcomed, expected and important!
You can use both an online meeting platform and a collaborative
platform for organising your ideas like www.miro.com,
www.mural.co, klaxoon.com, mentimeter, slido or their
alternatives. There you can work in groups or contribute
individually.
c. invite a buddy. Each time you can involve different
people to train them and share knowledge with them. They will
help you with all the elements of the process, they will learn and
be inspired to gain new experience and transferable skills.
d. invite the right stakeholders - a diverse group of
people that can contribute differently
e. communicate the agenda with your team/participants
and ask for feedback.
You can read more about how to prepare effective meeting agenda here:
https://www.mural.co/blog/how-to-create-meeting-agendas

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2. Choose the topic
a. Be as clear and specific as possible
b. let the topic be interesting and
stimulating for people
c. be sure that the creative approach is
suitable for the topic chosen
d. be sure to be able to communicate
clearly the subject before and during the
meeting
3. Set basic rules so everybody is aware and feels
comfortable with them. There are different rules
for the different approaches and for some of them
is crucial those rules to follow to guarantee the
best results, to save time, to unleash creativity
avoiding judgment and criticism.
Examples of some people rules for hybrid sessions:
● We start on time - it could be 5 min before the
official start or whatever suits your team
● all video on - nobody hides
● remote first - people that are participating online
are invited to share before the others
● one person speaking at a time & no small talks as
they can distract the sound and to interfere with
people online
● minimise distractions like phones, pets, kids,
neighbours, other colleagues around
● everybody speaks
Examples for some technical rules for the hybrid
sessions:
● 360 camera and adjustable microphone
● nice / big screen to be seen from afar
● strong internet connection
● technical support if needed

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5. Organise the ideas gathered, define and assign the
next steps
a. The ideas generated in a single session can
exceed your expectations. Be sure to have a
time slot for organising and grouping the
ideas
b. may be the most important moment - what
happens next? Negotiate next steps,
responsibilities, time frame, resources, etc.
Don’t leave the meeting with “let’s see what
will happen” or “we will send our ideas to the
next level management and will expect their
resolutions”!
c. be prepared to test and further improve the
ideas until the results suit your goals the
most!
d. gather feedback and ideas for improvement
of the hybrid creative sessions!
4. Conduct the session
a. Choose and explain a specific approach. You
can experiment with different methods as
there are many interesting ones. Be sure to
offer a variety of methods as part of the
bigger process of development of creative
culture and mindset within the company. In
the next chapter of this Unit, you will find
some amazing methods that can be used for
specific targets.
b. Be sure to be prepared and trained for the
method you have chosen, or if you are not -
explain and ask for support!
c. Keep everything visual - you can use online
platforms with different options to gather
ideas.
d. Encourage everybody to participate and
apply individual and group activities.

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6. Celebrate the achievement
a. It is important to close the process with the
same amount of energy and inspiration as the
opening/starting session
b. it is not about the party, but recognising the
efforts and courage of people to participate
and to let them share their experience, what
they have learnt for their job, for their team,
for themselves, etc.
c. you can invite people from other
departments/teams to share your experience
and to encourage them to do the same or to
contribute to your results.
d. publish the results of your sessions in your
internal virtual space or in the social media
your company is using. This will increase the
employer’s brand awareness - internally and
externally!

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Good Practices & Examples
You can watch some tips and tricks about How to
set up and master hybrid meetings
You can watch some tips and tricks about How to
Run Productive Hybrid Meetings!
As the hybrid meetings have 2 aspects - technical and creative, you can watch these 2 video for more
inspiration!
You can also check the Lighthouse series on the hybrid meeting
here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcbv9zftX5da-
gr66hWAT0u-3586rOnGi

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Icebreakers for
better hybrid
meetings
02

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2. Icebreakers for better hybrid meetings
To get more ideas and inspiration on why virtual team events are important
and how to improve your skills to organise such, you can watch the video
of Chad Littlefield from his channel on youtube:
Self Reflection
From 0 to 10 how good are you in
organising and conducting virtual team
events for your colleagues?
Have your team experienced a virtual or
in-presence team building activity
lately?
Did you measure the effect and
satisfaction of it?

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Have you ever attended online meetings where you wished
you had some time in the beginning to share something, to
joke, to ask a question, or just to have a casual, non-
business chat?
As the online meetings are the only time when hybrid teams
can meet, see each other, share and connect, be sure to
make your best to spend some time to raise the spirit of
the participants by using some simple techniques like
icebreakers, adapted for virtual environments. We call it
socialisation, which now in the hybrid reality, needs to be
managed and taken care of because it is no longer a
natural process that happens in the office.
The difference between traditional and virtual icebreakers
are obvious:
● you use online tools that sometimes can give you lots of
advantages in terms of organising and visualising the
process and the outcomes
● people can’t have the real feeling of being together but
still they can connect and feel better, focusing their
energy and attention.
The icebreakers help participants to relax, to know and
connect with each other better, to discover the hidden
potential, talents, and interests of others.
Depending on the meeting and the time frame, you can
choose short and quick ice-breaking questions, short
events or a bit longer online games that can be part of a
great team building agenda.

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A) Opening questions
No matter the purpose, size, number of participants,
and time frame, you can always ask people these
simple questions:
● Mood barometer: how are you feeling today
from 0 to 7? How is your energy today?
● Things that unite people: where are you
working from today? Are you wearing pyjamas
right now?
● Past experience: how would you describe the
last week for you in 1 word?
● Expectations: what are your best expectations
for today’s meeting? And for this week/month?
What makes it different in online meetings is the
possibility to use tools like slido or mentimeter to
visualise the results and use them for further
questions and discussions.
Based on the results you can encourage a few people
(or everybody) to share their experience.
This is so-called checking the pulse of the team!
Unexpected questions
Once you have started with the pulse checking, you can
continue with more unexpected questions for raising
the mood. Examples:
● would you rather … questions
● funny questions
● quizzes
● ranking favourite movies, books, songs, dishes, etc.
● Express or describe something with emojis
● Etc., etc. …
Would you rather live in the Arctic or in the
Sahara Desert?
Time travel back to the past or to the
future?
Being that creative is not always easy, but you can read
about more than 30 options on how to start an online
meeting here: https://blog.slido.com/virtual-icebreakers/

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B) Short virtual icebreaker
activities
Online platforms usually offer the whiteboard
option where all the participants can draw
their answers!
You can surprise your people by asking them to
draw something, instead of answering
questions. Yes, people hate it, but it is fun!
Of course, then everybody has to share and
explain at the end. Besides being funny,
people learn how to use tools like Zoom’s
option Annotate >> tools >> drawing, shapes,
texts…
Make sure to ask every participant to use their
device to connect and draw, even those that
are in the office.
You can use text polls and ask open questions
that requires longer answers.
What have you learned last
week?
What makes you proud?
What superpower would you like
to have at the moment and why?
Photo contest is another short virtual event, that
you can organize after long weekends or
holidays! You can use an online multiple
choice poll where to upload the pictures and
then people to vote for!

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C) Virtual team building games
and longer activities
It is not necessary to turn all your meetings into a
playground, but in case you want to offer a
different experience to your colleagues from
time to time, you can use virtual games. You
can use platforms that offer such games or
simply ask people to follow some rules and
play at home/office or wherever they are at
the moment.
In case you want to create your virtual games,
you can use TriviaMaker. With its few different
styles for games, you can add content that is
relevant to the team.
If you don’t have time and inspiration to create
your own games, you can use some of the pre-
designed (usually paid) ones in the variety of
platforms that offer such services:
● Team Building offers 30+ games for Zoom, MS Teams,
Google Meet, and Webex. Each game usually takes 60 - 90
min and includes quizzes, storytelling, team workout,
comedy workshop, and games like a virtual murder
mystery, ghost hunt, Halloween party, etc.
Other platforms that you can check are:
● Amazing games like Treasure Mountain, Rube Goldberg,
and Alpha Centauri you can find in The Offsite Co
● Scavify - virtual scavenger hunt app ensures interaction
through challenges and rewards so that your team can
engage in a fun activity
If you search on the internet you can find different possibilities
that you can try with your people!
Check some of the best online platforms here:
https://fundoofriday.com/team-building-platforms
And some of the most popular virtual games for 2023:
https://museumhack.com/virtual-team-building-for-remote-teams/

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The advantage of conducting online meetings is that
you can use online tools to visualise and manage the
process, keep the results and turn them into real
actions.
Here are some of the best tools to do this:
Slido - slido.com
Slido is a live polling and Q&A tool. People can vote,
submit questions during hybrid, remote, or live
meetings, and see the results. You can even organise
some quizzes to improve the learning process. Also,
you can collect valuable insights and ideas.
You can add Slido to your presentation or video
conferencing tool and interact from the place you
know best.
You can brand your sessions and have multiple
rooms.
Mentimeter - www.mentimeter.com
Similar to Slido, but with more features, it is a more
suitable option for gathering audience responses
during classes, meetings, and events.
To see the difference between these two, you can
read:
https://www.saasworthy.com/compare/mentimeter-
vs-slido?pIds=870,8901
Other great alternatives you can use:
● ThoughtExchange - thoughtexchange.com
● Kahoot! - kahoot.com
● Pitch - pitch.com
● Miro - miro.com
● Crowd Mics -
https://www.biamp.com/products/product-
families/crowd-mics

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Final thoughts
Online team meetings are a crucial part of your team
life. You can learn and improve your skills to plan,
organise, and conduct meaningful online events
which uplift the spirit of your colleagues, increase
the feeling of belonging, being accepted, and
contribute to the common goals.
As much informal research show, some quality non-
business time together during online meetings, can:
● increase the team morale - it means a high level
of excitement and enthusiasm generated, an
optimistic approach towards difficult situations or
the daily routine. Which means better
productivity, well-being, and a strong employer
brand!
● overcome the isolation and the feeling of being
alone, which impact positively the mental and
physical health of people
● improve collaboration, resilience, creativity and
innovation (GROWTH mindset)
● increase productivity (we know it sounds generic,
but you can measure it and prove it right)
● increase employee engagement and improve the
employee experience
● empower people to be in charge and enhance the
high-performance culture
● Increase the trust between the team members by
improved communication and better knowledge of
personal strengths
● prove that everything is possible if people are
united and feel good together, working for a
meaningful purpose!
All you need is practice and involve everybody in it!

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Brainstorming
techniques for
better hybrid
experience
03

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3. Brainstorming techniques for better hybrid experience
Living in a world of rapid changes makes us think of how
we can follow them or even how to be more innovative
and to create these changes. But people often think they
are not creative and can’t come up with new brilliant
ideas, simply because they lack experience.
Creativity and innovation is not always based on unseen
knowledge and legendary skills like Leonardo da Vinci,
but rather a structured approach towards problems and
situations that need our attention.
Fortunately, there are many creative approaches that can
help your team to see the problem differently and to be
able to offer proper solution. These techniques
empower people and teach them to rely on their
strengths, to work in teams, to have fun, to think out of
the box, and to date to share opinions. What a better
way to make your colleagues feel they belong,
contribute, and are valued.

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The benefits of a group brainstorming
A well-structured process with a friendly and
competitive atmosphere can decrease the
pressure on people when they have to think of
new solutions alone. Yet, such processes unite
people and teach them to rely on the group’s
wisdom rather than on their efforts all the time.
In such processes, many ideas are generated that
can serve many different problems or cases. As
the psychological techniques of associations,
people are inspired by what they hear and
experience and ideas then come up
spontaneously. More you get, the better for the
confidence of your people and the final goal you
are after.
The purpose of the brainstorming
You can apply different brainstorming
techniques based on your goal:
● to better understand your clients/users
and their problems, worries, hopes and
needs
● to create a new product or service that
corresponds to certain needs or
possibilities
● to resolve an existing problem
● to refine a product, service, or experience
● to have fun!

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Some important tricks for a successful
brainstorming session
1. Create a safe, supportive space (psychological
safety) - what better way to experience the values
of the company than to support each other and
grow together
2. Facilitate connection - let people know each other
3. No judgement - you’d better separate the
evaluation of the ideas from the brainstorming
sessions
4. Encourage wild ideas - you can reward the craziest
idea with a symbolic prize. Let people vote for
this!
5. Ask for quantity - one of the purposes of such
sessions is to unlock the ability of people to think
out of the box, with no fear of rejection!
6. Prepare and let people prepare as well!
7. Build on the ideas of others - you have to add this
aspect in the process. It is not only for generating
new ideas after all.
8. Set a time frame and follow it!
9. Stay focused - one conversation at a
time!
10. Use individual and group activities!
11. Use visual tools
12. Keep records (save the work done) - it is
easy with online platforms.
13. Follow up and let people see that their
efforts are turned into results!
14. Encourage people to their participation
15. Ask for feedback on the process and keep
growing!
16. Mind the proximity bias!
You can also use some templates that the different
platforms offer, like Sessionlab.

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Brainstorming techniques
The variety of brainstorming techniques could be
confusing, that’s why you need to have basic
knowledge and experience with at least a few of them.
This will give you some flexibility and freedom during
your online meetings with the team. The main (core)
ones include:
● Question storming
● Walking Brainstorm
● Mind Map
● Rapid writing.
● Lotus Blossom
● Starbursting
● The 5 Whys
● Brainwriting
● Round-Robin
We will introduce you some of them and encourage you
to try them with your team.

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Lotus blossom
Created by Yasuo Matsumura, a
management consultant working
in Japan, it is a simple creative
exercise which uses free
association to create ideas.
You need 1 core word (idea) in the centre and 8 words
like petals to surround it. The process can be repeated
with each petal, opening the lotus more. You need
more words to come up with original solutions at the
end.
You need to understand the process and use proper
online tools to organise the ideas and results.
For sure you will need somebody to help you with
giving the instructions, keeping the time, and
organising the “produce”.
Online tools you can use:
Some platforms offer templates for the Lotus
blossom brainstorming technique.
For example https://miro.com/templates/lotus-
diagram/

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Starbursting
A question-Based Brainstorming Method
As you already know, for virtual sessions it is
important to have a digital tool to track the
results. Besides miro, you can also use
Gliffy.com, Lucidspark, and many others.
Further, all you need is:
● facilitator to keep the focus on the process,
and
● time frame (possibly with a timekeeper)
● idea/problem to be discussed.
Your team is going to answer the 5 questions
who, what, when, where, why, and how,
taking into consideration the main topic.
The goal: to come up with as many questions as possible!
And to generate as many answers as possible.
The point of the exercise is just to get you thinking about
the important details you’ll need to consider.
The use: at the beginning of the development of a new
product, to evaluate concepts, to examine the direction
of a company/team.
Main
problem
Who? What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?

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Brainwriting
An active learning method
Brainwriting is different from brainstorming - instead of
sharing out loud, the participants write their ideas
down.
You need a main idea/problem that should be discussed.
Then you organise the space - online or in presence.
You need a moderator who takes care of the process and
organisation.
You can decide on the number of ideas everybody writes
down for each round of the process, but the research
shows that 3 ideas per person per round are the perfect
number to keep people creative and engaged until the
end.
Then you can set time - 5 min per round is enough to
write 3 ideas, but depending on the situation you can
improvise both with the time and the numbers of the
ideas.
Important:
When applied in an online environment you can choose a
platform with sticky notes with different colours like
miro or mural. This will make the exchange of ideas for
each round easier. See a template in miro here.
Process management:
Round 1: Everybody writes down 3 ideas.
Round 2: exchange the “paper” with somebody else and
add 3 new ideas.
You can add a different number of rounds. In case you
split people into smaller groups (like 6 persons per
group), then you can organise 6 rounds so everybody can
contribute to each idea.
Summary: Organise all the ideas in groups and rate them
based on the resources you have and the goal of the
process.
See The Design Thinking method in the next chapter for
more ideas on how to finish the process.

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Other Brainstorming techniques you can explore:
CREATIVE brainstorming techniques:
● Imagie-ination
● Bad idea brainstorming
● Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm
● Walking Questions
● Guided Imagery.
FUN brainstorming techniques:
● MindSpin
● Figure storming
● Flip and Rip
● Forced Connections.
VISUAL brainstorming techniques:
● 6-8-5
● Four-Step Sketch
● Headlines from the future.
Brainstorming techniques for REFINING ideas:
● 25/10 Crowdsourcing
● 3-12-3 Brainstorm
● Mash-Up Innovation
● The Creativity Dice
● Affinity Map.

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Collaborative brainstorming tools:
● Coggle - “Produce beautiful notes quickly and
easily. Share them with friends and colleagues to
work on your ideas together.”
● GroupMap - Customisable brainstorming
templates for meetings and workshops that help
your team think better together. Prioritise and
create action items that matter.
● Stormboard - “An online sticky note whiteboard
that makes meetings, brainstorms, and creative
projects more productive and effective.”
● Stormz - A facilitation Software for Online & In-
Person Meetings Design to facilitate any kind of
collaborative workshops: retrospectives,
brainstorming, design thinking and many others.
In-person or remotely. With small or large groups.

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There are a lot more brainstorming techniques that can be useful for your team.
To make it easier, you can invite volunteers to read through all of them and choose
the most appropriate ones for your purpose!
Then you can apply the selected one and ask for feedback about how people feel
and what they learn about each other, themselves.
Here are some ideas for topics to be discussed in a creative and non-formal way:
● How to improve the employee experience in all the stages of the employee life
cycle?
● What new activities we can add to the CSR (corporate social responsibility) so
the whole team (no matter where people are physically) to take part?
● How to boost a culture of sharing knowledge between the members of the
team?
● How to communicate our team experience internally and externally, to
increase awareness and to improve the employer brand?
Practice with your team!

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Creative methods
for approaching
problems and new
situations
04

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The Design Thinking
Design thinking is a methodology for solving
complex and not well-defined (examined)
problems. It is based on exploring human
needs, reframing the initial problem, generating
as many as possible ideas, prototyping, testing
and improving new solutions.
This method is more than a way to find out a
solution. Think of it as a way of thinking and
perceiving the world around you!
It certainly can help you to improve your products
and services, as long as it can be useful to
develop your team and the way people interact
and feel in it.
It is a method that you can use when you have
enough time to go through all the stages and
repeat them if needed.
There are five stages in the design thinking model
proposed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
at Stanford (the d.school):
1 stage: Research Your Users' Needs or also called
Empathising (you try to get into your user’s shoes).
2 stage: Re/define the problem (discover the actual
problem/s).
3 stage: Generate as many ideas as possible - Ideation
by using some of the brainstorming methods we
have described above.
4 stage: Create a prototype - a cheap and non-perfect
solution that represents your idea - Prototyping.
5 stage: Test and improve if needed.
4. Creative methods for approaching problems and new
situations

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situations
1 stage: Empathise
In this stage, you try to understand people, within the
context of your design challenge, about their physical
and emotional needs, how they think about the
world, their values, and what is meaningful to them.
How to empathise:
● observe how people behave and what they do.
People can’t share or describe all their reasons for
behaving in a certain way.
● talk with people, gather their stories and ask why
to understand their reasons and deeper meaning.
● interact with people - you may ask them to show
you how they do things. Walk with them all the
way to understand them.
At the end, describe your persona with all their
needs, hopes & fears, opportunities & headaches,
and positive & negative trends of the
environment.
You can use the template of
https://www.designabetterbusiness.tools/tools/p
ersona-canvas and even give your name and role
to your persona!

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2 stage: Re/Define
Great ideas usually don’t come out of thin air. They
appear when you are involved in something deeply.
That’s why, after you know your persona, it is time
to Re/Define the problem into a meaningful and
actionable statement. This is your new point of
view!
A good point of view has to:
● Provide focus and frame the problem correctly
● Captures the hearts and minds of people you
meet
● Inspires your team
● Limits the possible solutions to only meaningful
ones for your ones and saves you from the
disappointment of a bad solution.
3 stage: Ideate
A well-defined point-of-view will lead you into
ideation in a very natural way.
Now you can use some of the brainstorming
techniques described above to answer the question
“How might we …?”.
You can ideate in rounds, selecting the best ideas that
inspire your team.
Don’t forget that during this
stage no judgement is
allowed as your goal is to
unleash your team’s
imagination and creativity!

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4 stage: Prototype
At this stage, you will need some set of criteria to
select the few ideas that you will prototype and
experiment with later.
You can go with the 3 well-known:
● The most likely to delight
● The rational choice,
● The most unexpected
But it is up to you and your team!
Then you can select 3 ideas that people from your
team will vote for. The best 2 ideas (with the most
votes) will be prototyped!
In this way, you preserve innovation potential by
carrying multiple ideas forward—a radically
different approach that relies on the single idea
that at least the majority of the team can agree
upon.

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5 stage: Test and improve
Although the testing sometimes assumes that the user is
not familiar with how the "thingy" is used, you might
spend some time thinking of how to test in a way that will
let users give you the most natural and honest feedback.
Observe, ask questions, and interact with the users as
much as possible.
By testing you will learn more about the users, you would
improve the prototype, and ideally - you will upgrade
your point of view (the problem defined).
How to test:
● Let the users try to figure out how it works on their
own. Observe how they use and misuse it!
● Make the users feel that they experience an adventure
rather than being assessed on their skills!
● Ask the users to compare the prototype with other
similar ones! This might reveal new needs and
possibilities!

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Final thoughts on the Design Thinking method
Though it has a structure, this method is recognised as a
non-linear process, as it is flexible and people can use
the insights they get at every stage to improve and
develop all the other stages as well.
For example, the 5th stage – testing – can bring you a
deeper understanding of users’ needs (1st stage) and
new ideas (3rd stage), and also can help you to redefine
the problem (2nd stage).
Once you are experienced with the Design Thinking
model, you can lead your team through different paths
every time you apply the method, following the flow of
the process and the participants. Thus, the 5 stages
should be understood as different modes which
contribute to the entire design project, rather than
sequential steps.
The Design Thinking process relies on
collaboration between the business
teams and their users for achieving a
better understanding of how the users
think and what they need.
situations
Empathise
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test

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Good Practices & Examples of the Design Thinking method
GE Healthcare is an example of a company that
focused on user-centricity to improve a product
that seemingly had no problems.
Diagnostic imaging has revolutionised healthcare,
yet GE Healthcare saw a problem in how pediatric
patients reacted to procedures. Many children
were observed crying during long procedures in
cold, dark rooms with flickering fluorescent lights.
Considering this, GE Healthcare’s team observed
children in various environments, spoke to
experts, and interviewed hospital staff to gain
more insight into their experiences.
They redesigned the magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) machines and launched the “Adventure
Series”. One of them was a Pirate Adventure,
where the cold dark room turned into a pirate
ship! So the whole experience of kids was
changed for the better!
Source: https://www.gehealthcare.com/products/accessories-and-
supplies/adventure-series-for-ct

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As you already know from the previous units of Module 3, the
employee experience is an important part of the process of
building and maintaining a sense of belonging to a team and
an organisation!
Exercise: apply the Design Thinking method to come up with
new ideas about 1 of the 3 of the most important factors that
affect the sense of belonging of the employees:
Practice with your team!
Realising how
her/his job
contributes to
the bigger
picture
Receiving
timely
feedback and
recognition of
performance at
every level
Regular
learning
opportunities
that help them
grow

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World Cafe
As the Design Thinking method requires more time and longer
interactions, there is another creative method that can be of
great use for your team in terms of improving the sense of
belonging by interacting together and contributing to the
business (or another common goal)! It is so-called the World
Cafe!
It is a rapid method and requires less preparation and time. It is
optimal for large groups of people that need to discuss at least
a few hot topics at once!
How to do it? First, everybody seats at a table. There is a host on
each table that takes notes and summarises the ideas of every
round.
When the time for round 1 is up, people need to split and choose
another table, to meet with other people and discuss another
topic.
In the best-case scenario, the rounds are equal to the number of
topics so everybody can contribute to each topic!
In the end, every host presents the results!
For better results ask people from each table
to split. In this way people will meet more of
their colleagues during the process and will
not stay with the same ones from the first
table.

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The Master Mind method
The mastermind method is also one of the methods that
can be applied when time is limited or when you
want to support one or several colleagues to take a
decision that is within their responsibility and they
cannot or are not sure how to approach it. It is
suitable for smaller groups.
The method resembles a game in which the audience
takes on the role of investigator and asks questions to
clarify the situation. The Issue Holder needs to
answer all she/he knows.
It is played in rounds, with the first few rounds devoted
to clarifying the situation solely by asking questions.
People that are asking questions are writing down
each question on a sticky note (or online), and when
their turn comes, they ask only 1 question at a time
and give it to the answering person.
The others listen and try to build up the
bigger picture with the next questions.
The person receiving the questions
answers with what she/he knows or
shares that don’t know.
After a few rounds of questions, the
audience starts giving ideas and
solutions to the problem.
Then the person with the problem can
organise the questions and solutions
and share the best ideas that she/he
likes the most, and of course - why.
The process can finish with sharing for all
the group about the take-outs.
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Preparation:
For the audience: you need an online platform or
just enough sticky notes & pens for the
investigating audience (if in presence).
For the person with a problem / difficult situation:
you can use the following questions to help
her/him describe it:
● The essence of the problem/situation - where,
how, when and why it arose
● What would be the ideal outcome if I managed
to influence the situation (think about the
effect on the person, yourself, colleagues,
business, etc.)
● What steps have I already taken to influence
the situation?
● What challenges do I encounter/would I
encounter along the way?
● What do I know about this person?
○ professionally - her/his work attitude,
competence, etc.
○ personally - character, relationships,
hobbies, aspirations, what makes
her/him happy or angry.
After the situation is described aloud, the
questions can start! Followed by the
solutions!
Tips: for choosing a problem to work with, you
can ask everybody to write down a problem
she/he is facing at the moment or one that is
needed to be resolved. Then the groups read
all of them and vote for the 1 that is the most
important for everybody.
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Famous Masterminds
https://www.deliberatedirections.com/mastermind-
benefits/
You can read the article about famous masterminds
like Andrew Carnegie, Ben Franklin, Henry Ford,
Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and naturalist
John Burroughs, or the famous PIXAR studio, and
find more inspiration on how to apply it in your
team or organisation.
Read and reflect

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Creating a sense of belonging through group
creative activities is one of the most
effective and easy to be used approaches.
It helps managers to establish a culture of
supporting the differences and the diversity
in opinions and to teach people how this
happens in reality.
On the other side, it gives people the
possibility to know each other better, to
connect, and to feel like they belong to a
team that respects and appreciates them for
all they are.
The hybrid working environment comes with
unexpected opportunities to grow and
develop creativity, through all the online
platforms with the diversity of tools to be
used.
It only needs practice!
SUMMARY OF UNIT 4

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We offer you a short questionnaire
for self-assessment of the extent to
which you have understood the
content.
The goal is to check and reinforce
what you have learned.
You can take the quiz as many times
as you want. Remember, the quiz is
just part of the process of learning
new things!
SELF-ASSESSMENT
QUESTIONNAIRE

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Question 1: To organise a creative group
session, you always need to have a problem.
a. True
b. False
Question 2: To organise a successful group
session in a hybrid environment, you need:
a. Agenda and goal
b. Time frame
c. Some basic rules
d. Technical equipment and skills to use online
tools
e. Time for socialising in the beginning
f. Ice-breaking activities
g. Time for working on the goal
h. Time for Feedback
i. All the above
j. None of the above
Question 3: The hybrid environment might
be a good opportunity to gain some
knowledge on how to use different online
platforms for sharing ideas.
a. True
b. False
Question 4: Icebreakers are:
a. A must-have activity in your hybrid session
b. Good to have activity as it helps people to
connect, relax, and energise
c. You’d better don’t spend time on such
things as they take time and are useless in
general

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Question 5: The benefits of brainstorming
activities are:
a. Break routines and generate more ideas
b. Provide multiple and diverse perspectives
and external contributions
c. Help everybody to participate and
contribute
d. People know each other better
e. Teach a culture of acceptance and team
working
f. All the above
g. None of the above
Question 6: The challenges of the
brainstorming sessions are:
a. Decision-making can become more
complicated
b. It easily can turn into a disorganised event
c. Some people can dominate the
conversations
d. Some people may hide behind others and
skip participating
e. Group thinking can trump originality
f. All the above
g. None of the above

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• What is a virtual icebreaker and why it is important, https://www.brightful.me/blog/what-is-a-virtual-icebreaker-
and-why-it-is-important/
• 35 Icebreakers Perfect for Virtual and Hybrid Meetings, https://blog.slido.com/virtual-icebreakers/
• The Top 80+ Poll Question Ideas to Ask Your Online Audience, https://blog.slido.com/30-icebreaker-questions-
audience-live-polling/
• The 9 Best Online Team Building Platforms for Remote Teams, https://www.makeuseof.com/best-team-building-
platforms-remote-teams/
• CASE STUDY: How Microsoft’s Azure Team Used Virtual Team Building to Lift Spirits During the COVID-19 Pandemic,
https://www.outbackteambuilding.com/blog/case-study-microsoft-azure-virtual-team-building/
• 20 Tips For Building Successful Virtual Teams in 2023, https://teambuilding.com/blog/successful-virtual-teams
• Facilitating an interactive hybrid brainstorming session with 200 people, https://klaxoon.com/community-
content/facilitating-an-interactive-hybrid-brainstorming-session-with-200-people
• An Introduction to Design Thinking. PROCESS GUIDE, https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/ih-
materials/uploads/Introduction-to-design-thinking.pdf
• Top Design Thinking Examples, https://www.simplilearn.com/top-design-thinking-examples-
article#design_thinking_examples
Further Readings

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● Hybrid Meeting Norms: Best Practices for Hybrid Team Meetings,
https://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/meeting-best-practices-for-hybrid-teams
● How to Facilitate a Brainstorming Session, https://www.mural.co/blog/run-a-brainstorming-session
● Nine of The Best Virtual Team Building Platforms for Remote Teams, https://fundoofriday.com/team-
building-platforms
● Compare Mentimeter vs Slido, https://www.saasworthy.com/compare/mentimeter-vs-
slido?pIds=870,8901
● Top 10 Benefits Of Virtual Team Building, https://www.teamtactics.co.uk/blog/top-10-benefits-of-
virtual-team-building/?privacy=updated
● Lotus Blossom, https://andyeklund.com/brainstorm-technique-lotus-blossom/
● Active Learning In Virtual Environment/Brainwriting,
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Active_Learning_In_Virtual_Environment/Brainwriting
● Workshop templates, https://www.sessionlab.com/templates/
References

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• All about the idea funnel, https://lucidspark.com/blog/idea-funnel
• Best practices for the Ideate stage of Design Thinking, https://lucidspark.com/blog/best-practices-for-the-ideate-stage-
of-design-thinking
• PERSONA CANVAS (Design Thinking), https://www.designabetterbusiness.tools/tools/persona-canvas
• 5 EXAMPLES OF DESIGN THINKING IN BUSINESS, https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/design-thinking-examples
• 12 Key Benefits of Participating in a Mastermind Group, https://www.deliberatedirections.com/mastermind-benefits/
• Business Mastermind Model, https://www.personal-coaching-information.com/business-mastermind-model.html
References

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“Don’t wait for
inspiration. It comes while
working."
- Henri Matisse

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Thank you for learning with us!
www.prosper-project.eu
You can find us:
● https://prosper-project.eu/
● https://www.facebook.com/Workplace.SMEs.EU
● https://www.linkedin.com/company/workplace-smes/

Module 3 / Unit 4 Creative approaches for better hybrid inclusivity

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