Circle of the 9 Muses

Chapter 14

Use this exercise when you want to tap into the core structure of leadership storytelling or to engage your team in creating a shared story of your future.

For this exercise you will need:

• Two blank sheets of flip chart paper for each participant
• Plenty of colored markers
• Because flip chart paper is large, a lot of space to spread out. (Some people will take off their shoes and sit on the floor for this exercise.)
• Tape or another method of hanging the paper on the wall

You can't expect anyone to execute something they weren't part of creating.

—Meg Wheatley

Think about how much of your messaging as a leader is saying to your teams, “We are here, and we need to be there.” Every day, in ways mundane and significant, leaders move people forward.

What if instead of dictating direction to your team, you invited them to help you articulate it?

That's the idea behind creative tension pictures, which is one of the easiest exercises in Circle of the 9 Muses to execute. (It rivals Visual Timeline for ease of implementation.) You can also scale it very easily. That is, it works with a small team of three people, and I have used it in a conference ballroom with more than 100 people.

In this visual exercise, members of your teams will create metaphorical depictions of the current state and then the desired future state of the team (or project, function, organization, or ...