Using an Art Technique to Facilitate Leadership Development

Appendix B: Conducting the Touchstone Exercise

The information contained in this appendix is a description of how the Center conducts the touchstone exercise. This is not meant as a guideline. The reader is encouraged to use whatever pieces of it that he or she finds useful.

Introducing the Exercise

Before the exercise begins, participants should be introduced to the notion of the non-verbal “excursion” and its value in circumventing our accustomed verbal logic to give a new view of the subject of inquiry at hand (e.g., the participants’ leadership issues or focus). Providing this kind of orientation is particularly important if no other nontraditional or non-verbal exercises have been presented previously in the training context. Request participants ...