Workshop Exercises: Understand
Hopes and Fears
Remove the tension and uncertainty of a new challenge
Why: Gauge attitudes about a collaborative engagement and reveal expectations and doubts
When: Works great for kicking off a project with new team members
Instructions for running this play
- Prepare a whiteboard. Draw two columns on a board:
- Hopes
- Fears
- Introduce the exercise. Begin by explaining the purpose and process of the exercise. Encourage honesty and open discussion.
- Brainstorming Hopes and Fears. Hand out sticky notes to participants. Ask each person to write down their hopes and fears regarding the new challenge in a 5 minute Silent Storming exercise. Each note should only contain one hope or fear.
- Collect and Display. Have participants stick their notes on the designated wall space or board, creating two distinct sections: one for hopes, another for fears.
- Discussion and Analysis. Encourage each participant to Playback their notes while others listen. After each explanation, invite others to weigh in. Aim to understand the root cause of each fear and the steps to achieve each hope. Encourage the team to identify correlations between hopes and fears.
- Plan next steps. Consider using a Who / What / When to ensure clear responsibilities for moving forward.
Tips to perfect this play
Master and adapt the play to fit your context and needs.
Tip: Keep it visible
Keep the artifact posted where team members can see it. Refer back to it frequently to track progress.
Tip: Keep track
Over time, place stars on hopes that are realized, and remove fears that melt away.
Tip: Do fears remain?
For future retrospectives, take time to address fears that persist too long.
Every card deck includes workshop patterns, so your team can put the methods to work in your next session.
Running behavioral design workshops? The Persuasive Patterns Workshop Playbook (PDF) shows you how to design and run them.
Browse the card decksRelated plays
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- Hopes and Fears by EasyRetro