OutoftheBox in the Workplace
“I really enjoyed it and found it was a really good tool for helping us to work our way through all of the masses of ideas and information we’d pulled together! I thought it worked really well, especially given the complexity of the health and care system to have something to visualise the issues and help us with gathering and arranging our thoughts!“
Helen Cottrell, Engagement Officer for Sheffield Churches Council for Community Care
OutoftheBox can help teams in the workplace connect with each other, talking about values and issues in a light-hearted and yet profound and insightful way. It improves communication, empathy and resilience amongst teams.
‘Really enjoyed it and it’s much better than just sticking post it’s up. It visualised our ideas really well.”
participant in an OutoftheBox with Helen Coates
Kate Cornwell uses OutoftheBox in her role as Healthcare Chaplain at the Sheffield Hospitals Trust. She finds that the fact that the OutoftheBox stories are created non-coercively from a rich variety of genres, faith traditions and non-religious belief systems, gives her the confidence to provide a playful and respectful space for NHS staff members to affirm and challenge each other, to celebrate what is working well and address what needs to change.
Kathryn Lord ran an OutoftheBox session for a group of engineers at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge.
“OutoftheBox’s facilitation helped us reflect on a significant period of growth and transition. As we moved from individual to collaborative project work, the session revealed our team’s core values and helped build a stronger sense of unity. The process uncovered shared principles that brought our newly expanded team together while honouring individual autonomy.”
Sonya Sireau CEng Clinical Scientist, Head of Clinical Engineering Innovation, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge
Helen Coates works in the voluntary sector and has been involved in a scheme bringing together health, social care and VCSE organisations to think creatively about the issues we face in our work. She has used OutoftheBox, initially telling a story, then developing a scene, as a way to help the group to distil and to visualise ideas. She found that despite it being a completely new approach for all participants, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
‘”I thought it was great. It was an interesting, creative and playful way of approaching a problem and seemed to generate a lot of discussion and ideas.”
Members of Sheffield Cathedral choir used OutoftheBox as a brave and safe way of processing their feelings in the aftermath of the choir being abruptly closed, and in the early days of forming Steel City Choristers as a new independent choir which would serve the city.
“This way of sharing stories is a fantastic initiative which encourages us to explore our inner thoughts and emotions in a constructive way. OutoftheBox has helped us take a step back from our current reality, think, process and reflect.”
Joshua Stephens, Founding Director of Music, Steel City Choristers
Claire Pedrick, from The Coaching Inn, draws parallels between 3D Coaching and OutoftheBox:
“The coaching outlook which says trust the process and trust that the other person has what they need to do the work they need to do, echoes so strongly with my experience of using OutoftheBox storytelling to open up conversation. Both approaches advocate creating a container for the work which needs to be done in that moment. There is a recognition that this is what is needed in order for people to feel safe enough to be brave.
As a facilitator/coach I notice this is what I need too, both these approaches support me in curbing my own inner desire to ‘sort it out’. There is a lightness to both types of conversation, maybe playfulness is another way of putting it. Even when we’re opening a space to talk about painful, complex or long-term entrenched situations, I find space for gentle smiles and loving humour in the conversations. We uncovered another way of changing the medium in coaching, exploring the value of ritual, embodied learning, and engaging even more of our senses.”
