Warm-Up Reflection Template

—

The Warm-Up Reflection

This is a warm-up activity to get a shared understanding of possible biases and lack of diversity within your group. It's especially beneficial when working on socially and politically sensitive topics.

Applying this activity

While we often know that we are not diverse enough as a team, it is powerful to visualize it. This activity, therefore, is a conversation starter early in the workshop. It works well, both with groups that know and don't know each other.

1. The default team-reflection is divided into 3 groups

Socio-demographic factors: This is about the "objective" diversity of your team. By default, you could ask about age group, gender identification and political point of view.

Please adapt these factors to your project's needs.
Don't ask for more personal information than is needed.
Be sensitive that some people might not feel comfortable to share too specific information, especially when it comes to sexuality and religion.

2. Values: This is about the diversity of thought of your team

These are statements related to the general topic of your project. You will be able to show and tell how your team's values differ from the general public.

Look for interesting and surprising statement-based statistics that can be a conversation starter regarding your topic
Try not to be too polarizing or even condescending when picking statements. This part is about empathizing and self-reflection.

3. Personal experiences

This is about personal stories that might influence the perception of a topic. We are never objective. This part aims to create an understanding of close a topic to your participants or if they have previous experience with it. It's usually also a great transition tointroducing the project and its problem space from the stories that your team has to tell.