The Guilty Pleasure Playlist

About a year ago I started using music during my training and workshops. Based on the (in)direct feedback I’ve received it’s definitely something I can recommend. Some examples of how & when I use it are:

• Before the start of training. Especially when people don’t know each other, they might be a bit nervous and uncomfortable. Music helps them relax and start a conversation.
• During exercises. I try to select music that doesn’t distract participants from doing the exercise but does alert them when I turn the music off. It’s a very easy way of getting everyone's attention and moving on.
• After a break. This should be music that encourages everyone to continue the training with high energy!

For a while, I was pretty satisfied with myself, until someone told me…

Barry, you’ve got a terrible taste for music!

My world collapsed!!! Well, it wasn’t that dramatic but let’s say I was a bit disappointed. In the following weeks, I hardly got any sleep. I kept thinking of the ideal playlist that would satisfy everyone.

Moments before creating the “Best of Coldplay-playlist” (who doesn’t like Coldplay?) I had an epiphany!

Bring it to the team!

It’s what Christiaan Verwijs and I are continuously encouraging our training participants to do. If you encounter a problem that you can’t fix: bring it to the team! The best solutions are the ones the team itself came up with. These are solutions with the most support.

Why this photo? Well, try to read what’s on the post-it (bring it… etc)

The Guilty Pleasure

Therefore, a couple of training ago we started the experiment “Build Your Own Playlist”. However, this wasn’t an ordinary playlist. It was a playlist created by the participants of our training with their ultimate guilty pleasures!

At the start of the training, we ask everyone to write down their guilty pleasure. It’s part of the Profile Cards exercise visualized in this picture:

As a consequence, the music in our training got even more terrible:

But everyone loved it! It was their playlist and proved to be a perfect team-building exercise! The playlist made every group unique. Based on all the feedback the experiment was definitely proven to be successful. We save the playlists for every training and re-use them for follow-up sessions. Fun guaranteed!

Closing

In this short blog post, I’ve shared the idea of creating the “Build Your Own Guilty Pleasure Playlist”. An experiment that proved to be a great team-building exercise. It’s also a perfect match with our motto “bring it to the team”. If you are a trainer you might want to give it a try. If you’re going to attend a training: bring a set of speakers and suggest creating the list as an introduction exercise. Have fun!

Originally published at www.barryovereem.com on September 28, 2017.