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:

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

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!

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)

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!

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!

Related posts:

Can community scorecards be used to improve global health and education outcomes? The evidence is mixed, so the Transparency for Development team shares some tips on how to improve scorecard design…

The human mind is a mysterious and powerful thing. We all have a subconscious mind, which is a collection of our experiences, memories, and emotions that we aren’t currently paying attention to. This…

You can drive across the coast of California or just around your city. You can travel with friends, family or even alone. You can be out for a month or just for the day… It doesn’t matter, Road trips…