A few months ago, I ran a Mindset & Clarity workshop on Performance for a team in my wider department.

About halfway through the session, I jumped up from my seat, grabbed a sharpie and drew a diagram on a flipchart.

I'm certainly not Picasso.

But I was only drawing a stickman and it’s impossible to misdraw a stickman.

Or so I thought.

As I finished drawing, I took a step back and glanced proudly at my masterpiece.

Something seemed off but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Then, to my horror, it hit me.

I hadn’t just drawn a stickman. I’d drawn a stickman plus. And not the kind of “plus” you want to be drawing while 19 of your esteemed banking colleagues are watching, listening and scribbling down notes.

See, the two legs I’d drawn didn’t start at the bottom of the stickman's torso.  

Instead, they started a couple of centimetres above the bottom of the torso. Which meant I’d accidentally gifted my poor stickman an anatomical upgrade. 

Let’s just say he’d ended up with three “legs” rather than the usual two.

As it happened, there was another diagram I could sketch to illustrate the same point. So I casually flipped the chart over and on we went with the workshop.

Nothing to see here folks!

Anyway, lesson learnt and something I keep in mind when I run my workshops nowadays. 

In fact, I took the minimalist route for a workshop I ran yesterday on Resilience.

There were no slides, no flip charts and certainly no three legged stickmen. Instead, there was just an open conversation that got straight to the heart of the matter.

Here's what one colleague posted on LinkedIn after the session:

*****

Massive shoutout to Tom Grundy for today's powerhouse session on resilience aka bounce-back brilliance).

His thought leadership and raw personal storytelling hit home in the best way-authentic, uplifting, and packed with practical wisdom. I left feeling not just inspired, but equipped. So many reflections I can actually action starting now. 

Thank you, Tom - your impact landed loud and clear 🙌

*****

Over the last 12 months, I've run multiple Mindset & Clarity sessions on topics like State of Mind, Flow, Listening, Overthinking, Mental Bandwidth, Getting a Good Night's Sleep, Stress, Burnout, The Nature of Thought, The Nature of Feelings, Wondering, Work/Life Balance, Worry, Performance and Resilience.

Quite the menu.

If your team at work would like to work more productively with less stress and have more fun along the way, I'd love to come and run a workshop or two for you too.

If this tickles your fancy, hit reply and lets chat.

To fulfilment,

Tom