How we work

Listening

First, we listen to you. In our initial conversations with clients we encourage them to tell us about the goals of their organisation, the obstacles to achieving them, and about the culture: what’s strong, what needs work, and especially what challenges it faces.

Defining

With you, we then distil an objective for our work, which might be to improve how leaders communicate convincingly, to build trust within a team, to explore an urgent challenge or examine the purpose at the heart of the organisation. Sometimes the need is simply to make people more confident writers and thinkers.

Designing

We then design a workshop or series of workshops to address the need. The writing workshop does much more than teach people how to write. It creates the space and time for teams to focus on whatever merits close attention, and for each participant to contribute something particular to the shared process and the outcome. Above all, it allows the group to activate the imagination - to engage the deep stores of creativity and mutual endeavour that lie at the heart of why we work.

We don’t come with answers; the answers are in you and your colleagues, and the workshop is a powerful technique for bringing them out.

What to expect from our workshops

  • A Write to Think workshop is open to everyone, regardless of writing experience. We work in a range of contexts, but the priority remains the same: to offer the time and space for you to step back from what’s urgent and let the imagination work on the challenges you’re facing. We create an atmosphere in which everyone experiences the clarity and creativity that writing together brings about.

  • During the workshop, our tutors will offer a selection of short writing exercises designed to prompt an exploration of the issues at hand – starting with something quick and fun to get things flowing. Each prompt results in a few minutes of writing, after which everyone shares and reflects on what’s been written, with guidance from the tutors. This generates discussion and ideas, which we identify and develop as the session progresses, working towards the goal we’ve set with you in advance. At the end of the session we’ll have time for final reflections and an opportunity for feedback and observations. If relevant we’ll discuss action points and further steps, too. Overall you can expect to surprise yourself and others, and to enjoy yourself in the process.

  • We adapt the length, number and structure of our workshops to fit the client’s need, but typically work in the following formats:

    Icebreakers      A 60-90 minute one-off workshop designed to help individuals and teams who are embarking on a period of change or strategy.  Typically our clients use this to build rapport in a team; to invigorate energy and creative thinking at the start of an off-site meeting or planning session; for exploratory or visioning work before planning; for building confident independent thought. 

    Full workshops    Our standard workshop lasts three hours, which gives us the time to go deeply into the subject at hand. Delivered individually or in a series, depending on what the client is wanting to accomplish, the full workshop is the right format to explore opportunities and problems with the attention they merit.

    One-to-One     One-hour/90-minute one-to-one sessions that use writing exercises to help individuals connect with the language they use and the thinking behind it – the inner work that grounds all future development work. Typically writing exercises focus on voice, language, point of view and time.