101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Emphasize how this technique differs from all of the others in that it is designed to

remove the obstacles we often face by becoming too close to our problems—becoming too

familiar, so that our very understanding of challenges works against us in resolving them.

Ask group members to provide examples from their lives of similar situations and to dis-

cuss the validity of this premise.

Also consider having participants debrief using the following questions:

• What was most helpful about this exercise?


• What was most challenging?


• What can we apply?


• How would you rate the value of this exercise to helping us with this issue?


• Will this exercise be helpful in the future for other sessions?


• What did you learn?


• What will we be able to use from this exercise?


• What ideas were generated, and which ones were most interesting?

Free Association Activities: “Blue Skies” 179

101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &

Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.com

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