Competence model articles Enables participants to be creative and think out of the box Facilitates problem solving Knowledge of ways and methods to encourage creativity, problem solving and out of the box thinking Promoting creativity, problem solving and out of the box thinking Understanding and facilitating individual and group learning process

Let’s brainstorm what we will make for lunch

When you do not try problem-solving or/and out-of-the box thinking approaches in your daily life, you hardly prove the importance of those methods. We would like to encourage you to be methodic in your daily life. Give yourself a challenge, to try out at least one method (problem-solving and/or out-of-the-box thinking) each day in situations where it can be applied. Reflect on your experience and results that come out of using the method.

Donatas Petkauskas February 22, 2020

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Let’s brainstorm what we will make for lunch — Photo by lee junda on Unsplash

Why did I choose this tool?

One of the authors started to work as a project manager in a business organization and as a new employee noticed that people would discuss issues in different meetings over a few days and couldn’t come up with solutions. When several methods were applied, the issue was solved fast and in different ways. This example inspired us to think that we should be more active in using methods on daily basis.

How does this apply to being a trainer?

It helps learners as well as for a trainer to see how we can think creatively in different situations and there is no need to wait for a training to do so. Youth works, youth leaders and trainers deal with different situations in daily life and applying methods could come to more structured, creative results than expected.

Main content:

Grab the firey topic 🙂 and practice this skill in applying methods.

Think about the hot issue/problem, which is nagging you recently. The issue can be about your holiday plans, the housekeeping, work, money and whatever comes to your mind right now.
Apply the problem-solving method (you can see in other tool about knowledge of existing problem-solving methods). Let’s do SWOT about holidays in skiing resorts; let’s ask 5W in order to know why your child missed the dancing classes all the time and so on…
Reflect on you experience using problem-solving methods. What are your findings using the method? (You can list three positive and three negative aspects.)

Reflection questions

What was the outcome of applying the method on your everyday situation?

Co-author of the article: Agne Kvikliene

Agne Kvikliene – professional IT project manager who sometimes works as a trainer helping people to build organizational changes, strategies and ensure the quality. She had been working with training programmes and coordinated national trainers’ pool at National Agency of EU programmes for youth. While having experience in training, educating people she initiated training quality standards and raised the topic of trainers competences development. The biggest achievement for her was to lead Eastern partnership youth forum which was a milestone for the strengthening the quality of the non-formal education and the partnership among the EU and EaP countries. It became a continuous activity happening once in a two year.

Co-author of the article: Povilas Plukas

Povilas Plukas is the learning designer who designs experiences that grow personalities and helps organisations to reach their learning goals. Over the last 10 years he provides training courses on personal development, interpersonal communication, teamwork, change management, learning to learn, social entrepreneurship, gamification and game design. Povilas is a member of International Applied Improvisation network. He studied improvisation at Second City, a world-famous improv school in Chicago. He is partner in the consulting company Kitokie Projektai. The company has been active both in Lithuania and internationally since 2000.

Editor: Donatas Petkauskas

is professional supervisor, coach and experiential learning trainer, having more than 15 years of experience in consulting various organizations and individuals, creating and conducting training course on national and international levels. Donatas has extensive experience in non-formal education, training of youth workers and trainers. He is working in the field of non-formal education since 2003, since 2004 he is a member of trainers pool of Lithuanian National Agency (currently an alumni).