Hopes and Fears
What is the Hopes and Fears workshop tactic?
This tactic helps you understand your team’s expectations and hesitations, so you’re all on the same page before you take flight on a new journey.
What you learn from this tactic can help you adjust how you proceed. For example, you may find everyone has completely different expectations, or everyone has the same fear. In any case, gaining this shared understanding helps you start a constructive discussion on how to move forward.
If your team doesn’t yet have a clear goal or direction, an alternative tactic to try is Sailboat.
Hopes and Fears Miro Template
How to run the Hopes and Fears tactic in your workshop
1. On a large surface, create two columns. One titled 'Hopes' and the other, 'Fears'.
2. Frame a topic such as the current project, a goal or even the workshop itself.
3. Ask the participants to spend five minutes writing their hopes and fears on individual sticky notes.
4. One by one, invite each participant to share their hopes and fears, sticking them in the relevant column.
5. Theme Sort as each participant puts up their sticky notes.
6. Create a Democratic Discussion about how to reduce or remove fears.
7. Use Who, What, When to capture any actions from the discussion.
Not sure if this is the right approach for your team at the moment? Try a different tactic for understanding the problems and challenges you face. Or if you’re happy that you know what the next big challenge is for your team, try a framing tactic to help you articulate your problem, ready for solving.
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Hopes and Fears is one of 54 workshop recipe cards inside the Workshop Tactics card deck.
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