30 Circles
In Short
- Warm-up to unlock creative thinking and demonstrate divergent ideation
- Best for: Creativity/ideation exercise
- 30 Circles is a structured tool for coaching and facilitation. Warm-up to unlock creative thinking and demonstrate divergent ideation. It provides a repeatable framework that can be adapted to individual, team, and leadership development contexts.
- Type of tool: Creativity/ideation exercise
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Expected outcomes:
- Direct experience with warm-up to unlock creative thinking and demonstrate divergent ideation, applicable immediately in real work
- Improved capacity to note how few people reach 30, explore what blocked them, and what enabled those
- A concrete action or development plan to take forward from the 30 Circles process
In Detail
30 Circles is an experiential exercise designed to help coaches, leaders, and facilitators support practitioners in warm-up to unlock creative thinking and demonstrate divergent ideation. It sits within the category of Creativity/ideation exercise, making it particularly useful for practitioners working on capability development, team performance, and individual growth in organisational settings.
In practice, 30 Circles is delivered as a 6-step process. The process begins by give each participant a sheet with 30 empty circles printed on it. The session closes by use findings to open a conversation about creative constraints and divergent thinking. The structured approach ensures that participants move through a consistent experience while leaving room for the facilitator to adapt pacing and depth to the group's needs.
30 Circles is most effective when used to break existing patterns of thinking or interaction. The experiential format creates a low-stakes environment where participants can experiment, make mistakes, and draw direct parallels to real workplace dynamics through the debrief process.
How to Use
1. Give each participant a sheet with 30 empty circles printed on it. 2. Set a timer for 30 seconds. 3. Ask participants to turn as many circles as possible into drawn objects -- each circle becomes a unique thing. 4. Call time and count how many each person completed and how many are truly unique. 5. Debrief: note how few people reach 30, explore what blocked them, and what enabled those who got furthest. 6. Use findings to open a conversation about creative constraints and divergent thinking.
Pros and Cons
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Created by Bob McKim / IDEO (popularised by Tim Brown)
When to Use
This tool is suited to the following coaching and facilitation contexts:
| Context | Relevant |
|---|---|
| Individual Coaching | |
| Team Coaching | |
| Leadership Development | |
| Facilitation / Workshop | ✓ |
| Online / Virtual |