Elephant in the Room
Elephant in the Room is an ideation warm-up exercise for divergent ideation: it helps participants open up more possible ideas before choosing a direction.
How to run it
- Give each person a blank piece of paper
- Give everyone 60 seconds to "tear out an elephant" you can
- After the time allocated, have everyone hold their hand cut-outs up and show off their personal
- Turn the conversation serious and have them write down what the real elephant in the room preventing
- You can discuss the elephants as a group and then post the elephants around the environment/office, or you can directly post them around the space as information to be read throughout the day depending on the group and the content
Run this exercise live
The facilitator console stays in this browser. Its QR handoff is a short-lived participant snapshot containing only public exercise instructions, phase, prompt, and timer state.
What participants need now
Materials:
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Prompts to use +
Give each person a blank piece of paper
Give everyone 60 seconds to "tear out an elephant" you can
After the time allocated, have everyone hold their hand cut-outs up and show off their personal
Turn the conversation serious and have them write down what the real elephant in the room preventing
You can discuss the elephants as a group and then post the elephants around the environment/office, or you can directly post them around the space as information to be read throughout the day depending on the group and the content
Run this with your AI assistant +
Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or your own local model: paste this prompt and your AI will co-facilitate this exercise with you.
Adapt this exercise for my exact room. Exercise: Elephant in the Room. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: Give each person a blank piece of paper; Give everyone 60 seconds to "tear out an elephant" you can; After the time allocated, have everyone hold their hand cut-outs up and show off their personal; Turn the conversation serious and have them write down what the real elephant in the room preventing. Return a concise facilitator script with timing, wording, safety notes, and remote/in-person adjustments.
Origin unverified
- Where we observed it: The strongest current observations come from Relationship Makers Handbook; aggregators are listed as additional observations, not origin proof. (1 source observed, including Relationship Makers Handbook.)
- What that means: we track where an exercise has been observed in public sources. We do not claim to know who created it, or how popular it is.
- No efficacy claims: appearing in this library is not a claim that the exercise is proven effective. Facilitator judgment and context decide whether it works for a given room.
- Corrections: if you have evidence of an earlier or more accurate source, read our methodology and trust boundary and tell us.