Exercise: Sort & Share

In the video below, Senior Advisor Mark Sedway walks through an exercise we do with many of our clients called Sort & Share. It can be done in-person or virtually, and we’ve found that it helps groups wade into strategic tensions or dilemmas together while moving towards deeper alignment.

We hope you give it a try and would love to hear how it goes.
 

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:50 How Sort & Share Works
04:39 Participant Perspectives: Philanthropy Northwest
07:12 Participant Perspectives: Bright Promises Foundation
09:52 Impacts of Sort & Share 
 

Exercise Overview

Use Case:
Exploring strategic tensions and dilemmas as a group.

Impacts: 
Over the years we've observed that Sort & Share is particularly effective as it...
...gives everyone a voice.
...builds trust.
...pushes people out of “either/or” thinking.
...gets groups on the same page.

Steps: 

1. Frame your strategic tension as a two-sided question (note: the two sides can be yes/no). For example: 

• Should we spend up or scale down?
• Do we want to go broader or deeper?
• Should we play a supporting role or a leadership role?
   

2. Create a continuum using each of the two sides as the ends.

• If in-person, find a space where your group can form a line and use signs or flip charts to show what each end of the line represents.
• If virtual, you can use a virtual collaboration tool like Jam Board and simply draw a line and label each end.
   

3. Sort: Ask everyone to place or sort themselves on the continuum based on their perspectives right now.
 

4. Share: Once they’ve found their spot, ask people to share why they are where they are.
 

5. Give everyone the option to move to a different place on the continuum if they’ve changed their minds after hearing their peers’ perspectives.
 

Bonus: If you have time, you can change the terms of the question and see if people move.
 

If you are looking for support in strategy or facilitation, please reach out to us at hello@thegivingpractice.org.

Mark Sedway is a Senior Advisor at The Giving Practice. You can learn more about our team of consultants on our team page here.