Putting Boxes on People
Why would I ask anyone to put a box on their head?
By asking people to wear the box we move from theory to experience and bring the thinking out of the box metaphor to life. The intense impact the physical box has on our experience is similar to the impact our invisible thinking box has on our daily lives.
We are so used to experiencing life through our invisible thinking box that we believe we are experiencing the world as it exists. In reality, we are filtering out far more than we can imagine. By putting a physical box on our heads we are opening our eyes, emotions and awareness to just how closed our minds can be.
What do People do with a Box on their Head?
The most important thing to get the participants to do when they have a box on their head is to forget it’s there – to not focus on it.
We provide a task that will engage them enough so that they are no longer aware of the box and instead focus on accomplishing a task. We mirror day to day interactions in business and in our lives by asking participants to interact with each other, share ideas and coordinate action towards a common goal. The difference is that instead of wearing an invisible box, they will do these things with a physical box on their heads.
In the earlier iterations of the program, we kept the participants in the training room and asked them to do a number of tasks, including the infamous ball catch.
As we gained more experience we realized it is better to get them to do what they want to do naturally rather than giving them some arbitrary task. And what is the first thing people want to do when they put a box on their head? Take a photo!
Our favorite activity is to ask participants to leave the safety of the training room and go out in public in small groups to take groufies (group selfies) of themselves doing the most out of the box activity imaginable – but doing it with a box on their head. From the moment they leave the room to the time they come back, they must keep their boxes on their heads. When they have an idea about that picture, when they pose for it and when they take it, the idea of the box as a filter is always there as a boundary and the outside of the box is always there posing for the camera.
We find that leaving the safety of the room and incorporating the general public into their photos heightened the impact and created a deeper experience of what it’s like to think inside a box – and what it’s like to have the outside of the box perceived by others.
What Happens when they take the Box off?
Understandably, people think that the most meaningful moment in the process is when the participants put the box on their heads; but in fact the most meaningful moment is when they take it off.
In fact, we put the box on their heads to create the moment when they can take it off!
Taking the box off brings a sense of release, a kind of collective sigh of relief. That’s usually followed by a need to share the experience with others. Many participants immediately go on social media, start sharing photos with each other and sharing the stories of the experience they had doing out of the box activities with a box on their heads in public. As we slow down and start to have a conversation about all of this there is always an insightful debrief about the whole experience of creating, wearing and taking off the box.