Last week, I facilitated a few executive workshops for Dialogue in the Dark Hong Kong (DiD HK) – a very successful social enterprise originated in Germany.

With a special focus on promoting public awareness, empathy and equality towards the visually impaired (VI), DiD uses innovative and entertaining ways to demonstrate the potentials and talents of VIs and facilitate the people from all walks of life to reflect and improve their own lives.

The DiD executive workshop is one of the high impact service that leverages on the power of darkness to facilitate personal reflection and changes.

The motto of DiD HK reads:

Sight is what we see with our eyes; insight is what we gain without seeing.

The workshop gives participants a brief period of “life without vision” in complete darkness. Guided by visually impaired trainers, the participants has to face a highly uncertain and unfamiliar situation, tune up their senses, trust each other, communicate effectively and work closely together in a task-filled 2-hour session.

As a facilitator, my job is to help the participants reflect on the DiD experience after the darkness session, to guide them distill their insights, and help them generate their own ways of living better lives.

After more than a year and quite a number of workshops, I am still amazed by the power of this workshop.

In complete darkness, instead of losing your important sense component of vision, you become more alert. You tune up your ears, explore with touches, and rediscover that you can smell. How many of us have pay enough attention of those senses in our daily lives?

In complete darkness, you listen carefully to feedback. You learn to see if other really understand your ideas. You learn to really communicate!

In complete darkness, you step into the unknown. You learn to face unfamiliar and uncertain situations with confidence. Well, will changes still be a problem to you?

Facilitating DiD workshop debriefing is a very interesting and challenging experience. Unlike most training workshops, the DiD workshop has no specific contents, framework, theory, or skill to deliver.

The facilitator has to ride on the learning and experience of the participants and enable them to consolidate their own insights and generate the needed changes. Flexibility, responsiveness, together with fine skills, mindsets and experience all play important roles in a successful facilitator role.

Every session is a learning experience to me. It allows me to learn from the participants, and also give me the opportunities to refine my NLP skills and experiment new techniques in leading group sessions.

I am glad that I can play a part in the DiD executive workshop, and can contribute to the growth and development of so many management teams and individuals.

Interested? See you in the dark.