Just wanted to let you know that I did get the Group Works deck at last, and was entirely impressed. Fantastic! Great quality, beautiful and relevant images, perfect writing, 100% usable information, I was absolutely impressed all the way around, and I'm sure you are very rightfully proud of how things turned out, too.
I purchased the deck specifically to use as a tool for a presentation at a group that I am involved with that supports women's education. There have been several very tense moments within the past several meetings, when communication did not go well, and no one seemed to know quite what to do about it, even though the problem was obvious. I was not sure how to address the situation but someone clearly had to, so I decided to do some "guerilla facilitation" as the deck calls it - a great term that I had never heard before, but describes the need we had perfectly. So, I got the deck to use as a neutral way to introduce the concept of "group dynamics," rather than approach the situation head-on, as I don't feel skilled enough to do that, without messing it up and hurting more feelings.
I was nervous that either a) people would find the presentation boring or b) they would say - hey, you're talking about us! - and then get upset.
As it turned out, neither of these things happened.
Everyone was very attentive and participated very well in the ways I set things up for interaction, and no one acted awkward or brought up our previous tricky situations. Going forward, though, I think that awareness has been greatly improved that group dynamics is its own thing, and that there are specific techniques that can be deliberately learned and use to help groups communicate better with each other.
I also got several emails and comments privately afterward about how much they liked both the presentation itself, and the cards in particular.
All in all - thanks for a very effective tool that the world hugely needs, for sure!
teacher & freelance writer
