Do You Foster an Environment for Communication? Facing Challenges? Creativity?
Use the Principles of Improvisation to Build Psychological Safety and ‘The Idea Friendly Environment’
The Free Association is a London-based training company specialising in
Communication, Collaboration & Innovation.
Our unique style of unlocking creativity in individuals and teams has proven highly successful and has led to us to working with some of the world’s most reputable companies.
We create an environment of psychological safety - a space where employees feel valued, heard, and supported, enabling them to effectively collaborate and create.
We call this The ‘Idea Friendly Environment’.
Here, no one individual is responsible for the Eureka moment - the idea is a sum of all it’s parts. We believe everyone in a team has an invaluable voice, and a part to play in both creating and upholding the Idea Friendly Environment, and also in the innovate solutions it creates.
‘The Idea Friendly Environment’ programme has been trusted by and developed with some of the most successful businesses in the world. Find out how it can benefit your team.
“Don’t Bring a Cathedral.
Bring a Brick. We’ll Build it Together!”
- Del Close
Kraft Heinz - Training Experience 2022 ⤵
3 Simple Steps to Create The Idea Friendly Environment
1. Understand The Impact of Rejection 2. Embrace Failure and Encourage Risk 3. Mine Before you Refine
This programme that has been honed and developed with the UK’s most talent improvisers and some of the most successful, forward thinking businesses in the world.
1. Understanding Rejection, and it's ripple effects
We know that effective communication works in tandem with strong commitment to listening and empathy.
We need to experience how our actions may stop the flow of communication, and the ripple effects that they may cause. Once acknowledged, we can work to adapt how we comminicate - put our agenda aside, and uphold a space of deep active listening and responding.
2. Encouraging Risk By Embracing Failure
There's an old adage that we use - "What isn’t said, isn't known".
It means when you miss a chance to speak up, you make it harder for everyone. But at the workplace, the opposite sometimes feels true: Speaking up means you might get it wrong - which affects your willingness to take a risk in the first place. We all know that great ideas elevate an entire company - so why are we keeping them to ourselves?
3. Innovative Thinking
Innovation is coming up with new ideas and new solutions to problems.
It requires an ability to think in new ways about things you see everyday. And more than that, it requires a willingness to do so. We need to be open to listen actively to what your teammates are saying and doing, unlocking new points of view and following creative, new paths of thought to an innovative solution.
Stretching Comfort Zones, Facilitating Discoveries and Achieving Learning Goals... All While Having a Hilarious Time!
Some of Our Clients…
Our programmes have been applied across every industry - from finance giants to media and tech powerhouses. We have created an Idea Friendly Environment with teams in the smallest of independent organisations to the biggest businesses in the world.
Read our Case Studies ➤
Helping The Innovators of The Future
We feel very strongly about the importance of creative education, and hope you do too. For every business workshop that we deliver, we will provide a relevant creative skills workshop to children and young people, free of charge.
Our training teaches people to be confident, respond in the moment, value other’s ideas, accept failure, collaborate, innovate, and so much more. Even thought these entrepreneurial skills are desirable to employers, the UK formal education curriculum overlooks them as non-essential ‘creative skills’. This means that, for the most part, children and young people (your employees of tomorrow ) don’t gain them through their normal education pathways.
Don’t worry - We’ve got their backs.
We will provide free employability workshops to formal education establishments, and other organisations that engage hard-to-reach children and young people, and we will gladly provide them in a place of your choosing.