How to Run Minute Papers

Minute Papers is focused on surfacing the emotions, thoughts, and feelings that participants are experiencing. When creating the prompt, walk participants towards bringing their own opinions to the page rather than reciting facts.

Due to its brevity, it’s easy to plug Minute Papers into any part of an agenda. Anytime you have a dense conversation that made people feel things, strong imagery, content or context, use a Minute Paper to give everyone a moment to let their thoughts sink in.

You can use Minute Papers to:

• Check-in with the group and allow them to check in with themselves
• Begin the session and get a read on how they’re feeling upon arrival
• Create a moment of pause to change the energy of the room

Imagine you are facilitating a meeting with your team of six people who report to you. You want to understand how people are feeling about the team environment and eventually you’d like to know if they have any ideas for what would improve the collaborative dynamics.

You pass out paper and pen and then say to the group, “I’d really like us to take just the next minute to write down your answer to this question: ‘How am I feeling about our collaboration as a team?’”

You let the group know their papers won’t be collected; you’re just going to use them as a jumping-off point for conversation. You set a timer on your phone for one minute and let the group know to start writing.

Other prompts to consider using with Minute Papers:

“How are you feeling about the session so far?”

“When thinking about the conversation the group just had, what is something that for you was left unsaid?”

“If someone wasn’t able to attend today’s session, what is one thing you would share with them that you learned?”

Minute Papers is one of our favorite Facilitator Cards! Check out this video for more about how we use Minute Papers.