Tool
The Wheel
Not a personality test and not an oracle. A filing system with a good memory: eight directions that between them describe every state a group passes through in a day, and a collection filed underneath them.
How to use this
Where is your group right now?
Sleepy after lunch? That is South-west. Wired and unfocused? South-east. Something ended and nobody has said anything about it? West. Press that direction and the wheel hands you something to do about it.
If you do not know, turn the wheel and let it choose. Being sent somewhere unexpected is half the method.
Three ways to use it
- Diagnostically, in the moment
- Your group has just come back from lunch and nothing is happening. That is south-west. Press it, and take what you are given.
- Structurally, when planning a week
- Lay your timetable over the wheel. Most programmes are almost entirely east and south — arrival energy and activity — with no west and no north at all. A week with no silence in it is a week people leave exhausted and remember nothing of.
- Randomly, when you are stale
- Turn it and run whatever comes up. Being sent to a direction you would never have chosen is the fastest way to stop running the same four sessions for a decade.
The eight-direction wheel used here comes from the nature-connection lineage taught by Jon Young and the 8 Shields Institute, which draws in turn on teachings from many indigenous cultures. The wording on this site is ours and is written for youth work. See where the wheel comes from.