3D Mapping (Sculpting the Current Reality)
A team sculpts its current reality with physical objects: stakeholders and — crucially — invisible forces (power, frustration, hope) are each given an object, with distance, siz…
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u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools
openaligned IDG relationpractice-based~20+ documented methods
Free, Creative-Commons-licensed methods from Theory U / u.lab: awareness-based tools for sensing, presencing and prototyping systems change — Case Clinic, Sensing Journeys, Guided Journaling, Stakeholder Interviews, Social Presencing Theatre.
u-school.org/resources — Presencing Institute (Otto Scharmer et al., MIT)
License: Creative Commons (Tools 2.0 PDFs state CC BY; current content policy page says CC BY-SA 4.0 — variant to confirm)
Tools from this source (17)
Case Clinic
Structured peer-coaching for 5–8 people (~70 minutes): a case giver presents a current leadership challenge at their growing edge; after clarifying questions, the group holds th…
Container Building
The facilitator's meta-practice from Theory U: deliberately creating the holding space before the work — preparing one's own inner condition, co-creating ground rules, and invit…
Dialogue Interview
A prepared but generative one-to-one conversation (30–90 minutes) designed to open reflection rather than extract answers: the interviewer sets an inner container in silence bef…
Empathy Walk
Choose a person significantly different from you — across a boundary of politics, faith, class, life experience — invite them for a walk, and practice holding space across that…
4D Mapping (Social Presencing Theater)
An embodied map of a whole social system: participants physically take the roles of its stakeholders — including marginal and non-human ones — arranging themselves as Sculpture…
Guided Journaling (Theory U)
Writing through a scripted sequence of questions that walk the U: from current challenges and frustrations, through looking at your journey and self from outside, to the deeper…
Iceberg Model
The systems-thinking staple: start from a visible event and dig down through the layers beneath it — patterns and trends, systemic structures, and the mental models and paradigm…
Listening Assessment
A daily solo tracking practice: at day's end, estimate how much of your listening happened at each of Scharmer's four levels — downloading (reconfirming what you know), factual,…
Prototyping (Theory U)
Explore the future by doing: a small core team (~5, a microcosm of the challenge) moves an idea into a concrete experiential prototype — clarify intention, sense the system, hol…
Scribing (Visual Practice)
A practitioner draws the conversation as it happens — mapping ideas, tensions, and emerging patterns on a large visible surface while people talk — so a group can literally see…
Seeds Collecting
A small companion practice to journaling: capture the resonant notations — a phrase, an image, a half-thought — that carry a charge of possible deep change; protect them, return…
Sensing Journey
Leaving the office to see the system from its edges: small groups visit places and people that matter in the system they work on — users, front lines, forgotten corners — with t…
Shadowing
Learn by silent accompaniment: define a focus question, then spend half a day to a full workday at someone's side — observing their working reality without commenting or helping…
Stakeholder Interview
A structured conversation with someone your work affects, built around a short sample questionnaire: what is your most important objective, and how can I help you realize it; wh…
Story Sharing
In trios, each person tells a story of a moment when their sense of Self clarified — when they knew, for a while, who they were and what they were for — with five to ten minutes…
The Stuck Exercise
A Social Presencing Theater practice: one person embodies a real stuck situation from their life or work as a physical shape ("sculpture 1"), stays with it, and lets the body —…