exercise · all tools
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 questions — what in your work and life is ending, what wants to be born, what would you do if you could not fail — ending in concrete next steps. Private by design: the writing is never collected or shared; prompts are read aloud with steady timing.
Prerequisites
- Announce privacy up front: nothing will be collected, read, or required to be shared
- Biographical prompts (what is ending, what wants to die) reach deep; keep pace unhurried and allow skipping any prompt
- Offer an optional, strictly voluntary pair-share afterwards rather than a round
Practical
- Time
- 30-45 min + 10 landing
- Group
- 1–∞ · individual, small-group, large-group
- Settings
- in-person, online, self-guided
- Materials
- Prompt script; private notebook per person
- Mechanisms
- narrative-identity, values-clarification, stillness-silence
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Origin & where it lives
Otto Scharmer / Presencing Institute — Theory U (u.lab practice)
Instructions: open online · CC BY (Presencing Institute)
In this directory via u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools · IDG Phase 2 Research Report & Toolkit (2022) · HostingTransformation Methods ToolBox
Depth 3 with holding 1 is deliberate and validator-flagged (W1): the container here is privacy, not the facilitator — the same design logic as solo journaling, run at group scale. The host's craft is limited to pacing and protecting silence.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25