Tree of life exercise

The Tree of Life is a narrative therapy tool that was designed by Ncazelo Ncube and David Denborough (for more information see here) for young people with HIV. It aimed to encourage the children to believe in their own abilities, acknowledge their dreams and stand in a safer place from where they could talk about their difficult experiences in ways that were not re-traumatising, thereby enabling them to feel stronger in themselves.

The Tree of Life has since been adapted to various settings to help individuals and organisations recognise their strengths and create co-produced knowledge about how to respond to new opportunities. Here, it is used as an exercise to help practitioners reconnect with their professional identity and appreciate their values, strengths and resilience. It also helps people explore how strengths can be used to overcome potential difficulties or storms in their career.

The exercise may appear simple, but it can be a very powerful tool. It can take several hours to do well or can be simplified if you have less time available. Examples of completed trees from social work leaders are shown below.

Materials needed : All you need are brightly coloured felt-tip pens, Post-it notes and flipchart paper. Experience suggests that any initial reluctance to ‘play’ tends to be overcome quickly, and even senior leaders will soon engage in creating amazing and meaningful visual images to stimulate discussion.

Instructions : Explain that participants should draw a tree – step by step – to represent themselves, their team, or their organisation. This can be done individually, in pairs or in a group. Encourage participants to be as elaborate as they wish. Let them know that they can share as little or as much as they want to in their drawing (but the content should be anonymised when sharing later). They should begin by drawing the roots of the tree, then the ground, the trunk, the branches, and finally the leaves. Below are some questions to guide their drawing (these should be adapted for group work). Let participants know when to move from section to section (allowing about 10 minutes for each section).

Aim : The aim of the exercise is to help people see that understanding individual and collective strengths can enable us to build a sense of individual, team and organisational resilience. This will also foster a sense of appreciation for our individual and collective skills, values, and professional hopes and dreams.

Roots

• What shaped your life and your decision to be work in health and social care?

• What brought you into the work? Who influenced and inspired you?

• What aspects of your past influenced who you are today? What keeps you grounded?

Trunk

• What are your skills and values?

• What drives you in what you do?

• What are the ‘non-negotiable’ codes that guide the way you act?

• What values have you learned, or what do you appreciate from those who have influenced you?

Branches

• What are your hopes, dreams and wishes for your career, your service and your organisation?

• Throughout your time in this type of work, what have you contributed that has made you proud?

• What do you want to achieve for your organisation?

Leaves

• What brings you energy in your work?

• Who and what helps keep you going when things get tough?

• What brings you energy outside of work and are good things to focus on?

Feedback

Once people have done this individually or in their small groups, ask them to share and discuss with the wider group. We found that asking people to put their trees on the walls around the room is particularly effective. Describe this as a forest; remind people than an individual tree is more susceptible to storms, while a forest is far more resilient.

Storms and challenges ahead

Invite the group to think about the challenges or storms that are on the horizon:

• What storms and hazards do you face?

• What is the likely impact of the storms?

• Are there ways of weathering the storms that will allow you to hold onto your values?

• How can we use our collective strengths, visualised by the trees, to weather the storms?