Who Are You at This Event? ESVP Assessment

Each of us in the work process has been to various meetings. And at each of them we felt differently: somewhere we didn’t want to be at all, and somewhere the involvement was such that time flew by unnoticed. And these very feelings from meetings have been somewhat systematized - as a result, the ESVP assessment appeared.

What is it?

An assessment of a group’s potential engagement in a meeting. Each letter has its own meaning and corresponding feeling or expectation from the meeting.

ESVP:

• E - explorer
• S - shopper
• V - vacationer
• P - prisoner

“E” Explorer

The person most interested in the meeting - wants to learn as much as possible, come up with new ideas. And just bring something positive.

“S” Shopper

A person will carefully study everything that happens, but most likely without showing initiative like an explorer. This person will take away one or two ideas from the meeting.

“V” Vacationer

A person who is not particularly interested in the meeting, but is happy to spend time here so as not to work.

“P” Prisoner

A person feels that they are forced to be present here. And would like to do something, perhaps, more useful.

For whom?

This assessment is most useful for the person who will lead the meeting. For example, for a Scrum master.

How to work with this?

Option 1 - at the beginning of the meeting. Divide the board/flip chart into 4 parts, where each will correspond to a specific role. And ask participants to stick a sticker with their name in the corresponding area.

Option 2 - at the beginning of the meeting. Give each meeting participant a card where each option will be described, and the participant can choose who they are. Ask them to sign the cards. Then collect the cards and either process them later or stick the cards on the board, as in option 1.

And?

Based on the resulting picture, you can already work with this group. Highlight the explorers and don’t forget about the prisoners, throw ideas to the shoppers and give the vacationers the opportunity to joke.

Summary

At the end of the meeting, you can ask people if their attitude towards the meeting has changed. Very often vacationers and prisoners get involved in the work and bring very good results.

P.S. despite the fact that these techniques are most often used in Agile for retrospectives; I am sure that even outside the world of flexible approaches, you can use such techniques for researching your group for productive work.