Facilitator Competencies
Is Strategic Visioning a Waste of Time? 6 Ways to Overcome Resistance To It
Your group needs strategic planning. But they either refuse or are very resistant to doing the visioning part of strategic planning. YOU may know that visioning is essential as a foundational piece of strategic planning. So you are doing the group a disservice if you “give in” to their resistance to it. So what can…
Masterful Facilitation Under Any Circumstances Using 4 Levels of Connection
Today I woke up thinking a lot about connection. If you aren’t connected, you cannot facilitate. As facilitators of group process, we need to be connected at so many levels. It is our lifeline in times of trial and tribulation. Connection allows us to be fully present to whatever arises in the group. It requires…
Decision Making Authority: When You Have It and When You Don’t
If you search on the phrase “ladder of decision making” on the internet, you find some great graphics. The graphic overview handout we provide you today (free download link is below) is only one version. You can find ones that apply to schools, citizen involvement, leaders in a corporate setting and so on. Our version…
We Are a Community! Keys to Thriving as a Facilitator
Today, I’m going to blog about community. I’ve been surrounded by community for the last few weeks. It has come up in conversations I’ve had with colleagues. Even in the course we taught last week, there was a sense that the group needed to create a community of facilitators to practice with and share lessons…
Seven Facilitator Tips to Make Your Training MUCH More Engaging
You have your training plan ready and you realize you want it to be more engaging. Typical training is about passing on learning and content, in small or large blocks. It provides theory, information, and ideally activities to help retain the information. But the emphasis is on a hierarchical model where the trainer is the…
Finding the Silver Lining… for that Facilitated Event Gone Wrong!
What do you do when you have a facilitated an event that has gone badly? It might just be one moment in the whole event that you keep dwelling on after the fact. You realize you made a mistake. And you don’t exactly know what you could’ve done differently. This blog is about many stories…
Becoming a ToP Facilitation Trainer and Other Questions About ToP Methods
Recently we ran a Technology of Participation (ToP) training for a school district. It was really wonderful to work with principals, consultants and department staff together on an issue of importance to them. We were asked a few questions about Technology of Participation training. This blog answers a few general questions they asked plus tells…
Finding Your Passion – Two Intuitive Tools to Launch Your Annual Plan
This blog will focus on two intuitive tools to assist you in thinking about your big picture planning for this year. These are great tools to use with yourself, coaching others, and facilitating any groups who would benefit from having a clear vision and purpose. The first is a brand new one that our son,…
Facilitation Methods vs. Tools: Making Your Facilitator Journey Easier
Today, at risk of repeating ourselves, we are going to talk a bit more about your journey as a facilitator. It is an amazing journey, a “hero’s journey” (mythologist and author Joseph Campbell came up with this term) of sorts. Each one of us will have a different journey, depending especially if we start it…
How Facilitators Stop Power Imbalance, Dominance and Oppression
This week marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, November 11, 1918. WOW. I was in Canada for the last 2 weeks and we passed through a small village on Vancouver Island on this anniversary date. We passed by a beautiful gathering of veterans and citizens in a cemetery. People were…
