Facilitator Tools
Treat Your Groups to 6 Energizers From Our Menu
Here are a few really cool meeting energizers from colleagues whom I deeply respect or whose processes I have used and found to work extremely well. Please read also our earlier blog on why I normally disapprove of energizers just to energize or have fun! These energizers are relevant, fun and produce an outcome. The…
Finding Your Passion – Two Intuitive Tools to Launch Your 2019 Plan
This blog will focus on two intuitive tools to assist you in thinking about your big picture planning for 2019. 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, Gabriel,…
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…
A Simple Design to Facilitate Climate Change Action
This blog is going to focus on a climate change action workshop in Hong Kong I was co-leading in the midst of a super typhoon coming towards Hong Kong. Hong Kong had never experienced this high level (9) typhoon in its history. Here is a photo of a tiny sample of the after math in…
Energizer: Positively Connecting the Group
True to my word, we are keeping the blog very short and sweet for the next little while. Here is a quick energizer I’ve used in various formats for many years. I learned and adapted it from my Portland colleague Paula Manley! It is also based on the “flow” concept of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It works…
Short But Powerfully Participatory Meetings
The Diagnosis You have 20 to 30 minutes to hold your regular team meeting. You’ve fallen into the bad practice of just having people report out. It has become an informational meeting where there’s not very much interaction. Some people may be paying attention for part of it but probably not all of it! You…
What Can A Facilitator Do to Honour Life’s Milestones?
Since 1995, when I first learned the Technology of Participation methods from The Institute of Cultural Affairs, I have been impressed with the tool I have heard them use on staff and collegial special events, good-byes and birthdays. However, the way I’ve been using it over the decades, is to conduct a conversation with my…
Brainstorming Gone Wrong? Here’s How to Fix It
We suspect you have seen poor brainstorming technique by people NOT trained as facilitators. Typically here is how brainstorming goes: The meeting person says: “We have problem x. What can we do to solve it?” The leader writes down as many ideas as they can get from whomever has an answer on a flipchart or…
Spring Clean Your Meetings! The Art of A Fresh Start
This blog contains a series of videos and handouts on how to dramatically enliven your meetings. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring is often the time we take to get rid of old, NOT useful things. It is a time to freshen up our day-to-day living space. We call this process “spring…
Facilitator Endurance: 4 Stages That Win You the Gold
I’ve been thinking about endurance. The winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea now, are a very big demonstration of endurance. Athletes go through a four stage process more or less of endurance training. What about facilitators? I’d like to talk about the why and what of the four stage process as it relates to our…
