Facilitator Tools
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…
Facilitating From the Side – There’s Hope for Bad Meetings
I worry a lot about people who attend meetings. I worry because many tell me how bad they are. I am totally spoiled. I simply don’t attend others’ meetings unless I know they will be well run. Most of the time, I am facilitating them or facilitating from the side without permission. What about those…
Got 10 minutes? The Power of Reflection
I started to write my blog today and part way through it I felt like throwing it out the window – it was sooooooo boring! I felt I had said the same things a million times. So instead I’m just talking to you from the heart today – it is something I have wanted to…
Tinkering with Open Space!
A number of colleagues and I occasionally debate whether it’s ok to modify a well known, well established, outstanding framework. In the course of a recent conversation, a few of us came up with a modification to one of the steps in the Open Space Technology (OST) framework. For me, OST has always been a…
Four Lessons from 22 Years of Facilitation Practice
Next year is my 23rd anniversary for being in business as North Star Facilitators. That’s a relatively big piece of history for me. As I reflect on my own journey, it’s sometimes hard to notice my successes. Likely many of us tend to focus on where we have struggled. I am no exception. In this…
The Honest Truth About My Facilitation Footprint
Today, I want to tell you how my facilitation practice has evolved over 25-30 years. What are the footsteps I have taken and what are the footprints I’ve left behind? How have I evolved in this time? This is a question that the IAF (International Association of Facilitators) has been asking us to answer for…
Preparing to Facilitate – Are You Ready (Enough)?
The photos we use in the banner and narrative for this revised 2011 blog are from my current trip in Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada. There are magnificent coastal views of course being on a spectacular island with much rain forest – albeit much of it has been logged. I was thinking…
Deepen Your Impact – What Seoul Taught My Soul
In just a minute, you will read and see more about deepening your impact when you facilitate groups. But first, take a tour of Seoul’s, South Korea, incredible depth via a few photos. Imagine what this country has been through and is going through. Breathe in the richness, depth, resilience, creativity of these people! Then,…
