Guiding Groups

Space: The Final Frontier of Facilitation

Highlights from the International Association of Facilitator’s Conference Do you know what I’m talking about if I say I have a little ache in my heart because I’m missing being with my IAF friends?  I returned home to Portland, Oregon in Northwestern USA from spending 5 days in Orlando, Florida (southeastern USA) being with many…

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Facilitation Saves The Day (AGAIN!) Five Steps to Easing Tension and Conflict in Groups

How does conflict show up in groups? I’d like to share three short stories about my own facilitated events that went wrong and then either turned out great, OK or failed miserably. These stories illustrate how conflict shows up differently in groups. Then we’ll share some tips, tools and a five step process to ease…

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Be Known For Your Razor Sharp Meeting Principles

So you’re running a lot of meetings, and you never have time to prepare for them, and you’re not sure if they are very effective, and you really don’t have time to think about making them better! Sound familiar?  Ok – help is here! Here is your short guide to six common principles for effective…

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“A Hero’s Journey” – A Model to Help Groups Through Big Change

Recently, I had the pleasure of being reminded of a model that I think serves facilitators and their groups well.  It is Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”.    I was co-facilitating a plenary session with my dear ICA colleague, Jo Nelson who works with ICA Canada.  She had the idea of using the theme of the Hero’s…

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Unflappable Holy Cows – Lessons Learned

I’ve been back from India for 10 days.  I went there to take a course called Ayurveda Mandala.  This is partly out of sheer personal interest for continuing to develop my health and wellness practices but also largely staying curious about the work I’ve been co-creating on The 5 Elements of Facilitation Design.  What keeps…

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What About Having Culturally Competent Meetings that Rock?

In April we started our first in a three part series of free webinars called “Meetings That Rock”.  I realized that in the promotional video that I made some cultural competency mistakes.  A colleague talked about this with me and it was embarrassing that after all my cultural competency training and quest to be a…

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Why Brainstorming Often Fails

Are you making the right kind of “splash” with your brainstorming technique? We suspect you have seen poor brainstorming technique by people not trained.  Typically here is how brainstorming goes: The meeting person says: “We have problem x. What can we do to solve it?” They write down as many ideas as they can get from…

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