Library of facilitation techniques

One person is designated as the leader.  Others copy exactly how the leader moves.  The leader calls on a new person to be the leader, and so on. Follow the follower variation is when the leading gets passed to the entire group and no single person is leading.

A simple exercise that complements exploratory, discursive, and creative workshops with insights and opinions from outside. Use this exercise when brainstorming ideas, developing a new product or service or creating a strategy or plan that will include others. Participants phone a co-worker and ask them questions relevant to the task. This quickly generates meaningful input from a range of “outside” perspectives. Often, participants will be surprised at how simple it was to solicit this input and how valuable it is to the process.

This fast, physical and loud energizer, has a high level of silliness and quickly charges up a group. The group repeats a simple chant over and over again, getting louder and louder as they go. By the end, the group is shouting and jumping about.

Set the expectations for behavior and conduct you have for participants at the beginning of your online meeting with the Online Meeting Etiquette checklist.

Regular, effective feedback is one of the most important ingredients in building constructive relationships and thriving teams. Openness creates trust and trust creates more openness. Feedback exercises aim to support groups to build trust and openness and for individuals to gain self-awareness and insight. Feedback exercises should always be led with thoughtfulness and high awareness of group dynamics.

A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

For use with a team, organization or any peer group forum.

Can be done in person or virtual

This is designed to create a conversation that brings Core Values alive. This is great for a team that knows what values they stand for. Through this exercise they will celebrate their values in action and therefore be energized to magnify them further.

It will also help bring along anyone that is new so they can understand that the group really walks the talk

This game helps participants to get information on each other in a fun, competitive way.

Instead of directly asking people what they like or don’t like about a particular brand, product or service, this method gives insight into their perceptions by eliciting feelings based on real-life experiences and interactions through writing a love or breakup letter.

To be used in the ideation and user exploration phase.

The Starfish can be used wherever you want to get an overview over how people perceive the status quo. It can be used as a gather data exercise in retrospectives or as feedback tool after events.