Library of facilitation techniques

Using Quote to inspire team and promote trust.

This is a group activity that explores group dynamics, team-building and creative problem solving. It is also a lot of fun. A team of any size has the challenge to prepare a dinner for themselves and their peers, with limited resources and limited time. It works well with new teams as an exercise to help them bond, but it can also be effective for the development of experienced teams.

The History Map game shows you how to map moments and metrics that shaped your organization. It’s also a great way to familiarize new people with an organization’s history and culture during periods of rapid growth.

Spectrum mapping is designed to reveal the diversity of perspectives and options around any given topic and to organize them into a meaningful spectrum. It’s valuable because it unearths information that plays a role in attitudes and behaviours that otherwise may not be visible.

You can help a large group of people identify obstacles and opportunities for spreading ideas or innovations at many levels. Panarchy enables people to visualize how systems are embedded in systems and helps them understand how these interdependencies influence the spread of change. Participants become more alert to small changes that can help spread ideas up to other system levels; they learn how shifts at larger or lower system levels may release resources to assist them at another level. With better appreciation of the Ecocycle dynamics at play, the group creates “opportunity windows” for innovations to spread among levels and across boundaries.

A lateral thinking approach for ideas to a difficult problem

Here's a closer that encourages participants to recall what happened in the session and to come up with second thoughts about how they could have benefited more. It also creates useful materials for an interesting icebreaker.

In pairs, one person describes a modern appliance to someone from 500 years ago

As a group is developing ideas in a brainstorming session, it may be useful to do a quick “reality check” on proposed ideas. In the NUF Test, participants rate an idea on three criteria: to what degree is it New, Useful, and Feasible?

We live in fast changing world and we need to think and react quickly and decisively. This gamification tool encourages people to think rapidly and creatively. Remove the mental barriers that prevent people from overthinking and blocking in branstormings.