Library of facilitation techniques

Decision Making & Goal Setting Workshop Activities

Workshop activities focused on decision making, goal setting and implementation. Guide your group through the process of narrowing down ideas and select the best option to execute.
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Andy Pearson

Circle, Square, Triangle

At the end of a workshop, it's important to reflect on the things you've learnt, the things you still need to work on and how the things you've learnt in the workshop will help you improve. This activity encourages post-session reflection, and is suitable to be run remotely.

Hyper Island

3 Action Steps

This is a small-scale strategic planning session that helps groups and individuals to take action toward a desired change. It is often used at the end of a workshop or programme. The group discusses and agrees on a vision, then creates some action steps that will lead them towards that vision. The scope of the challenge is also defined, through discussion of the helpful and harmful factors influencing the group.

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Thiagi Group

Social Virus

We all know how quickly the cold or flu can spread through the office, but we don't often think about how contagious our emotions can be. This exercise provides a brief simulation of how quickly both negative and positive emotions can be transmitted. One participant is selected to be the Negative Infector General and asked to infect others with a negative emotion. During the next round, you pretend to select another participant to be the Positive Infector General. At the end of the second round, participants are surprised to find out that they became more positive even though no one initiated the emotion.
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Hyper Island

Project Point of Departure

This is a method for individuals and teams to define the structure, direction and first steps of a project. The individual or team works through a set of questions and documents the answers in a sharable digital format. This can either be a “living” document that develops with the project it can be left as just a clear and concise record of the starting-point.

Gamestorming methods

RACI Matrix

Sometimes responsibilities aren’t clear. By creating a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) matrix, a group will tackle the responsibility problem directly.

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Hyper Island

Parking Lot

This is a classic business tool used to keep meetings and workshops focused on track. During discussions, questions will often emerge that are important but not fully relevant to the focus at the moment. These questions or issues are “parked” on a flipchart, to be addressed and answered later. This practice helps ensure that important questions do not get lost and that the group can stay focused on the most relevant things.

Liberating Structures

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices.

DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

Thiagi Group

Near and Far

Near and Far is a wonderful warm up game that provides excellent avenues to build connections and to discuss various issues of corporate culture and dynamics. I have used it in conferences and it is suitable for small, medium, and large groups.
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Thiagi Group

Lasting Impression Elevator Pitch

How do you explain what you do to someone you meet for the first time and make a lasting impression? Being able to explain what you do may result in a career spurt—or at least help you avoid some embarrassment. Participants write a short pitch they can use to introduce themselves to clients or new acquaintances or to make unscheduled presentations. Later, they have the pitch critiqued and improved using a three-part rating system.
Thiagi Group

Stress Balls

Understanding the importance of communication and teamwork is an important requirement for high performance teams of knowledge workers. This exercise is an effective energizer that requires communication and teamwork. Ask participants to form a circle and throw a ball around to simulate the movement of a message. Change different variables such as speed, quantity, and complexity to create a mess.
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Thiagi Group

Quick Change

This opening activity works well for topics that deal with the challenges of change. It is adapted from an activity developed and used by Crestcom, a management and leadership development company.