Library of facilitation techniques

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Featured Author – International Association of Facilitators

IAF is a worldwide community of facilitators promoting excellence in the use of professional group process facilitation to create engagement and impact.

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261 results

Methods (261)

Erica Marx

Dolphin Training

One player leaves the room and the group decides a short series of actions (or one action) to positively reinforce and get the player to do. Group decides on a song to sing louder/softer to hot/cold the person into doing the activity.

2
Hyper Island

Go Bananas

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.

Liberating Structures

Improv Prototyping

You can engage a group to learn and improve rapidly from tapping three levels of knowledge simultaneously: (1) explicit knowledge shared by participants; (2) tacit knowledge discovered through observing each other’s performance; and (3) latent knowledge, i.e., new ideas that emerge and are jointly developed. 

This powerful combination can be the source of transformative experiences and, at the same time, it is seriously fun. Participants identify and act out solutions to chronic or daunting problems. A diverse mix of people is invited to dramatize simple elements that work to solve a problem. Innovations represented in the Improv sketches are assembled incrementally from pieces or chunks that can be used separately or together. It is a playful way to get very serious work done! This structure embodies LS Principle #4, Learn by Failing Forward.

Thiagi Group

CIA

Here's what the three letters of the acronym stand for: constructive, immediate, and active. Whenever someone shares some news about positive things that happened to her, react constructively, immediately, and actively. This strengthens your relationship and makes both of you happy. To learn more about this approach, read the handout at the end of the game instructions.

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.