Library of facilitation techniques

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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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1,507 results

Methods (1507)

Liberating Structures

Caravan

You can quickly and effectively get and give help in a diverse group, organization, or community. Caravan gets rid of long large-group presentations and replaces them with several concise consultations made simultaneously to group members that have asked for help with a challenge.


A few individuals set up stations where they share a challenge and a consultation question. Often the challenge is directly or obliquely shared by others in the group. As small groups of consultants move from one station to another, their size makes it easy for people to connect with the client and visa versa. Clients learn how to ask productive questions and consultants learn how to be more effective coaches.

With Caravan everyone can quickly learn how challenges are being addressed and how new approaches might be adapted to their own situations.

Liberating Structures

Positive Gossip

Creating a climate of appreciative personal feedback can dramatically boost performance for individuals and groups. It is possible to begin turning a vicious self-reinforcing cycle of negative gossip—that stifles risk-taking and innovation—into a virtuous self-reinforcing cycle of positive feedback. Positive Gossip is an antidote to a strongly felt discontent and indifference that spreads informally from person to person (a form of acute proliferative dysphoria). A generalized malaise in which “things will not get better, only worse.” A robust pattern of positive feedback can eliminate the need for extrinsic rewards and incentive programs (e.g. free coffee coupons, stickers, awards ceremonies).
Liberating Structures

Future-Present

Notice threads in the present that if tugged on might unravel a more attractive future. Identify how the hints of a more ideal future are present, just not widely distributed yet. Participants can notice small changes, support structures, and local success patterns that have the potential to be scaled up to a global transformation. This includes surfacing strategies to overcome resistance and methods to spread early successes. Future~Present does not produce a plan to be implemented but rather builds momentum, imagination, social proof, and confidence in subtle or incremental signals. This builds capacity to actively shape next steps and pounce on opportunities.

Erica Marx

Truth holding

A collective witnessing practice where participants anonymously name truths they are carrying and then the group then takes turns physically and verbally “holding” one another’s truths, building shared understanding, acceptance, empathy, and surfacing patterns in the group.

Mirna Smidt  from Trainers Toolbox

Ideal Day - Design Your Perfect Average Day

Perfect Day is a reflective writing exercise that helps participants visualize and design their ideal future lifestyle.
By imagining a single “perfect average day” five years from now, they explore what truly makes them happy & what is important to them across work, relationships, health, and adventures.

This activity guides participants to dream big without limitations.
The outcome is a vivid, detailed description of a day that reflects their most authentic, joyful life.

Heike Roettgers

NASA-Teamübung

  • 4–5 Personen pro Gruppe
  • Bei mehr als 5 Personen bitte in mehrere Teams aufteilen.
Suzanne  Whitby

Polak Exercise

Named after futurist Fred Polak, this reflective exercise asks participants to consider how they see the future, whether it’s bright or bleak, and how those images shape the present. It helps surface underlying assumptions and emotional responses to change.

Creative Commons Methods

Guided Journaling

Guided Journaling is a tool for the bottom of the U-process and builds on a completed co-sensing phase. It cannot stand alone! It allows participants to step into a deeper level of self-reflection and is often followed by a solo experience to expand on the insights that arise.