Library of facilitation techniques

This method is adapted from the well-known icebreaker 'Two Truths And A Lie' to create an activity that you could return to throughout a meeting.

Which of these two values is more important among the employees in your organization?

• Integrity
• Customer-focus

Yes, you are right: Both of them are important. And comparing these two values is like comparing apples with oranges.

However, thinking about these values, discussing them, and placing them in a priority order makes them more tangible. Participants identify the highest-priority value among a set of employee values by comparing them two at a time.

A fun and reliable technique for scoring many ideas, with instant visual results. Participants rate statements by dropping tokens in Feedback Frames in a range of slots that are hidden by a cover, with results later revealed as a visual graph of opinions. This simple in-person analog tool uses secret score voting to recognize nuanced gradients of agreement towards consensus and avoid traditional voting problems such as groupthink and vote-splitting, which are common in sticker dot voting.

This effective technique can be used at any meeting to make discussions more structured and efficient. By using simple hand gestures, participants can express different opinions and desires.

Appreciative Inquiry is based on the organization’s positive core strengths in order to find insights and untapped chances that have to ability to exponentially increase performance. 

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.

A light way to encourage punctuality in any group event or meeting in which there are breaks

Vote with your feet exercise to set up insightful conversations and activities

People working in different functions and disciplines can quickly improve how they ask each other for what they need to be successful. You can mend misunderstandings or dissolve prejudices developed over time by demystifying what group members need in order to achieve common goals. Since participants articulate core needs to others and each person involved in the exchange is given the chance to respond, you boost clarity, integrity, and transparency while promoting cohesion and coordination across silos: you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again! This structure enacts LS Principle #6, Amplify Freedom and Responsibility.

Practice deeper listening and empathy by experiencing the same stimulus from two perspectives. Partners sit back-to-back and first listen individually to a short piece of music, noticing their internal experience through body, emotions, and thoughts.

They then describe their experience to each other in detail before listening again — this time through the lens of their partner’s description. By shifting from “my experience” to “your experience,” participants practice perspective-taking, empathy, and disciplined attention.

This simple structure builds the micro-behaviors that strengthen understanding, improve collaboration, and enhance the quality of insight gathered from others.

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