Library of facilitation techniques

Leadership and Personal Development Group Activities

Activities to support personal development and train new soft skills. Help your participants to reflect, grow self-awareness and learn new interpersonal skills.
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Hyper Island

Feedback Map

This is a feedback exercise to support participants to deliver feedback that is clear and specific, especially after working in multiple project teams over a longer period of time. The team maps the connections between individuals, then uses specific points of interaction to prompt feedback.

Liberating Structures

Drawing Together

You can help people access hidden knowledge such as feelings, attitudes, and patterns that are difficult to express with words. When people are tired, their brains are full, and they have reached the limits of logical thinking, you can help them evoke ideas that lie outside logical, step-by-step understanding of what is possible. Stories about individual or group transformations can be told with five easy-to-draw symbols that have universal meanings. The playful spirit of drawing together signals that more is possible and many new answers are expected. Drawing Together cuts through the culture of overreliance on what people say and write that constrains the emergence of novelty. It also provides a new avenue of expression for some people whose ideas would otherwise not surface.

Hyper Island

Back-turned Feedback

Regular, effective feedback is one of the most important ingredients in building constructive relationships and thriving teams. Openness creates trust and trust creates more openness. Feedback exercises aim to support groups to build trust and openness and for individuals to gain self-awareness and insight. Feedback exercises should always be led with thoughtfulness and high awareness of group dynamics.

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Hyper Island

Reflection: Individual

Individual reflection helps to pick apart complex experiences so that the successes of the experience can be repeated and the failures can be avoided in the future. The format is flexible, taking you through key stages of the reflection process, and ending with key action points.

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Liberating Structures

Shift and Share

You can quickly and effectively share several innovations or useful programs that may lie hidden within a group, organization, or community. Shift & Share gets rid of long large-group presentations and replaces them with several concise descriptions made simultaneously to multiple small groups. A few individuals set up “stations” where they share in ten minutes the essence of their innovations that may be of value to others. As small groups move from one innovator’s station to another, their size makes it easy for people to connect with the innovator. They can quickly learn where and how new ideas are being used and how they might be adapted to their own situations. Innovators learn from the repetition, and groups can easily spot opportunities for creative mash-ups of ideas.

Thiagi Group

Cover Up

This exercise deals with the importance of unlearning. The facilitator gives instructions to cover one of your ears or eyes. Later, the facilitator refers to the left ear as nose and the right eye as mouth. Subsequent instructions slow down your performance.
Knowmium Learn

Call To Action Follow Up

Used as a post-session follow up or multiple session activity, participants share their action plan or project success. Results can be posted and discussed on a shared network or brought to a later live session (such as a review session or informal group catch up).