Library of facilitation techniques

One of the most important concepts in the workplace is trust. It affects performance, informal and formal relations, atmosphere of the workplace etc. With this activitiy you cn discover what one thinks about trust.

You may be a trustworthy computer programmer but nobody may trust your ability to manage a project. You may trust your surgeon to do brain surgery—but not to give you financial advice.

Trustworthy differentiates behaviors and traits that contribute to trustworthiness in different situations (such as predictability) and other behaviors and traits that are limited to specific situations (such as surgical expertise).

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.

You can use Whispers as a follow-up activity to any interesting experience among a group of friends. It's my favorite game to informally debrief my colleagues at the airport or during the drive back after a conference.

Here's an interesting game that produces humorous results. Hidden behind the humor, however, is subtle provocation that forces participants to think deeply to justify some of the basic principles and assumptions related to the training topic.

Participants write “Why?” questions related to the training topic. Then each participant writes a response to someone else's “Why?” questions. The questions and answers get mixed up, producing incongruous results.

What wishes do participants have for your training session? Which of these wishes do the most participants share?

Here's an opening activity that helps the participants to generate a list of wishes, discuss them, and identify the highest-priority wishes.

This is a modification of an interactive lecture activity that is transformed into a textra game. This activity can be inserted after participants finish reading a handout. It involves a poster preparation contest that taps into the listeners' linguistic and visual intelligences.

A major purpose of an opening activity is to help participants get acquainted with each other. Here's an opener that identifies and rewards participants who would make good politicians.