Library of facilitation techniques

Help people to share their individual way of navigating an activity - such as doing their work, or attending an event - by combining the revealing power of metaphor with a series of simple interactions.

When people are hesitant to engage with each other, for example at the beginning of an event, you can help them to actively feel heard, and create a space where discovering and sharing rarely-noticed personal talents and insights becomes straightforward.

Once participants feel heard and have begun to share, they will be more inclined to trust, to work together, and to take interpersonal risks. And each person will have created an enduring personal image to carry with them and to share with others.

I've been using this for years as a Clean Language introduction, and recently submitted it as a candidate Liberating Structure because I'd love to see loads of other people trying it out.

Works in person or online, with six to 600+ people.

With this facilitation technique you can immediately include everyone regardless of how large the group is. You can generate better ideas and more of them faster than ever before. You can tap the know-how and imagination that is distributed widely in places not known in advance.

Open, generative conversation unfolds. Ideas and solutions are sifted in rapid fashion. Most importantly, participants own the ideas, so follow-up and implementation is simplified. No buy-in strategies needed! Simple and elegant!

This structure reinforces LS Principle #1, ­Include and Unleash Everyone.

A subset of people with direct field experience can quickly foster understanding, spark creativity, and facilitate adoption of new practices among members of a larger community. Fishbowl sessions have a small inside circle of people surrounded by a larger outside circle of participants. The inside group is formed with people who made concrete progress on a challenge of interest to those in the outside circle. The fishbowl design makes it easy for people in the inside circle to illuminate what they have done by sharing experiences while in conversation with each other. The informality breaks down the barriers with direct communication between the two groups of people and facilitates questions and answers flowing back and forth. This creates the best conditions for people to learn from each other by discovering answers to their concerns themselves within the context of their working groups. You can stop imposing someone else’s practices!

You can help a group move from either-or conflicts to both-and strategies and solutions. You can engage everyone in sharper strategic thinking, mutual understanding, and collaborative action by surfacing the advantage of being both more integrated and more autonomous. Attending to paradox will reveal opportunities for profound leaps in performance by addressing questions such as: What mix of integrative control and autonomous freedom will advance our purpose? Where do our needs for global fidelity and consistency meet the needs for local customization and creative adaptability? This makes it possible to avoid swings in strategy that are frequently experienced by many organizations. This structure enacts LS Principle #6, Amplify Freedom and Responsibility.

You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference. 

15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change. 

With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape. This structure enacts LS Principle #6, Amplify Freedom and Responsibility.

In Creative Destruction, groups imagine how to achieve the worst possible results. By asking “What must we stop doing to make progress on our deepest purpose?” participants can have fun, courageous conversations about letting go. Since laughter often erupts, issues that are otherwise taboo get a chance to be aired and confronted. With creative destruction come opportunities for renewal as local action and innovation rush in to fill the vacuum. Whoosh!

This structure embodies LS Principle #8, Invite Creative Destruction to Enable Innovation

In Mad Tea/Calm Tea, everyone rapidly completes sentences related to a shared challenge to quickly provoke a deeper set of reflections and strategic insights among group members. Mad Tea is the louder, more energetic face-to-face version, while Calm Tea is the quieter online alternative. They both get people thinking differently, sharing new ideas, and understanding different perspectives while generating fellowship and laughter. Both bring to life LS Principle #9, Engage in Seriously Playful Curiosity. The questions focus attention and produce a fresh understanding of strategic options and next steps.

You can help a group of people understand how they work together and identify changes that they can make to improve group performance. All members of the group diagnose current relationship patterns and decide how to follow up with action steps together, without intermediaries. The STAR compass tool helps group members understand what makes their relationships more or less generative. The compass used in the initial diagnosis can also be used later to evaluate progress in developing relationships that are more generative. This structure brings to life LS Principle #5, Practice Self-Discovery Within a Group.

DAD makes it easy for a group to discover better practices that only a few members are using to solve a common problem, called positive deviant behaviors.

We’re going to uncover the behaviors and practices some of us are already using to tackle our shared challenge. It’s like going on a treasure hunt to find the solutions hidden in our midst.”When held in a local setting close to where the problem manifests, it creates a safe space to invent new and more effective practices, sparking imagination and strengthening resolve to take action. It also builds relationships between people in diverse roles. This structure enacts LS Principle #2, Practice Deep Respect for People and Local Solutions.

You can enable a large group of people to connect with a leader or an expert (the celebrity) as a person and grasp the nuances of how that person is approaching a challenge. With a well-designed interview, you can turn what would otherwise be a passive, often boring presentation into a personal narrative that is entertaining, imparts valuable knowledge, and reveals the full range of rational, emotional, and ethical/moral dynamics at play. You can often turn the interview into an invitation to action, drawing out all the elements needed to spark the participant group’s imagination and encourage cohesive action.

Uncover and challenge the hidden beliefs, assumptions, and internal voices that are limiting progress toward an important goal. In small groups, one person shares a personal or professional challenge while two others play contrasting “pixie” roles – one advocating for change and possibility and the other representing resistance and caution.

Through this playful exchange, participants surface unconscious assumptions, explore opposing perspectives on risks and opportunities, and gain clarity on how to move forward. This structure helps reveal internal barriers, generate new insights, and support more informed action planning in individual and group settings.

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.