Library of facilitation techniques

Wise Crowds make it possible to instantly engage a small or large group of people in helping one another. You can set up a Wise Crowds consultation with one small group of four or five people or with many small groups simultaneously or, during a larger gathering, with a group as big as one hundred or more people. Individuals, referred to as “clients,” can ask for help and get it in a short time from all the other group members. Each individual consultation taps the expertise and inventiveness of everyone in the group simultaneously. Individuals gain more clarity and increase their capacity for self-correction and self-understanding. Wise Crowds develop people’s ability to ask for help. They deepen inquiry and consulting skills. Supportive relationships form very quickly. During a Wise Crowds session, the series of individual consultations makes the learning cumulative as each participant benefits not only from being a client but also from being a consultant several times in a row. Wise Crowds consultations make it easy to achieve transparency. Together, a group can outperform the expert!

If I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar, we both end up where we began. But if I give you an idea and you give me an idea, we end up with two ideas each, benefiting from a 100 percent return on our investment.

In One Will Get You Ten, we leverage this principle so that you and all other participants receive a 1000 percent return on your investment on ideas.

Group selects one interesting, particularly challenging case to work with live.

Sometimes a number of people are silent and there is not necessarily a dominant person in the group. This often happens in cultures where being assertive is not valued.

Understanding and analyzing a piece of advice are important activities. Here is a game that requires the participants to analyze the features associated with different pieces of advice.

Triads is a structured sharing activity for identifying the advantages and disadvantages of an object (examples: iPad, chicken soup) or a process (examples: meditation, conflict management). It also enables the participants to leverage the advantages and to reduce the disadvantages.

Player 1 initiates with object work.  Player 2 joins the scene by doing object work that someone might also be doing in that environment.  

Use of Active Listening to slow down a discussion, or manage dominant participants

Case Clinic is a peer coaching process designed to identify innovative solutions and next steps for addressing a pressing and immediate leadership challenge. In a Case Clinic, a case giver presents a case, and peers or team members act as coaches, based on the principles of the U-process and process consultation.

One at a time, people add to create a moving, noise-making machine.