Library of facilitation techniques

This opening activity works well for topics that deal with the challenges of change. It is adapted from an activity developed and used by Crestcom, a management and leadership development company.

The 20/20 Vision game is about getting group clarity around which projects or initiatives should be more of a priority than others. Because employees’ attention is so often divided among multiple projects, it can be refreshing to refocus and realign more intently with the projects that have the biggest bang for the buck. And defining the “bang” together helps ensure that the process of prioritization is quality.

It is a great activity to show participants that it is plausible to change our automatic behaviours and reactions to annoying situations.

This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

A good way  to start a meeting/workshop/training to see how participants are feeling, what might be distractions that they are carrying with themselves into the room and how low/high their energy level is.

The activity serves as a brief energiser during a workshop, and helps to get creativity flowing. At the end of this method, each team member will be a little more familiar with each other.

With this activity the participants get to know each other on a deeper level.

With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

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.

Help Me Understand is based on the underlying (and accurate) assumption is that employees come to meetings with widely different questions around a topic or a change. It also allows the players to discover overlaps with other players’ questions and to notice the frequency with which those questions occur—something they may not have known prior to the meeting.

Client-centricity” (or “client-focus”) is an approach to business based on putting the client/customer at the center of an organization's philosophy, strategy, and operations. This exercise promotes collaborative exploration and reflection around an organization’s approach to its clients. Participants discuss and share positive experiences they have had as clients, and use this to define their approach to “client-centricity” as a group. They discuss different groups of clients based on needs, and explore how successfully the organization has met those needs in the past. The exercise ends with a prioritization of areas for improvement.