Library of facilitation techniques

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

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.

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.

How to introduce yourself in a fun, creative way? Build a handshake!

Any breakout group activity to capture ideas and generate dialogue around them.

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.

This simulation game consists of six rounds of activity, each involving a different participant. A mini debriefing discussion is undertaken immediately after each round to identify the emotional impact of the type of goal statement used during the round and to relate the experience with workplace events. The final activity requires participants to apply their insights to the specification of work-related performance goals.

A classic improv game designed to encourage creative thinking, develop improvisation skills, and energize a group - great to break the ice and generate laughter with minimal set-up!

In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top.

The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Use the exercise at, or very near, the start of a course, workshop or meeting where people don't know each other as it helps to learn names of each other