Library of facilitation techniques

find the right tool for your next session

Featured Author – International Association of Facilitators

IAF is a worldwide community of facilitators promoting excellence in the use of professional group process facilitation to create engagement and impact.

IAF International Association of Facilitators
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338 results

Methods (335)

Mirna Smidt  from Trainers Toolbox

Self Check-in

A short daily reflection practice that boosts self-awareness, emotional clarity, and inner balance. By focusing attention on the body, emotions, thoughts, and energy, participants learn to recognize their needs and regulate their internal state more effectively.

Ideal for daily routines, mental well-being programs, and resilience-building workshops, this exercise supports emotional intelligence and mindful presence.

Liberating Structures

Caravan

You can quickly and effectively get and give help in a diverse group, organization, or community. Caravan gets rid of long large-group presentations and replaces them with several concise consultations made simultaneously to group members that have asked for help with a challenge.


A few individuals set up stations where they share a challenge and a consultation question. Often the challenge is directly or obliquely shared by others in the group. As small groups of consultants move from one station to another, their size makes it easy for people to connect with the client and visa versa. Clients learn how to ask productive questions and consultants learn how to be more effective coaches.

With Caravan everyone can quickly learn how challenges are being addressed and how new approaches might be adapted to their own situations.

Hyper Island

Reflection: Team

The purpose of reflecting as a team is for members to express thoughts, feelings and opinions about a shared experience, to build openness and trust in the team, and to draw out key learnings and insights to take forward into subsequent experiences. Team members generally sit in a circle, reflecting first as individuals, sharing those reflections with the group, then discussing the insights and potential actions to take out of the session. Use this session one or more times throughout a project or program.

Hyper Island

Hello Kitty

A simple and short group game all about trying to make each other crack a smile. Participants take turns being 'kitties' and 'puppies'. The puppies try to make the kitties crack a smile or laugh. The last kitty standing is the winner! An original from The Northern Quarter Agency.

Inspire Team

Disagree Without Debating

Time depends on the number of statements covered. This activity can be extended or shortened as needed. Any time for this activity must include time for introducing the activity, explaining the rules, aligning participants on the spectrum, allowing each participant to share their stories and perspectives, facilitating respectful discussion, and concluding the activity with reflection.

Robert from SessionLab

Icebreaker: The Group Map

Ask people to place themselves on an imaginary map laid out in the room representing the country according to where they grew up. Ask them to share one internal value they got from that place, and why is that important for them. Encourage people to share a short story if they want

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Deborah Rim Moiso

Values Tour

If you are working with a team or company that already has a list of values, and are looking for a dynamic activity to refresh participants' knowledge and understanding of those values, look no further. By using embodied and spatial knowledge, this activity will make values basically unforgettable for all involved.

Liberating Structures

Wicked Questions

In Wicked Questions, participants ask, “How is it that we are doing two things in tension with each other simultaneously?” These questions reveal entangled challenges that are unintuitive or difficult to discuss. Wicked Questions can reduce either-or thinking and engage everyone in thinking strategically about how to balance competing priorities. It can be particularly useful in transitions because it exposes the tension between what is being said and what is actually being done. This structure reinforces LS Principle #7, Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See.

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