Library of facilitation techniques

An engaging variation on a feedback activity that focuses on future changes and positive action, rather than dwelling on what went wrong.

✓ Understand the ‘how’ of influencing.

✓ Demonstrate an understanding of the 5-Step IWA Model and its application.

✓ Understand the role of authority in influencing others.

✓ Develop a Game Plan for immediate implementation (if appropriate).

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.

Team energiser for a virtual classroom or web conference meeting

This process is used to aid in planning projects by showing all activities that have to take place in the chronological order so as to reach a goal.

The art of questioning to better listen. 2 rounds for the same team to discover the secret profession of the facilitator (or one of the participants).

Use the Group Works cards to design/debrief your facilitated session and/or live in the moment to deal with challenges that emerge.

The Feedback Mingle is an exercise in which every member in a group gives feedback to every other member in the group. Often used as a closing activity, it aims to facilitate feedback, generate positive energy and create a sense of team.

Free open-source tool that allows you to simply type or scribe notes & immediately see them appear in a large flipchart image on your webcam within the meeting.

Most facilitators know the power of a flipchart to draw out, capture and recognise participant input. But flipcharts are not so easy to use in the online world.

Virtual Flipcharts plug this gap and provide an easy to use tool that will be very familiar to you and your team. It even looks like a physical flipchart.

During the conversation, you type or scribe (draw) things directly into a page on Powerpoint and they appear instantly on your virtual flipchart in your webcam window. This means that they can play a part in simple 'round-virtual-table' face to face discussion without the disruption of screen sharing.

Create as many pages as you need and move between them with a scroll of your mouse.

Furthermore, the content of the virtual flipchart pages can instantly be distributed via emails to everyone at the meeting, and/or it can be send as sticky-notes to any of the other tools and techniques you might be using (for grouping, sorting, voting, display, off-line work, syndicates etc.)

Use cases: Capture ideas in a brainstorm; Record different perspectives in a discussion; Put ideas into the parking lot; Sketch out an idea or explanation; Create simple tools (like SWOT) within it; ... basically, anything you would use a real flipchart for.