Library of facilitation techniques

A quick, physical improv game that asks participants to embody an object as quickly as they can!

In the Desert Island Game, begin by asking your participants an important question – if you were stranded on a desert island, what essential items would you choose to survive?

Participants are given a list of items to choose from and must work together to decide which items will help them stay alive.

The Desert Island Game is a great, remote-friendly exercise for a team to work together and share opinions.

Open a blank space on a whiteboard canvas and let people freely play with it! No instructions, no opening questions... but a space to learn how to use the tool and play around. Be prepared to be surprised as meaning begins to emerge after just a few minutes!

This is a simple drama game in which participants take turns asking each other “What are you doing?” and acting out the various responses. Though simple, it engages the imagination and gently challenges participants out of their comfort zone by having them mime a range of different actions.

A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

This simple group game is played in a circle. Participants repeatedly choose one other person to look at, hoping that person won’t be looking back at them. Whenever eye contact is made between two participants, both must shout wildly and lunge backward. They are then eliminated. The game generates laugher and boosts energy in a group.

Help people to share their individual way of navigating an activity - such as doing their work, or attending an event - by combining the revealing power of metaphor with a series of simple interactions.

When people are hesitant to engage with each other, for example at the beginning of an event, you can help them to actively feel heard, and create a space where discovering and sharing rarely-noticed personal talents and insights becomes straightforward.

Once participants feel heard and have begun to share, they will be more inclined to trust, to work together, and to take interpersonal risks. And each person will have created an enduring personal image to carry with them and to share with others.

I've been using this for years as a Clean Language introduction, and recently submitted it as a candidate Liberating Structure because I'd love to see loads of other people trying it out.

Works in person or online, with six to 600+ people.

Take 5-10 minutes time to wake up group's body & brain!

A physical-participation disentanglement puzzle that helps a group learn how to work together (self-organize) and can be used to illustrate the difference between self-organization and command-control management or simply as a get-to-know-you icebreaker. Standing in a circle, group members reach across to connect hands with different people. The group then tries to unravel the “human knot” by unthreading their bodies without letting go of each other people’s hands.

As a management-awareness game to illustrate required change in behavior and leadership on a management level (e.g., illustrate the change from ‘task-oriented’ management towards ‘goal/value-oriented’ management).

Campfire leverages our natural storytelling tendencies by giving players a format and a space in which to share work stories—of trial and error, failure and success, competition, diplomacy, and teamwork. Campfire is useful not only because it acts as an informal training game, but also because it reveals commonalities in employee perception and experience.