Library of facilitation techniques

Use a remote-friendly version of the classic note and vote exercise to generate ideas quickly, vote on the most suitable, and turn them into how might we statements your group can move forward with! 

By using the metaphor of a sailboat, teams can articulate what is working well and also, what is holding the organization back. Individually think about and note down:

What is moving us forward and What is Holding us back in as an organization or team.

Moving us forward: what's working for us, what's really good.

Holding us back: what challenges are we facing?

Starting a meeting or after a break in a group where participants don't know each other or don't know much about each other

This format for brainstorming compresses the essentials of an ideation session into one short format. The numbers 3-12-3 refer to the amount of time in minutes given to each of three activities: 3 minutes for generating a pool of observations, 12 for combining those observations into rough concepts, and 3 again for presenting the concepts back to a group.

The Portrait Gallery is an energetic and fun icebreaker game that gets participants interacting by having the group collaboratively draw portraits of each member. The activity builds a sense of group because it results with each participant having a portrait drawn of him/herself by the other members of the group together. It also has a very colourful visual outcome: the set of portraits which can be posted in the space.

This is designed to work as a standalone workshop or as a companion to the Team Self-Assessment tool. Using reflections and insights on your working process, your team will 'update' its operating system by making deliberate choices about how to work together. The goal is gradual development, not a radical shift. You will design an ideal-state for your team and slowly work towards that.

Explore any complex topic with Hopes, Worries, Risks, Chances seen by your participants. This creates connection, better acceptance for different angles and aspects of the topic and reduces the uncertainty of the group.

This method is useful for evaluating a project currently in progress, to see if any adjustments need to be made for the team to work more effectively together. It provides a framework for discussion. Participants focus on the things that are helping and hindering the team process, and create action steps for improvement.

You can eliminate or mitigate common bottlenecks that stifle performance by sifting your group’s portfolio of activities, identifying which elements are starving for resources and which ones are rigid and hampering progress. The Ecocycle makes it possible to sift, prioritize, and plan actions with everyone involved in the activities at the same time, as opposed to the conventional way of doing it behind closed doors with a small group of people. Additionally, the Ecocycle helps everyone see the forest AND the trees—they see where their activities fit in the larger context with others. Ecocycle Planning invites leaders to focus also on creative destruction and renewal in addition to typical themes regarding growth or efficiency. The Ecocycle makes it possible to spur agility, resilience, and sustained performance by including all four phases of development in the planning process.

An energiser game for remote teams where participants share images of their work set-up and attempt to guess opponents' desks while bluffing their own!

Define your company values by identifying what inflates or deflates your culture.