Library of facilitation techniques

A simple exercise that complements exploratory, discursive, and creative workshops with insights and opinions from outside. Use this exercise when brainstorming ideas, developing a new product or service or creating a strategy or plan that will include others. Participants phone a co-worker and ask them questions relevant to the task. This quickly generates meaningful input from a range of “outside” perspectives. Often, participants will be surprised at how simple it was to solicit this input and how valuable it is to the process.

This is an exercise to inspire your team with products or services that they think they can use as inspiration for their concepts in the next phases of their design sprints.

Set the expectations for behavior and conduct you have for participants at the beginning of your online meeting with the Online Meeting Etiquette checklist.

Light, energising exercise that helps the group to observe the other people on the call.

One person is designated as the leader.  Others copy exactly how the leader moves.  The leader calls on a new person to be the leader, and so on. Follow the follower variation is when the leading gets passed to the entire group and no single person is leading.

This fast, physical and loud energizer, has a high level of silliness and quickly charges up a group. The group repeats a simple chant over and over again, getting louder and louder as they go. By the end, the group is shouting and jumping about.

Instead of directly asking people what they like or don’t like about a particular brand, product or service, this method gives insight into their perceptions by eliciting feelings based on real-life experiences and interactions through writing a love or breakup letter.

To be used in the ideation and user exploration phase.

It has been used as a part of training of facilitators and as part of team building.

Regular, effective feedback is one of the most important ingredients in building constructive relationships and thriving teams. Openness creates trust and trust creates more openness. Feedback exercises aim to support groups to build trust and openness and for individuals to gain self-awareness and insight. Feedback exercises should always be led with thoughtfulness and high awareness of group dynamics.

A team-building activity in which a group is challenged to physically support one another in an endeavour to move from one end of a space to another. It requires working together creatively and strategically in order to solve a practical, physical problem. It tends to emphasize group communication, cooperation, leadership and membership, patience and problem-solving.