Library of facilitation techniques

Overview: Two groups plan a company party. The first time they must start each sentence with the words, "Yes, but..." The second time they must start their sentences with the words, "Yes, and..."

A simple exercise in which each participant prepares a personal presentation of him/herself sharing several important experiences, events, people or stories that contributed to shaping him or her as an individual. The purpose of personal presentations is to support each participant in getting to know each other as individuals and to build trust and openness in a group by enlarging the social arena.

In gallery view we say something that is true of you (e.g. I have a dog). Everyone that this is true for keeps their camera on; everyone that this is not true for covers their camera. Repeat with a new true statement from someone else in the group.

A Reflective Teamwork Activity (RTA) involves participants creating a checklist and then evaluating their performance by using the same checklist they created.

Here's an outline of this activity: Participants are organized into groups of five. Members of each group are randomly assigned to the roles of a manager, an assistant manager, and three employees. Each participant prepares a list related to a different management topic. The manager has the lengthy task and additional supervisory responsibilities. Other group members have simpler tasks. After the list preparation activity is completed, a debriefing discussion relates the manager's behavior to the items in her list.

Use of Active Listening to slow down a discussion, or manage dominant participants

Blind Drawing is an icebreaker game where one person describes an object the other person must then draw with only verbal instructions as a guide.

This fast and loud energizer is highly effective for boosting a group’s energy in a very short amount of time. The group stands in the circle and a loud yell of the sound “Maaaah…” is sent around the circle. It gets louder and louder as it travels around the circle until it gets all the way around and ends with a thundering, collective “ZUNGA!”

Brainwriting is essentially the same as brainstorming. Ideas are generated by asking people to write them down instead of verbally presenting them.

The Anti-Problem game helps people get unstuck when they are at their wit’s end. It is most useful when a team is already working on a problem, but they’re running out of ideas for solutions. By asking players to identify ways to solve the problem opposite to their current problem, it becomes easier to see where a current solution might be going astray or where an obvious solution isn’t being applied.

You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.