Library of facilitation techniques

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Featured Author – Melanie Martinelli

Melanie Martinelli has spent more than 20 years helping organisations create learning that leads to real change. Melanie is passionate about helping L&D teams move beyond delivering great training and start designing for lasting learning transfer.

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Methods (1537)

Thiagi Group

Keep Your Finger on the Pulse

Public speaking is reported to be one of the top stressful events for all people. This jolt uses that fact to make a learning point about the physiological effects of stress on the body. Participants take their pulse at the beginning of a session. They are later told they will be participating in a stressful event. When they retake their pulse, they realize how much the thought of the stressful event has caused their pulse rate to increase.
Thiagi Group

Meeting Management

This textra game incorporates these important facts:

It is easier to compare two different items at a time than to compare a larger number of items.

When we compare two items, we understand them at a deeper level.

Thiagi Group

Novice or Expert?

Trainers have difficulty imagining how people feel when they are forced to learn through their weak learning styles. This activity enables them to experience the frustrations of working though a weak learning style—and the positive feelings of using their strong learning styles.
Thiagi Group

Passions Tic Tac Toe

This simple game that explores the concepts from these two quotations: "Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you". —Oprah Winfrey. "Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are." —Penelope Lively, novelist
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Thiagi Group

Values Processing

Which of these two values is more important among the employees in your organization?

  • Integrity
  • Customer-focus

Yes, you are right: Both of them are important. And comparing these two values is like comparing apples with oranges.

However, thinking about these values, discussing them, and placing them in a priority order makes them more tangible. Participants identify the highest-priority value among a set of employee values by comparing them two at a time.

Hyper Island

Project Wrap-up

This session is for members of a team to learn from their experiences on a project, to support each other to improve, and to bring closure to the team. They start by drawing out the high and low points of the project, and use these to move into a discussion about what they have learned. They define some actions that they are going to take into future projects, and support each other by giving feedback to improve their practice.

Gamestorming methods

The Blind Side

The premise of this game, therefore, is to disclose and discover unknown information that can impact organizational and group success in any area of the company—management, planning, team performance, and so forth.

Liberating Structures

Simple Ethnography

You can enable participants to find novel approaches to challenges by immersing themselves in the activities of the people with local experience—often their colleagues on the front line or anyone who uses their product or service. You open the door to change and innovation by helping participants explore what people actually do and feel in creating, delivering, or using their offering. Their observations and experience can spur rapid performance improvements and expedite prototype development. The combined observations may make it easy to spot important patterns.