Library of facilitation techniques

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155 results

Methods (155)

Sandra Gentizon

Conversation Café

The format of the Conversation Café helps people have calm and profound conversations in which there is less debating and arguing, and more listening. Sitting in a circle with a simple set of agreements and a talking object, small groups will engage in rounds of dialogue with little or no unproductive conflict. As the meaning of their challenge pops into focus, a consensual hunch is formed that will release their capacity for new action.
Heike Roettgers

Mad Tea Party

This method quickly provokes a deeper set of reflections and insights among group members. While standing in two concentric circles, everyone forms a pair with someone else and completes an open-ended sentence in less than thirty seconds. After one minute, the participants move to the right, form a new pair, and complete the next sentence. This allows the entire group to simultaneously have a conversation, share ideas & insights, and quickly get to know many new persons.

Liberating Structures

Ecocycle Planning

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.

Erica Marx

Truth holding

A collective witnessing practice where participants anonymously name truths they are carrying and then the group then takes turns physically and verbally “holding” one another’s truths, building shared understanding, acceptance, empathy, and surfacing patterns in the group.

Emma Ralph

Systems Thinking

  1. All behaviour is connected (no behaviour is isolated).

  2. All behaviour is created jointly (and is in fact circular).

  3. You cannot not behave.

  4. All behaviour provokes feedback.

  5. A change in one part of a system results in a change in another part.