Questions Only
A classic improv game designed to encourage creative thinking, develop improvisation skills, and energize a group - great to break the ice and generate laughter with minimal set-up!
Library of facilitation techniques
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Flip It!
Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.
Open Space Technology
Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation
Journalists
This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.
Managing behaviours
Increase your communication skills. Role play to help you recognize and manage different behaviours in a virtual environment (or not!)
Angry Customers
Training Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) to handle angry and abusive customers is a tough challenge. Effective communication with an angry customer requires a combination of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. As a part of our training session, we use this rapid roleplay activity.
Issue Analysis
A process for understanding a complex problem situation
Better Connections
We build a stronger relationship with people when we see them as human beings with whom we share similarities in terms of family and life situations. It is very difficult to form strong relationships with people about whom we know very little.
We feel more connected to “full” people. For example, take John, the accountant. If I think of John as an accountant, I might put him into a box of what I think I know about accountants. I might not feel connected to accountants and will treat him accordingly. But when I think of John as a keen mountain climber and outdoor adventurer with two children, one of whom is graduating from university next month, then John becomes human to me, and I can feel connected to him.
Agreement-Certainty Matrix
You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic.
- A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate.
- It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably.
- A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail.
- Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward.
A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”
The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.
Wicked Questions
You can spark innovative action while diminishing “yes, but…” and “either-or” thinking.
Wicked Questions engage everyone in sharper strategic thinking by revealing entangled challenges and possibilities that are not intuitively obvious. They bring to light paradoxical-yet-complementary forces that are constantly influencing behaviors and that are particularly important during change efforts.
Wicked Questions make it possible to expose safely the tension between espoused strategies and on-the-ground circumstances and to discover the valuable strategies that lie deeply hidden in paradoxical waters.
Feedback Mingle
The Feedback Mingle is an exercise in which every member in a group gives feedback to every other member in the group. Often used as a closing activity, it aims to facilitate feedback, generate positive energy and create a sense of team.
Decisions, Decisions…
When it comes to decision-making, why are some of us more prone to take risks while others are risk-averse? One explanation might be the way the decision and options were presented.
This exercise, based on Kahneman and Tversky's classic study, illustrates how the framing effect influences our judgement and our ability to make decisions. The participants are divided into two groups. Both groups are presented with the same problem and two alternative programs for solving them. The two programs both have the same consequences but are presented differently. The debriefing discussion examines how the framing of the program impacted the participant's decision.