Notes - Foundations of Effective Facilitation– Oct 21-22, 2011

Group Norms from 4 groups
  • Judgement free sandbox
  • Respect
  • Honouring difference
  • Contributing to the focus of the discussion
  • Acceptance of thinking outside the box
  • Acceptance of different opinions
  • Acceptance of diversity of background
  • Being present for each other
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  • No dumb questions(opening as mood dictates)
  • Be specific with feedback
  • Open and honest feedback
  • Be part of the solution -stay engaged (take a pulse, be direct and up front)
  • Be flexible
  • Have fun
  • Refer back to this list

  • Maintain focus
  • Space to express ourselves
  • Respect to space
  • Respecting needs of others
  • Non-judgemental
  • Open
  • Concrete with examples
  • Honesty
  • Participate actively
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  • Keep positive
  • Encouragemore in-depth connections
  • Keep in mind this is a groups session and a learning environment
  • Accept mistakes; no pressure to ‘get it right’
  • Respect individuals boundaries
  • Respecting different opinions
  • Honest feedback

Below are some of the flip chart notes from the session. We hope that they will provide a good review of the days together.

What is the value in juggling? / Why did we do Juggling here?
  • Play
  • Humility
  • Teamwork
  • Team growth/failure
  • Eye-hard co-ordination
  • Multi tasking
  • Confidence
  • Learning something new, skill
  • Freedom
  • Accepting unexpected outcomes (dropping the ball)
  • Surrendering to the process
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  • Relationship building
  • Metafacil. – learning + creativity
  • Teamwork
  • Different balls represent different people
  • Colour
  • Weight
  • Size
  • Breaks up learning styles
  • Experience learning
  • Thinking outside the ball

  • Focus
  • Play
  • Learning + practicing a new skill
  • Frustration from not completing a task
  • Great activity for kids (and adults)
  • Team building
  • Building awareness of learning new task – body awareness
/
  • Team building
  • Group equalizer (not everyone is good)
  • Idea of practice (ex facilitation) makes you better
  • Idea of facilitation as an art – you make your tools, then use them
  • Juggling issue/approaches/symbolic

  • Feeling of breathing and grounding
  • Aware of your body
  • Safety net
  • Personal creation
  • Lesson in communication – step by step (not all at once)
  • Lesson: break the lesson down into steps while still having an ultimate destination
  • Reading the crowd: adapt if necessary
  • Best use of time???
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  • Simple example of facilitation
  • Team work/creation
  • Team dynamics
  • Competitiveness
  • Related to everyone
  • Show juggling
  • Before showing others you have to know what you are doing

  • Learning things 1 step at a time
  • Placement
  • Ok to drop the ball
  • Hard to not drop the ball
  • Not the end of the world to drop the ball
  • Curiosity about the next step
  • Slowing down to learn
  • Baby steps
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  • Get to see how we learn
  • See our responses to learning process and how it would feel to our participants
  • How we take direction
  • How we work together
  • It’s fun – no consequences – safe learning

Using experience as a path to deeper learning leadership, groups
Generating personal decisions
Building trust
Being present in their own decision-making linkin values to actions
Development quadrant – creative space being generated
Original (intention)
When there’s a mix, use your judgement – read and adjust
Have some ppl provide content
Ask ppl what they mean
Get one word understanding of what their rating means
What they want more or less of
How do you act on the groups findings
Good start – ask everyone for their input and input and adopt as appropriate
Give us the opportunity to steer the direction
Putting the onus on us
Need to be open to the group. Don’t stick to the agenda if it’s not appropriate or working
find the happy medium
Ask – what do you want to learn?

Foundations of facilitation ‘recap with visual explorer’ conversation:

  • Shine a light on conversations – challenge with questions
  • Team work – like a orchestra
  • Reflection – silence
  • Openness with the facilitation
  • Going deep
  • All together – same time
  • We are at different levels
  • Every experience ‘informs us’
  • Include everyone
  • Provoke the system (comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable)
  • Provide tools – specifics
  • Addressing fears – name it within the group, the possibilities of it being there
  • Paying attention to the group
  • Accomplish objectives
  • Fine tuning –adjust agenda – being willing to adjust it

Tool box items:

  • Get outdoors
  • Juggling balls – production process
  • Hoola hoop group activity – highlighting team work –blaming
  • Passing the stick (for time control)
  • Understanding team dynamics – before trying to facilitate/lead
  • Provoking the group
  • Mix it up
  • Get people outside normal zone
  • Start at deeper level
  • Content vers understanding the value – ice breakers
  • Variety of opening methods are very relevant and will fit in and expand the type of facilitation I do
  • Slow things down. Don’t have to have the end result out in the first hour of day etc – move step by step
  • Ball of yarn to connect people as they introduce themselves
  • Making the group to discover the purpose
  • Talking stick as a timer – can be a distracter
  • Talking – provides pulse of group
  • Having observers
  • Interesting to note facilitators adjusting and chatting abut where to take the next piece
  • Very fluid process and not set in stone
  • The balance between freedom and structure and provoking the system
  • Fingers behind the back – choose a number between 1 and 10 that reflects how much you are getting what you need…
  • Allow for silence – don’t be afraid of it
  • Opportunity for reflection
  • Passing the responsibility of leading to the group, or an individual
  • Know your material – be the expert – be prepared
  • Let be practice the skills you taught and demonstrated
  • Believe in yourself; be authentic; show your passionate purpose
  • As facilitators we need to repeat questions and comments by facilitators in order to equalize language (ESL) issues, hearing problems and/or fans or outside noises etc
  • Changing facilitators location and direction
  • Find out if they have had similar experiences like you are about to do, before you are with them preferably
  • Using timing tools to keep things on track – ie stick
  • The importance of asking questions and of personal journeys
  • Keep it simple
  • Different positions (standing, sitting, moving)
  • Little adjustments (back of room)
  • Surprises (make juggling balls)
  • Have a focal point/distracter
  • Have a 2 minute story time
  • People like to talk about themselves – have an end point
  • Creating a relaxed atmosphere that encourages story telling (or realistically idea sharing), ensuring participants are comfortable with each other is critical.
  • Using many (different) facilitators
  • Switching between small group/big-group conversation
  • Summarize findings on flip chart (or similar)
  • Set up early and feel comfortable in the room before people show up
  • Focal piece in circle to keep on topic
  • Facilitators help U get somewhere, not tell you where U need to be
  • Importance of modeling by the facilitator
  • Keep the participants in the learning zone – away from panic, but not too comfortable
  • Pick a leader
  • Steer the objective
  • Strengths
  • Weakness/challenges
  • Solutions
  • Challenge the answers
  • Toys – some people need them to ‘occupy’ their mind
  • The fish bowl method of conversations
  • Call people to the circle, then physically move to another place in the circle
  • Sharing the role of facilitation
  • Acknowledge + validate questions + comments from the room
  • Get people moving
  • Eco-ductions – with stick, stone and twig in centre
  • In partner work try turning back to back (excellent for my trust building work)
  • People can be checking their blackberries not because they are bored, but because they need to occupy their minds while learning.
  • Ask a question, then look away or down, to encourage the group to engage with each other, because people tend to answer your question directly at you.
  • Positively re-directing those who are resistant
  • Fish bowl conversations/de-briefing
  • Activities as metaphors – eg. ‘Dropping the ball’ – juggling
  • Direct and personal feedback to individuals after an activity
  • Get your audience interacting + sharing at the start
  • Making people feel safe to play, discover and try
  • Visual explorer cards
  • Acknowledge and question the “O”s

Pacific Center for Leadership – Oct 21-22, 2011 –page 1 of 7