Group facilitation methods

To have a group come up with ideas on how to spend $86,400 within 24 hours. This exercise helps to acknowledge time and its importance in our day-to-day lives.

Object: an ice breaker to uncover 3 things all members of this small group have in common (other than the obvious things such as you work for the same company, are in the same town and are human!) (For example, all have been to California, all have siblings, all like golf) and 1 thing that is unique to each person in the group.(For example, only one is an only child, only one collects plastic frogs, only one was born in a foreign country).

To ensure you are fully prepared for a facilitated session

To create implementaries for the first 90 days after the planning workshop and to become committed to the success of the plan.

To slow down a discussion, to demonstrate that you have heard what the person has said, to stop a person from dominating the conversation.

Clarifying what happened by
1. keeping everyone in the group informed about what others were doing (especially where a group has split into smaller units during an activity)
2. informing others outside the group about a group event (or possibly just to update the trainer following an independent exercise)
3. reconstructing a distant or complex event (to help people recall and relive the facts and feelings of an event)

Investigating What Happened:
1. Awareness-raising (bringing out different points of view and disagreements;
2. Focusing on issues which participants have found difficult to recognise or confront during the activity
3. Analysing a problem (similar to reconstructing the scene of a crime)

To unblock a group that seems to be stuck

The goal of this process is to collect and discuss ideas among large groups.

Affinitizing (clustering) a large group of ideas or statements using a group process.

To use analogies as a basis of generating ideas

To prepare online participants for interaction with key topics and objectives.

To prepare online participants for interaction with key topics and objectives.

“Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves systematic discover of what gives a system ‘life’ when it is most effective and capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to heighten positive potential. It mobilizes inquiry through crafting an “unconditional positive question’ often involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people.”

Cooperrider, D.L. & Whitney, D., “Appreciative Inquiry: A positive revolution in change.” In P. Holman & T. Devane (eds.), The Change Handbook, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., pages 245-263.

Appreciative inquiry: Dream Phase "creating a clear results-oriented vision in relation to discovered potential and in relation to questions of higher purpose, i.e., 'What is the world calling us to become?'” ref: 1

To create possible pilot projects, change initiatives and actions that have potential to move us toward the future we want as articulated in our design propositions.

When a participant is disrupting the session and seems to want to say something.

To bring to awareness assumption being made about the situation in a problem solving process and to check the validity of assumptions being made in a problems making process. Assumptions that are not valid can be dropped or changed.

Participants are able to get to know the other participants in a program and to experience an informal and relaxed way to get to know other people.

To imagine the future all ready arrived at and to walk backward from that future and to experience a realized future by standing in it.

To enhance the participant's skills in planning, presentation and team building and to practice team creative thinking in a safe / humorous context

to review the consequences of solving or not solving a problem from the perspectives of best, worse and most probable.

To generate a variety of ideas with as much divergence as possible.

To consider blocks to creative thinking and how they might be overcome and to experience the need to take different perspectives on a simple problem solving situation and to have fun with it.

A method for groups to use their own resources in a very short time

To generate divergent ideas by using other's ideas to trigger them.

To construct a strong, long, ingenuious, beautiful bridge and to appreciate the complexities of working as a team.

To enable a group to reach agreement by identifying what can not be included in the model or plan

This is a fun energizer that requires some paying attention, thinking and coordination.

To energize a large group of people. in a fun way,

Icebreaker, to break the Ice rapidly

- to force yourself or other people out of a thinking rut.
- test out ideas for validity.
- challenge the problem or situation you are considering when initially defining the problem

The intent of this method is to change thoughts in a way to detect a positive chance in anything. The main question is: What is positive in..? It is very helpful in order to reach a change in perspectives. This method can not only create absurd ideas but also support a positive group climate since this activity can also bring a lot of fun.

A simple and quick opening introductions

To have participants all have an equal opportunity to speak on a topic.

To see the multiple levels of meaning found in a picture and experience of sense of awe found in a poster.

To enable colleagues in a team setting to offer reflective questions about an issue one of the members is concerned about.

To generate ideas using all four Innovation Styles of visioning, exploring, experimenting and modifying

1 A highly politicized and fairly polarized (yet congenial) group
2 A recognized lack of collaboration and partnership
3 Votes are split along predictable lines
4 Common ground that seems to get built keeps shifting.
5 The idea of a vision blocks progress

This method helps a facilitator and group reach consensus about how best to arrange a network of up to maybe 20 ? 30 activities that have to be sequenced over time into a useable plan of action

To reflect on the products of the meeting.

Contingency Diagram is a technique for generating ideas concerning and issue or concern that capitalizes on negative thought. By thinking of all the ways you can cause a problem to get worse or continue unchecked, you provide the basis for later developing an action plan to overcome these barriers.

To identify similar ideas and to put them together and to create a pattern based on an agreed to set of values.

Use it when you want to get ideas from a large group of people.

Use it when you do not have time or ability to discuss ideas, and just want to collect people's thoughts.

Use it when you want to engage an audience, giving them a sense of involvement

To get a group that has a vision but is not able to move to the implementation phase.

One of the important parts of getting a good brainstorm is setting it in context and doing the preparation. That can get you several valuable things. It can get you to a question that really makes sense. It can help you work out how to pose the question and how to get people brainstorming. It can lead you to determine what to do with the list of ideas generated.

A quick and simple way of generating strategies to deal with blocks.