Be Your Material

As trainers and facilitators, it’s easy to get overly concerned about what we’re presenting to our groups. But research, as well as our direct experience shows that the greatest impact of our communication occurs at the non-verbal level. That is our body language, emotional state, and subconscious intentions are picked up through visceral channels developed [...]

Transformation Through CareFrontation

Giving others feedback on behaviors that make us uncomfortable can be really tough. In this week’s article Transformation Through CareFrontation, we share a simple method of delivering constructive, compassionate feedback to individuals or to an entire group, to expose ineffective behavior and to explore alternatives to that behavior. Click here to read the full article. [...]

How to Use Talking Circles for Deep Communication

Long, long before group facilitation came on the scene, Native American cultures used Talking Circles to gather group wisdom for consensus decisions. In this week’s article, How to Use Talking Circles for Deep Communication, we discuss the essence of this tradition and how you can implement talking circles in your work with groups of all [...]

Do You Have Imposter Syndrome?

One of our readers, Valerie Gillies, shared an interesting response to one of my past articles, Facilitateaphobia that dealt with fear faced by new facilitators. She shared information around something called the “Imposter Syndrome” put forward by an educational author Stephen Brookfield, in his book, “Skillful Teacher,” where he made observations about his doctoral students. [...]

Don’t be an Allopathic Facilitator

Often we are called in to facilitate organizational interventions by organizations that are “sick,” meaning that their dysfunction has become so untenable that something simply must be done about it…”Our organization is broken and we need to fix it!” Pressured for a quick fix, we are often challenged to stand by approaches we know to [...]

Bringing Meetings Back from the Dead

One of my favorite books on facilitating meetings is “Death By Meeting,” by Patrick Lencioni. It’s framed in the form of a fable that is not only easy reading, but also helps you relate to the message. The message lays out the two main reasons meetings are usually so poor and what to do about [...]

Know the challenges of leading leaders

Have you ever facilitated a group of facilitators? In my experience, this can be a challenging thing to do. Some of my most frustrating experiences with groups have occurred when working within groups of my peers. In this week’s article, Facilitating Facilitators, I reflect on these experiences and made some observations that may help us [...]

Using the Socratic Method as a Learning Facilitator

What is the Socratic Method? The Socratic Method uses questions to guide your student on a journey of discovery leading toward greater understanding or increased performance.
Although facilitation is about moving people to where they want to go, the simple truth is that nobody moves anywhere unless they move themselves. The Socratic Method is a way [...]

Creativity Generator for Managers

Our feature article in this issue Creativity Generator for Managers, is comprised of a short 15-question quiz, by Dr. Robert Epstein, to assess your ability to inspire creativity in others. Your scores will identify your current competency levels and will alert you to additional practices that may help you inspire more creativity in your groups [...]

What Are You Projecting?

This past week I had the opportunity to co-facilitate another Journey of Facilitation and Collaboration Workshop in the University of Wisconsin in Madison. As always, it was a pleasure to watch this new group of facilitators unfold as a high-functioning team. While many beautiful insights and opportunities emerged, there is one I want to speak [...]

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