Five Ways to Facilitate Group Conversations

With Christmas just around the corner, many of us will be attending parties, family and social events. And while we think of facilitation as a skill set used only by thusly initiated group change agents, the opportunity to use at least the basic elements of this skill set is available during ordinary social interactions.
Consider your [...]

Facilitating Ego Surrender

I was talking with my friend Darin Harris this morning about the impact facilitation has on our personal and spiritual development. As we were talking, a metaphor came to mind about the facilitator being an instrument. While I’ve used the instrument metaphor before, today it showed me something deeper than in the past. In this [...]

The Art of Not Doing

This holiday week, I want to present an idea that might easily be labeled as a sacrilege in this society. Ours is a culture of doing, even at an increasingly frenetic pace. It’s a common view that if we’re not doing something, we’re failing or lagging somehow. Everything in our world is about growing, progress, [...]

6 Tips For Speakers to Better Engage Their Audience

Most of the people you address as a speaker have been conditioned to sit and listen to you as passive observers. This role they take does not usually serve their highest and best good. Perhaps more importantly, the role you take as a dynamic, high energy presenter may at times get in the way of [...]

Are Speakers Serving Their Audience?

I’m contemplating offering a teleclass for speakers to help them to shift from charismatic to more catalytic. That is, using some facilitation skills to engage the audience with the speaker and with each other. Do you think there might be an interest in this among the speaker community? I’ve got some basic info on an [...]