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Revisit Your Roots

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As life long learners, our field can get pretty complicated with all the models, strategies, philosophies, and approaches within which we tend to immerse ourselves. Considering this, it’s probably a good idea once in awhile to reflect on those core attitudes, skills, and perspectives that form the foundation of all the strategies and interventions we […]

Fine Points of Sushi Preparation and Consumption

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Facilitating a group with strong egos is a lot like eating sushi. In some cases, strong egos form a healthy basis for a meeting, giving you the right nutrients for building the group and the organization. In other cases, you question the safety of these raw elements on everyone involved. Will you get a parasite […]

Care and Feeding of the Master Facilitator

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Facilitation is a demanding role that can take its toll on you if you are not prepared at all levels. A master facilitator must have fine-tuned awareness and intuition to sense and act on the nuances of group process. She must stand tall in the face of conflict, willing to walk participants through to its […]

Experiencing the Tenets of Facilitation

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The One Word Story is an experiential activity that can be debriefed to illustrate the importance of ground rules or basic teamwork skills. This activity can easily be done virtually as well as face to face. Also note that the activity contains guildlines for each stage of the Kolb Learning Cycle. Activity: One Word Story—Ground rules/teamwork […]

Are you a Facilitation Fundamentalist?

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Once we become something, like a facilitator, coach, teacher, consultant, trainer, counselor, therapist, minister, or a member of any number of the helping professions, I believe that something very good and something not so good begins to happen. As we delve into our new field, our understanding and expertise deepen, but at the same time, […]

Re-Viewing Reality: Facilitating Context as a Transformative Intervention

Most organizations are operating in a virtual hamster wheel intent on finding problems, processing information, proposing solutions, and executing actions plans. Rarely do we question the context from which these problems arise and within which they are defined. Shifting context is not that hard and it changes everything. So what if we could shift contexts […]

Training & Development

Effective adult training and development will emphasize participant engagement and co-creation of the course content so that relevant experience of participants is tapped and shared, and opportunities exist to practice new skills and receive feedback to assure learning transfer. In my opinion, effective training and development is really better defined as Learning Facilitation. We have several resources […]

Your Presence is Your Present to Your Group

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Be a Model of Presence One of the attractive aspects of facilitation is that you don’t have to do the work for your group. Though sometimes, what you do have to do is a lot harder. One of those things, which I see as the hallmark of an advanced facilitator, is our ability to be […]

The Guardian (Consensus Building)

Consensus is reached when everyone can “live with” a solution or agreement. They may not like the solution very much. However, the basic test is not a full “thumbs up” but that the solution doesn’t violate a basic need or interest. The consensus builder role is to find and express common ground. This is done […]

The Mediator (Conflict Magic)

In a culture where fight or flight are the common options for engaging conflict, most of us have been conditioned to simply avoid it at all costs. Hearing people disagree or dive deeper into conflict inspires anxiety responses like sweaty palms, tightened chest, and that sick feeling in the pit in your stomach. Some degree […]