Spontaneous Facilitation

Spontaneous Meeting Facilitation

I had the chance to help out at a meeting last week and wanted to capture some of my reflections on the experience. No matter where you go, it starts with learning what the group wants to accomplish, the important dynamics of the group, and to meet them where they are on their journey. Facilitation then builds the bridge of where they want to go.

My take-aways

- Fun icebreaker: find someone you don’t know and put a sticker on where your value comes from (part of body or an item with you). Tell your story.

- Discussion activity: set up ‘challenge’; in groups they needed to endorse the current recommendation, add to it or change it.

- Loved “tea” as the language for the break.

- Discussion activity: set up courtroom with judge, witness, defendant (document), and arguing for/against. Would have been great to segue into fishbowl, then have up graphic facilitation paper for people to write their ideas for next steps... (or facilitator could have captured on flip chart during fishbowl/prompted with questions).

Wonderful experience all around; nice to be stretched out of comfort zone (you know, where you typically have time to research and prepare!).