Techniques for
Facilitation
Ideas to try out and shake-up your meeting
A new way to think about the future
10 minute activity
Here’s an activity to generate ideas in a group for the future direction of an organisation or department.
Ask each member of the group to think individually of a response to the following question:
If you could ask one question of an all-seeing Oracle who knows everything about the future of our department/organisation, what would it be?
Invite people to tell the group their answers. Note the range of ideas put forward, which are likely to include quantifiable measures of performance, imaginative visions and reflections of people’s values.
Next, ask everyone to think of what they would ask if they had a second question. After hearing what everyone says, it might be worth reflecting on differences between the two rounds of responses.
A vision for the future
Try this technique to create the future you want for your team, department or organisation. Imagine this day either one, two years away.
Use these prompts to create a your vision:
Where are you?
Who is with you?
What team traits have been amplified?
What team traits have diminished?
How do you feel at the end of the day?
How do you want your team to feel at the end of the day?
What commitment can you make now that will help start you on this journey?
A technique to draft a team leadership manifesto
When you want to bring people together and articulate what matters to you, what you stand for and who you, as a team are, as a collective, try this technique.
Choose one prompt from each of the 4 categories below. Ask your team to respond to the prompts chosen, and share these with each other before distilling your manifesto to just a short sentence in answering each prompt.
Identity – who are we as a team?
What are our traits as a team?
Who are we not?
What’s surprising about us as a team?
Beliefs – what do we believe in?
What are our values?
What are we here to do?
What are our priorities?
Practices – how we work together
What are our commitments to levity?
What are our commitments to creativity?
How do we find balance?
Use this manifesto as a template that you can update, refresh, reimagine as your team and the context you’re working in changes. You might find that responses change depending on whether you’re working from home or in the office, or simply as priorities change.
On figuring out who you are, as a team
3 questions to help distil the narrative of your team:
Who are we?
Who are we not?
What do we believe in?
Face the fear of not knowing
Ask yourself:
How does what I know get in the way of what I don’t know, but maybe need to learn?
A question from Liz Wiseman, featured in our post The power of not knowing.
Master the 3 ways to influence people
Use the
Head,
Heart,
or Hands
From the Center for Creative Leadership
Building trusting cultures at work
Never miss an opportunity to ask somebody how things really are, whether that’s about themselves, yourselves or the wider world around you.
To show genuine concern, I think is the real secret of leadership. It’s not just asking to say I want to evaluate the situation and I need data on this. It’s about how do you feel about how things really are? And what can we do together to make that better?
Dr. Paul Gentle – Academic Director at Invisible Grail
How to influence well
Engage your own, and others, curiosity. Try these questions, from ‘Influence…and how you do it‘ by Dr Paul Gentle, at Invisible Grail.
How do you feel about this challenge?
Who else could we engage to help influence the key people?
Who sees this differently at the moment, and how would they explain their point of view?
A technique to nurture a culture of feedback and openness
As Keith Grint and others have emphasised, questions which stimulate insight are part of a leader’s capability set. If you want to nurture a culture of feedback and openness, try starting with this question:
“If there were just one thing I could work on that would improve how I …,
what would it be?”
A technique to shed new light on your own or others’ thinking
This technique works well in a one-to-one conversation, or in a meeting when you can ask people to work in pairs.
Ask the person or people you’re talking with to think of a metaphor for a challenge they’re working on (e.g. climbing a mountain range, kayaking without a paddle…).
Then ask their partner to fire questions at them with develop and play with the metaphor (“Why haven’t you got a paddle?”, “What else could you use instead?”, “Where do you think you’ll end up?”, “What will you do next?“, etc.)
Allow 3 or 4 minutes each way for this – then do make sure to leave some time for people to reflect on and note down their ideias!
4 questions to think about your professional purpose
What energises me?
What comes easily to me?
What do people come to me for?
How am I when I’m at my best and what really matters to me about this situation and why?
From Helen Teague’s post ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?‘. Helen is our OD expert at Invisible Grail.
A meeting ice breaker
To set the tone for a meeting, ask people to answer this question before you get started.
What’s a particular strength you can bring to this meeting today?
Provocateur at meetings
Bring a different perspective to your next meeting.
Invite an unusual guest for part of your next meeting, as a provocateur who will stimulate fresh thinking. This could be someone from outside your organisation who can play back to you their perceptions of your team’s identity and how It performs. Listen out for the insights this generates.
Feedback on meetings
Stop…
Start…
Continue…
Ask people to write what they would like to see stop, start and continue in meetings, leaving their comments on post it notes or online via a chat box.
Writing when your stuck
5 ideas to reconnect you to your message
“[writing] permeates decision-making… helps us form alliances, and when we get it right it moves us to act.”
“Distillation gives your idea clarity.”
“The point is to free your mind and your words from the grasps of boredom, repetitiveness and perceived boundaries”
“The hardest place to start is at the beginning.”
“Keep it true to you, keep it human.”
From Louse Clifton post ‘Reimagined: Writing when you’re stuck‘