What if one of the most used tools in our facilitation kit wasn’t a sticky note, a whiteboard, or a carefully designed slide deck but a pair of comfortable shoes? Between us, we’ve been running workshops for a long time and if there’s one technique that consistently surprises us with how well it works, it’s the walk and talk. It’s a simple thing, just getting people outside, walking and… Read more »Get moving with a walk and talk!
Have you ever wondered how to get everyone in a group actively thinking, contributing, and building on each other’s ideas, without the discussion getting stuck or dominated by a few voices? In this episode, we explore the bus stop technique, a simple tool for enablers of change that helps structure group work. The bus stop technique is useful as it helps break a large group into small groups. Each… Read more »Use the bus stop and move!
In this episode, we’re exploring two deceptively simple strategies that, when used together, can dramatically improve the quality of group conversations: the Think Pair Share method and the pause. Whether we’re facilitating in a farmer’s shed or on Zoom, these tools help us create space for quieter voices, encourage reflection, and ultimately generate richer conversations. Think Pair Share is a three-step facilitation strategy that promotes reflection, equity, and engagement.… Read more »Pair and pause for deeper conversations
These days it can be difficult to run traditional focus groups, where people physically sit around a table and share their thoughts about a topic. In this post-COVID-19 world, many of us are concerned that the others in the room might share more than just their ideas with us, and we might catch COVID-19 ourselves! Or perhaps our organisation’s policies have changed and they’re much more likely to ask… Read more »10 tips for running effective online focus groups
We’ve talked about the benefits of using a flipped learning approach before. It can save time during the session, allow deeper exploration of the topic and drive more effective engagement. But the greatest risk is that not everyone does the pre-work. In today’s episode, we’re going to suggest some ways to encourage everyone to do it. If our participants do not do the pre-work, it can make facilitating the… Read more »Flipped learning… how to get people to do the pre-work
What’s the best way to generate new ideas? Hopefully it won’t surprise you to know that it isn’t brainstorming, as we touched on that in an earlier episode. Having lots of people shouting out ideas over the top of each other may seem exciting, but brainstorming doesn’t generate the greatest number of useful ideas. In this episode we’re going to introduce you to a better way of generating ideas—the… Read more »Stop brainstorming… use the 6-3-5 method instead
Sometimes as Enablers of change we just need a few more ideas to help us plan, design and run our activities. Where do we go when we want more resources and ideas for facilitating? In previous episodes we’ve given you our top five journals, journal articles, blogs, and podcasts. These resources aren’t any of those and so are a bit of an eclectic mix around facilitation and running small… Read more »Five useful facilitation resources
Are you thinking of running a hybrid event where you have attendees both online and physically present in one or more venues? You might think it will give you the best of both worlds, but in this episode we will show you why it is often the worst of both worlds—and what you might be able to do about that! In agriculture our perspective is often that hybrids are usually… Read more »Why hybrid events are often horrible!
How can we keep the meeting we’re facilitating on-track when everyone keeps going off-track? This is a common problem with both physical and online meetings, and can really derail your progress. In this episode we’re going to talk about jellyfish, those floating blobs of jelly in the ocean, and show you how you can use them to help keep your meeting focused and have some fun too! We all… Read more »Using jellyfish to help keep our meetings on-track
How do you go about designing a robust yet flexible facilitation process? Hopefully you’re not just cobbling together a few random activities, like brainstorming and using dot stickers to vote on the best ideas, and hoping this will do. In case you need some structure and process, in this episode we’re going to explore the FIDO process and help put some bite into your facilitation! Bob Dick wrote the… Read more »Put some bite into your facilitation with FIDO
