I'm a member of the International Association of Facilitators, a brilliant association that promotes the power of facilitation, so I felt really happy to receive, on the last day of 2015, a lovely certificate of appreciation.
Thanks especially to other IAF leaders and activists: Martin Farrell, Martin Gilbraith, Julia Goga Cooke, Anja Kantowski, Helga Brüggemann who I have worked closely with during 2015 on IAF activities.
Vision exercises help teams create 'desirable and appealing pictures of a future state'. Lego Serious Play can be a useful tool to help teams think about and quickly envision future scenarios.
Sometimes in visioning teams find it hard to tune in to a time scale that is neither too futuristic or too current. With a blank canvas people may think about the future from many different starting points.
Taking a user centred approach can help teams people about the future from the perspective of different stakeholder groups. At a recent workshop for PCMA participants were asked to form five groups and each group was given a different persona to work with.
This week I ran a workshop at Wszechnica Uniwersytetu in Krawkow on facilitating strategy meetings and workshops. Participants asked for the slide deck, so please download it here.
Dialogue, as we are choosing to use the word, is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization.
Yesterday I facilitated an 'ExportJam' workshop commissioned by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI - a Government department) that aimed to generate ideas for how the UK can double exports by 2020.
At the workshop mid point we recorded stories that looked like this: Read More...
Adrian Crookes, (pictured) is a course leader at the London College of Communication. At the end of a workshop I facilitated this week, he reflected,
“I thought LEGO Serious play was a remarkably adult way of getting together to discuss issues and problems”. Conversely meetings using post-it notes and flip charts seem to infantilise by comparison.” Read More...
IMEX Frankfurt is the ‘worldwide exhibition for incentive travel, meeting and events’, and each year c.300 association executives from 40 countries gather the day before IMEX to learn from each other during ‘Association Day”. Read More...
This is a gridcard. It’s made from 160 gsm (gram per square meter) paper and is A6 (105mm x 148mm) in size.
It’s just a piece of paper for people to write things on, but this simple device has eight ways to help you have better meetings. Used well, gridcards will: Read More...
At last nights IAF (International Association of Facilitators) London “Meet Up” Sharon O’Regan asked us to share ideas for how to handle a person in a meeting who won’t shut up. Photo credit, image from Lynettes Blog. Read More...