Download our latest Ebook - Facilitation Essentials
Posted by Andrew 16 December 2008
We have compiled our latest thinking and models on facilitation into a downloadable e-workbooklet titled “Facilitation Essentials: Inspiring Teams and Engaging Leadership”. Download it here. And have a merry christmas!
Want an engaging conversation? Try the fishbowl process
Posted by Andrew 12 December 2008
Here’s a great process I’ve used alot, and most recently it was with a group of early career researchers, scientists and mentors. It see’s an inner group of participants involved in a discussion that is witnessed by a larger group.
With only the inner circle conversing it turns out to be a great way of generating rich discussion afterwards amongst the whole group!
The process:
• The room is set up with 3 chairs in the middle of a larger circle of chairs.
• With everyone sitting in the larger circle of chairs the facilitator invites participants to think about a topic or theme of interest. The idea is to stimulate participants to come up with questions for the centre of the fishbowl in the upcoming conversation.
• The facilitator then introduces the fishbowl, describing the process. The key aspect is that when the inner circle is talking the outer circle are listening. If it helps, describe how participants who join the inner circle of the fishbowl can be thought as ‘wise-elders of the tribe’.
• Facilitator describes the 5-minute chair rotation and that the facilitator will be responsible for monitoring the time and selecting the 5 minute chair. (An item may be placed underneath the 5 minute chair to indicate which one it is). When the 5 minutes is up, this chair is vacated to allow for another participant to come join the inner fishbowl
• Invite participants to think about the topic/theme and develop a question that they would like to hear discussed in the fishbowl.
• Once a question has been decided from the outer circle, the facilitator then invites participants who feel passionate or interested in the question to come join the fishbowl. • Once the inner fishbowl chairs are occupied the facilitator can restate the question from the outer circle.
• Fishbowl participants start discussion.
• Facilitator stands or sits outside the fishbowl and times for the 5 minute chair rotation.
• The inner circle discusses this question/issue for 15 minutes. The outer circle participants listen but are not allowed to contribute to the discussion. The inner circle is not to engage or speak with the outer circle. The inner circle is the whole crucible of conversation.
• One chair from the inner circle is nominated by the facilitator as the 5 minute chair and this person is tapped on the shoulder at 5 minutes to join the outer group and a member of the outer group can take this chair and join the conversation of the inner circle.
• Once the 15 minutes is up a new question is raised from the outer group and a new group of ‘wise-elder tribe members’ join the inner fishbowl.
What can Organisations learn from Natural Resource Management?
Posted by Andrew 30 November 2008
Having just returned from a fantastic facilitation conference in Bathurst, I’m reflecting on some work I completed a few years ago. This piece of work explored Perspectives on the art of Facilitation: A delphi study of natural resource management facilitators and was published in the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management. You might ask – what does this have to do with organisations? How could anything from the country or rural setting provide insights for today’s fast moving fast paced organisations?
Let me respond by asking you to consider our findings. And – in particular – ask yourself – do any of these apply in any of the organisations you’ve worked in?
The key findings that we found in this nine month study across Australia included the following issues:
- Over consultation and insultation
- Outputs and outcomes not relayed back to participants
- Overloading key volunteers
- Lack of ownership
- Lack of evaluation of actions
Do any of these match your experiences in organisations? Does your organisation have willing volunteers involved in projects or resigned conscripts? What would be the impact of evaluating actions as well as keeping participants in the loop of outputs and outcomes?
Read our paper here for more on what actions could be taken based on these issues…
Looking for me?
Posted by Andrew 24 November 2008
I’ll be at the Australian Facilitators Conference in Bathurst from Tuesday 25th to Friday 29th!
Learning Facilitation Skills - Ian Gawler’s story
Posted by Andrew 19 November 2008
Hat-tip as they say to my wife. She is currently reading “Ian Gawler – The Dragon’s Blessing” and shared this great quote of how Ian learnt to work with groups.
“It took me years before I felt really comfy having open discussions with groups”, Ian says. “It was much easier to just tell people what to do – which is what I did in those early days. As the years went on, I learnt from the participants, and from other study, and gradually developed a much better capacity to facilitate the groups and their dynamics”.
Speaking to a CEO recently he reflected on how alot of facilitation work ‘isn’t rocket science’. He was right of course. I often think how the skills of facilitation are often thought of as ‘common sense’. Of course, the problem with ‘common sense’ is that it’s not so common. The final quote I’ll share from Ian Gawler’s biography shows the evolution of one such learning working with groups.
For the first couple of years, for instance, the groups would typically run for two hours and then when they had finished everyone would have a cup of tea. Or more correctly what would happen would be that people who were gregarious and talkative would hang around and have a cup of tea, but the more reserved and introspective – the ones who probably needed to stay and talk – would disappear and miss out on the benefit of talking with others.
‘And then dear old Jim came in one day and said: “Why don’t we meet for an hour, then have a cup of tea and then come back to session”’ Ian thought it a fine idea and the groups have been doing it ever since. ‘This small change took seven years to work out and it meant that everyone, quite naturally, had the opportunity to talk with the others in their group. People talked more, people interacted more. It made a huge difference to the quality of the program’.
No matter what your skills as a facilitator – I think the following quote of the paragraph captures the heart of it:
‘I think in the early days what compensated our lack of skill was the real dedication to wanting to help people’, adds Ian. And it worked – and for people from all walks of life.
How can you be more helpful with and to the groups you work with?
Facilitating Mind Games at Kioloa
Posted by Andrew 10 November 2008
Tomorrow I’m off to Kioloa – on the south coast of NSW to facilitate a 4 day program of leadership and development for early career researchers and scientists.
Am I looking forward to the beach, the surf, the waves and some reflective time for myself and participants? Absolutely!
What do your group conversations look like? Do you need a facilitator?
Posted by Andrew 31 October 2008
This network map shows a natural (unfacilitated) conversation taking place. I mapped this conversation during a recent highly successful Open Space meeting I facilitated. This social network analysis map brings up some key features.
The links represents who spoke after who. For example – Bill spoke only after both John and Jane. The size of the nodes represent how far away from the group’s conversational space the participants are. For example you can see that Jim is the most distant from the group in terms of conversational space. On the flip side – John, Bob and Jane are at the center of the conversational space. This can be seen by the colours – representing the frequency of interaction had within the conversation – ranging from Red– the highest to Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet – being the lowest amount of conversational interaction.
So what? Well – I will answer that in the form of questions below. And they are:
What are some guiding principles of facilitation? How would they have changed the dynamics of this conversation? Where would the facilitator be in the above network map? On the counter side – if this is an example of a naturally occuring conversation within a group – how can a group (by themselves) learn to change their own dynamics? Why does everyone need to be an “equal” in a conversation? Does it make sense that there will be conversations where people have more interest and passion than others? What’s your experience?
No Time? Try Collaborating
Posted by Andrew 31 October 2008
This is a great example of the power of collaboration.
With blog posting taking time – it doesn’t get any better than when you find a chance to work collaboratively and have someone else write a blog post for you. 
And thanks to Viv – here’s one that came to fruition yesterday – about Fireworks!
What can you do with story and narrative approaches?
Posted by Andrew 27 October 2008
In a great Open Space session last week at the ODA conference, Ian Shrives helped to bring forward a great list of benefits and ways of positioning working with story. Here’s the listing, with a few of our own added, of the power of facilitating story – you could utilise story for:
- Post-implementation learning review
- Myth busters program
- Network Building
- Constructive Conversations
- Strategic Dreaming
- Focus Group Reviews
- Role Analysis
- Cultural diagnosis and assessment
- Conflict resolution
Interested in learning more? You might enjoy our “Journeying with Story” program.
Off to the Organisational Development Australia Conference
Posted by Andrew 22 October 2008
Tomorrow and Friday I’m heading out to the ODA 2008 conference themed around Perspectives-Practices-Possibilities. Check out the program here!