My recent Glorious Disaster I walked into a leadership team workout for a Fortune 100 company this week and was absolutely shocked with the mindset of the people in the room. I knew that these were very smart people in a successful company with each of them responsible for departments with budgets into the tens […]
Archive | Facilitation Techniques
Workshop Leader Nightmare Part 2
Yesterday I wrote about a nightmarish workshop setup I walked into and had to improvise on the spot. You can read about it here if you missed it! Making lemonade from lemons… I quickly popped in an Altoid, just in case, for the people in front of me, took a deep breath and got […]
Workshop Leader Nightmare
Anyone who leads workshops or provides training will relate to this recent nightmare of mine. I literally had a dream about it last night and just had to share it… Last November I had the opportunity to provide our Mindset of a Legend training to 25 HR executives from GE. This is, quite frankly, the […]
Preparing the Group
Preparing the group for a great experience takes some planning and preparation. They will be walking into the room with all kinds of baggage: Will we have to role-play? How many phone calls am I going to miss? Is this going to be boring? Traffic is going to be hell going home tonight! When are […]
Front Loading
Front-loading an experience is making clear the purpose of an activity, session, workshop, retreat or meeting prior to actually doing it. If participants clearly understand the purpose or lesson upfront, that topic will repeatedly show itself during the action component and potentially make it easier to identify during dialogue or discussion. Front-loading can include a […]
Ideas to Follow Up on Workshops
Following up on your session is incredibly important to helping participants. See Raising the Collective Bar about why. Below are some ideas: Follow up with them with recent articles and personal notes to keep them motivated. Send them the new ground rules established in the workshop, if applicable. If your group is geographically close, […]
Raising the Collective Bar
Take a moment and think of a large spider web.A spider web is very similar to organizations. If you are looking directly at it, you will see many different strands connected together in a concentric circle – see left. Now, turn the top edge of the spider web toward you 90 degrees so the […]
What if…. the debrief gets out of hand?
What you will see: A gripe session Arguing or fighting Discussion moving off the topic Side bar discussions Likely Causes: Poor questioning from the facilitator Unresolved team issues How to Prevent it: Be careful of using activities when therapy is a more useful and honest solution. Do not use activities when you are seeking to […]
What if…. someone dominates the debrief?
What you will See: One person answering most of the questions One person talking excessively. Most participants remaining silent. Likely Causes: The person wanted to show that he or she has the correct answers. Other participants are afraid to differ with the dominant person. The person may dominate the work environment and this is […]
What if…. participants don’t join the debrief?
What you will see: Lack of eye contact with you, especially after you ask a question. Minimal one-word responses to your questions Shoulders shrugging Silence Likely Causes: They did not understand your question You haven’t given them enough time to formulate an answer. They fear embarrassment of a ‘wrong’ answer in front of you […]