The Challenge of Including a Surprise New Topic
Looking at?Facilitators’ Toughest Challenges?for a Facilitation Week masterclass yesterday, I listed a few that are regularly raised in our sessions. We had, for example,?‘How to make opening a session engaging and attractive’?and?‘How to deal with various varieties of tricky participants’.
Then I asked if any of the participants had brought a challenge they were keen to explore. Yes, ‘How do we get groups to make decisions and then stick to them?’ someone urgently asked.
By allocating a Zoom breakout room to each topic and setting up permissions to allow participants freedom to go to whichever breakout they wanted, it was easy to include this new question, and a group formed to discuss it.
Within 20 minutes, they’d filled a shared Google Doc with a wealth of ideas. One tip to gain stickiness: make the decision, then agree the first steps each person is going to take in implementing it.
In a tightly-packed 60-minute webinar, I was reminded (again!) of the value of creating space within which participants could improvise to find collaborative ways forward on their urgent, emerging questions.
How are you allowing space for creative improvisation?
Extending Invitations to Experience and Engage with Who and What Matters to You
2 年Love the leaving space, "?the value of creating space within which participants could improvise to find collaborative ways forward on their urgent, emerging questions." A well written line here.
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2 年My tendency is to cram too much info into a session. It doesn't allow for processing and discovery. Thanks for the tip, Paul. I have two presentations coming up soon, and I will allow more time for creatively inspired improvisation.
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2 年Paul Z Jackson, really like how you set up the design for people to bring their Qs--and, discuss their own discoveries in the process. Rather than pack in the instructional content--you asked them to discuss and come to conclusions of their own, devoting a full 20 mins of 60 to do so. As facilitators, we can get caught up thinking that the more we bring, the more value. While I'm sure you also brought some content, it's a both-and thing. One great value of bringing people together is to have them discuss what they already know, and test out their additional ideas. I like the space you provided for that. They get to affirm their own mastery in the master class.