# Facilitation

Notes from a facilitation training

Facilitation → alignment of a group

Check-in in beginning of a meeting, eg via chat/poll → engaging
- for example:
- How is your day going (1-5: 1 great, 5 horrible)
- What is your participation ability in todays meeting (in percentage, how much can you participate and focus on the current meeting)

### Connecting
- apart from the "usual": meeting has purpose and goals, agenda, expectations, clear roles
- also provide:
- psychological safety: come as you are, no judging, welcoming and including atmosphere
- leading the group and keep everyone focussed and on topic, engaging everyone

### Roles in a meeting
Content vs process management
- Leader (goal oriented), presenter (inform about a topic), facilitator (enable co-creation)
- Process
- tech
- who begins
- turns
- possible grouping for smaller discussions
- goal in mind
- time management, keeping things on schedule (and know when deviation is ok)
- engagement
- facilitator can also switch roles if they have something to present, but should mention (now I am switching to tell you something about xxx, now I am back to facilitator)

### CSA model
- Clarifying: What are we trying to solve?
- Solutions: How should we solve it?
- Actions: Who does what and when?

→ Creates alignment and commitment
→ Facilitator knows what stage the group is in

### Idea divergence and convergence
- Idea divergence: Producing ideas without comments, brainstorming, free flow, no judgement or decisions,...
→ safe space to produce ideas
- Idea convergence: Selecting ideas
> DO NOT mix idea production and selection of ideas! Especially "shooting down ideas right when they come" hinders idea production

### Group memory
- shared notes, gdocs, wiki, office word online, etc...
→ helps focussing, listening, remembering
### Dialogue
(depends on topic and group size if these are helpful)
- me (write down your own ideas, goals etc)
- we (discuss with a peer in breakoutroom)
- us ( discuss with the whole group)
-> can be done separately or one after another, ask for volunteers in large groups, or appoint someone; make it a safe space to admit "I don't know" or "I do not have an opinion about this"

### Some practical notes

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#### Online meetings

- remaining time timer on for breakoutrooms is really helpful
- me-we-us: broadcast facilitation updates ("now we are doing XX, now we switch to XX, .. ")
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