Meetings don't have to suck. They can be fun, engaging and productive.Viv and Johnnie offer dozens of tips and insights to help you do a better job of facilitating. They explain how to get out of the traps that lead meetings to be boring and soul-sucking. This is a concise and colourful guide to get meetings that really work for human beings, working with emotions to generate more powerful results.

As group facilitators, we can use methods like Open Space Technology, Future Search, and World Café to reliably evoke "group magic" when working with larger groups. Yet how can we tap into the generative power of self-organization when working with smaller groups - especially ones facing complex and conflict-laden issues? In From Conflict to Creative Collaboration: A User's Guide to Dynamic Facilitation, collaboration consultant Rosa Zubizarreta describes a ground-breaking facilitation method for transforming unproductive group friction into effective teamwork and innovation. Dynamic Facilitation's agile approach draws task groups into a co-creative "flow zone" - where participants create practical and innovative solutions while building trust, empathy, and authentic community. Some of the distinctive features of this approach include welcoming solutions initially and throughout the process, as a form of rapid prototyping, and using empathic listenint to create safety for both solutions (creative thinking) and concers (critical thinking). As we create a "map" of the different perspectives that are present, we support participants' own ability to recognize patterns and create new meaning.

This book reveals the secrets of the art of facilitation and shows how to use it to initiate group empowerment. Developing facilitation skills means first fully understanding the facilitator role: that of a guide helping a group or individual towards a conclusion, without steering the decision. To become an effective group facilitator you need to understand the principles of self-facilitation and the facilitation of individuals, as well as that of a group. The authors, all experienced facilitators, begin by fully explaining the skills required and the benefits to be derived. The Toolkit which follows includes practical activities, designs and processes, and includes a model facilitation training programme. This combination of personal experience and practical advice will have wide appeal for facilitators, trainers and group members.

Praise for Facilitating Group Learning "In this engaging and accessible book, George Lakey draws on a lifetime's experience to provide a highly practical resource to anyone seeking to understand and respond to the complexities of group work. The book will be invaluable to anyone trying to effect social change through groups while striving to stay simultaneously sane and employed." Stephen D. Brookfield, Distinguished University Professor, University of St. Thomas "I've been working with forms of direct education for many decades, and I found new ideas and inspirations in every chapter. For anyone involved in teaching, training, sharing skills, or leading groups, this book is an invaluable resource!" Starhawk, author, The Earth Path, Dreaming the Dark, and Webs of Power "George Lakey has inspired our union to engage in education in a way that challenges us to redefine social justice and equality in new and exciting ways. This book helps us to continue our journey to touch the souls of union members." Denis Lemelin, national president, Canadian Union of Postal Workers "Facilitating Group Learning will ease the way of all who venture into the white waters of facilitation. George clarifies the most basic, complex, and nagging challenges of facilitation, while honoring the realities of individual and social power dynamics and providing real-life examples from the path of continued growth and mastery. A rare gift!" Niyonu D. Spann, founding president, TRV Consulting and Beyond Diversity 101 "This book is a must-read for people who teach adults of any age, no matter what the subject, and care about doing it in ways that yield deep and abiding learning. Wonderfully well-written and rich with psychological and spiritual insights as well as practical strategies, it represents the fruits of a lifetime of transformational teaching and learning by one of the foremost adult educators of our time." Parker J. Palmer, author, The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, and The Heart of Higher Education

This collection of duck activities has a strong fun element, however, we do not want it to sound like it is all just fun. There is, in fact, a wealth of solid theory that forms the basis of why we developed this stream of uses for six bricks in business and learning environments. The idea of using playful methods for a range of purposes to generate innovative thinking is not new. For centuries, people have used artifacts like totems and puppets to tell stories and share information, beliefs, and knowledge. We also know that many facilitators and trainers are using tools such as design thinking and agile methodologies where prototyping and games play an important role in the processes of thinking and creating. Whatever your goal, using 3D models is a great facilitation tool. It allows you to lead people through a process where they are able to examine their inside world and relate these lessons to their work environment. These insights then lead to opportunities for further exploration and discovery and ultimately, more productive and effective communication.

Create a fresh, intentional approach to meetings When meetings draw employees away from day-to-day tasks but fail to reach their intended outcome, it has huge costs to the organization. All too often, this happens because meetings lack purpose—people gather together to discuss a problem but don’t know how to approach it strategically. Consider that the typical leader spends at least 10 hours a week in meetings with an average of five people. Now, assume each of those individuals is priced out at $100 an hour. That’s $5,000 a week in meeting costs. Multiply that $5,000 by 50 weeks, then by the 10 top executives. The cost? $2.5 million. Of course, leaders dread the thought of one more ineffective meeting, as do most other workers. With preparation and intention, you can turn these wasted opportunities into sessions that fully engage participants and teams. In Not Just Another Meeting: Creative Strategies for Facilitation, you will learn how to be intentional about diagnosing what your team requires from a meeting. By expanding your repertoire of what to do and how to do it, you can respond to any situation with calm, certainty, and creativity. Experienced facilitators and consultants Rodney Napier and Eli Sharp describe 13 classic designs, such as the Future Search, Collapsing Consensus, and Genie in the Bottle. Applying to wide-ranging workplace issues, these designs provide the tools to enable any gathering to solve problems, build trust, and deal with conflict. Accompanying them are animated videos, available online, that allow you to observe exactly how to facilitate each design. This book shines a new light on situations you’ve taken for granted for years. Break out of your old meeting habits—and actually excite the participants of meetings you lead.

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

The key to facilitating vibrant, deep, and motivating programs for youth and adults. Community, youth, nonprofit, education, entrepreneurial, and religious organizations all have exciting ambitions, but they often lack the creative skills to impact people on a deeper level. Catch the Fire is a complete guide to using arts and empowerment techniques to bring greater vitality and depth to working with groups of youth or adults. Based on the premise that you don't have to be a professional artist to use the arts in your work, this unique book invites group leaders into the realm of creativity-based facilitation, regardless of previous experience. Including over one hundred stimulating activities incorporating storytelling, theater, writing, visual arts, music, and movement, this detailed guide uses the Creative Community Model to: Bridge gaps and unite people across generations and cultures Build vibrant, creative learning communities with youth and/or adults Fully engage participants and volunteers Develop social and emotional intelligence Take a deeper, more meaningful approach to learning Drawing on nearly two decades of experience providing transformative programs to empower youth and adults across North America and around the world, Catch the Fire is a powerful and valuable resource and a much-needed reminder that art is for everyone! Peggy Taylor and Charlie Murphy are co-founders of PYE Global: Partners for Youth Empowerment and developers of the Creative Community Model, a process for building creative, heart-centered learning communities with youth and adults from diverse cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. Peggy is co-author of Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life which sold over 250,000 copies worldwide.

Join the conversation between evaluation and facilitation. This issue explores the interplay between the two and how one practice can inform the other. The authors represent both the evaluation and facilitation fields, describing underlying concepts that inform their practices, the competencies they seek to develop, the choices they make about facilitation in the work they do, and how they gauge success. This issue brings together topics meant to stimulate the curiosity of evaluators and facilitators and encourage reflection on their work and the skills needed to carry it out. This is the 149th issue in the New Directions for Evaluation series from Jossey-Bass. It is an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.