“Team crazyness” 

 

The team work is also part of the facilitation skills, since there are a lot of tasks when we facilitate the workshop besides introducing the activity and debriefing it. It is great if the team have the opportunity to get to know each other and reflect on their strengths and things they tend to do automatically. But for this a self reflection is required. So I would like to invite you to answer what are your tendencies and task you tend to do when facilitating:

• Prepare the space, and keep it clean and organized

• Interact with participants when they arrive and during the breaks (small talk)

• Facilitator entertainer - looking at the mood of participants and trying to keep it high and make pax enjoy and laught a bit. 

• Supporting your colleagues - you see that in a minute your co-facilitators will need some materials and you stand up and bring it to them. 

• Taking care of participants - for example you see that there are side talks and probably someone did not understood the task, so you go and clarify, or you see that someone is leaving the room when something potentially triggering have been discussed so you go after this person to check on them. 

• Public speaking,you feel comfortable to be in the center of attention, and you can explain different concepts in a simple and engaging way, competencies to do great presentations. 

• Visual facilitator - it is not about drawing amazingly, but rather ensuring that all the things which are discussed are visible in the same time, so more visual learners can follow. Especially important when you introduce the activity, to have the instructions also on flip chart or other visual form, so do you like to prepare and decorate your materials in advance?

• Reporter - Are you this person who does photos of the sessions and posters for the report, and ensures that all the materials needed for the report are saved? 

As you can see there are much more to facilitation then standing in front of people and introducing tasks. And the list above is not complete, since I did not mention session designer, person who leads the team and many more which are our of my head now. 

 

I envied you to reflect what are the things that are natural to you, and what might be challenging. And you will need to talk within your teams.