3 of 11: Suggested Facilitation Strategies - Designing a Thorough and Detailed Facilitation Agenda that is Structured AND Flexible
This set of suggested strategies aims to help you in designing a thorough and detailed agenda that is (a) structured, logical and outcome-driven; and at the same time (b) flexible, allowing for flow and emergence. Here are some things to consider:
(1) Make sure you are really tuned in to the detail of ALL of the desired outcomes for the event. Often clients have a notion of these. However, rarely are these articulated in a sufficiently nuanced fashion. For example, rarely is due attention given to both to the desired outputs (such as a written vision statement, an action plan, a letter to policy makers), the ‘hard outcomes’ (such as consensus going forward, decisions taken, items prioritized) and the ‘soft outcomes’ (such as sense of ownership, enthusiasm and energy for going forward, improved relationships between group participants). Prepare yourself well, ensuring clarity around these objectives AND how they are prioritized by your client and participants.
(2) Share the desired outcomes with the group at the start. Then keep checking in with the group on
progress towards these achieving these.
If you are making good progress, great.
If you are not, assess (perhaps with input from the group) whether or
not what you had planned is going to get you there, and then determine whether
you proceed as plan or adapt accordingly.
(3) Check your design is sufficiently structured by asking
yourself (and possibly others) what you would expect to get out of each
session, giving some examples of how the diversity of participants would answer
the questions posed. If this isn’t
crystal clear, think further about the questions and sequencing of sessions.
(4) Plan an iterative process that is – by design - both
structured and highly emergent - where the outcomes from one session naturally
flow into the next, and determine the focus of conversation. For example, you may have a tightly
timed-agenda with sessions progressing from plenary presentations to table
discussions to reflections in plenary to voting on the most important points to
small group work on those points. Highly
structured? Yes. And at the same time what the group
prioritizes to focus conversation on is entirely up to them. For this to work,
just remember that it is imperative to be very clear about the logic of the
structure and the questions you use to guide the thinking of the group in the
early sessions. Note also that
transitions between activities takes time.
(5) Schedule a session where participants determine the agenda -
for example, how about incorporating a session in the agenda drawing
inspiration from Open Space Technology? Participants
can openly propose table discussions and then other participants choose from
this marketplace of offerings which conversations they join. This can be very
valuable when people come with something they desperately want to share or
discuss with others, but which doesn’t fit perfectly in the logic of the agenda
and achieving the desired outcomes.
Related blog posts / links:
Open Space for Conversation (and Eating Croissants): http://welearnsomething.blogspot.ch/2009/02/opening-space-for-conversation-and.html
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