Facilitating with care in lock-down situations

In the current situation of (near-) lock-downs, interviews, meetings and group discussions are moving on-line. And so are workshops, with tutorials and useful advice on running on-line workshops popping up all over the place. If, as a facilitator, you want to make sure all workshop participants make the best of a virtual workshop, the challenges of moving on-line are not just technical. When everybody has to work from home, your workshop enters the participants' households. To express it in terms of systems thinking, your workshop is not confined within the borders of office spaces and working hours anymore; it intersects with a number of household systems:

Small group work - keep it fresh and productive!

It is the early afternoon of the second workshop day; the participants are a bit drowsy from a rich lunch; messages have piled up in their smartphones and some people would prefer to deal with those rather than discussing strategy or whatever the workshop is about. Small group work is on the workshop plan. What can you do to keep it lively and productive?

Virtual Workshopping

Earlier this week I facilitated an internal reflection and planning meeting with evalux, a Berlin-based evaluation firm which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. One of the workshop participants was based in Beijing. It would have been too onerous to fly her over to Berlin, so we found a way to beam her into the workshop via the internet.

I like highly participatory workshops, where people work in alternating configurations –

Resources for facilitators

A friend has asked me about resources on facilitation of planning workshops. This makes me realise that my approach in facilitation is fed by many different streams. Some favourite resources in English:

Facilitating workshops in two and more languages

A friend recently asked me about interpreters to support a planning workshop in East Africa, reminding me that I meant to write down a few guiding thoughts on facilitation in multi-lingual contexts. It is complicated, but if it works out well it is truly empowering to those who do not speak the "dominant" language.

Tips for Multi-Everything Facilitation

Just got back from an exhilarating multi-country, multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder, multi-language planning workshop. So much "multi" can make workshop planning quite an adventure: Will the participants understand each other, across cultures, disciplines, languages and perspectives? Will those who come with the money listen to those who come with the expertise? Will the participants reach any agreement or useful conclusions within a short (2-day) spell of time? In the end, things appeared to work out beautifully. I see three major factors for such success: