I've been playing a lot with ChatGPT in the context of facilitation. Check the overall conversation by opening the images in this post one by one! This stuff is mind-blowing!!!!! Some conclusions: ✅ ChatGPT is wonderful for inspiration! Think of it as a co-facilitator ✅ You need to know what to ask! Problem framing and critical thinking are skills even more valuable in the age of AI ✅ The robot wont run the workshop for you ;) So the whole human element and real-time ability to adapt give facilitators even more value! ✅ I cannot wait to see the amazing abilities AI will give facilitators. One example is to use AI tools to quickly capture visually some exercises outputs without the need to be a great scribbler/sketch-noter. You can try it out at chat.openai.com :) How about you? What experiments have you been doing with AI and facilitation?

One of my favorite books of all time is 'The Power of Moments' by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. In this book, Chip and Dan talk about improving experiences for others, and they explore what makes occasions unique and memorable. Psychologists have found that, when we reflect on our experiences, we tend to remember two moments in particular: The "peak"—the best moment of a positive experience—and the ending. Peak Moments are things that happen that are out of the ordinary; they're unexpected and a bit of a surprise. These moments disproportionally impact how we remember an event. These moments make us feel excited, motivated, and surprised! So here's the question for all of us: Are we paying attention to these moments as facilitators? Are we consciously creating peaks for our customers or participants, or employees? You could run an average workshop, sticking to the agenda, and everything would run smoothly. BUT, if you've designed your plan to include a few peak moments throughout, people will remember this workshop to be incredibly special and memorable. They're more likely going to want to have you facilitate another workshop for them in the future so that you create this unique experience for them again. ❓So how can you create these peak moments in your workshops❓ 💪 Start your workshops strong: Make sure you make the group feel welcome when they arrive at the workshop. What we did in a recent workshop to create a peak moment at the beginning was we made a welcome poster with every participants name on it in fun colourful writing. We also had a little goodie bag on each persons chair for them to take home. This was filled with simple things like a notebook, sharpie, post-its and our own AJ&Smart stickers. Another workshop we had everyone wait outside the room, we blasted some high energy music and let the participants in. We high-fived each person as they came in and everyone was super pumped before the workshop even started. 🎉 Celebrate wins/milestones: Throughout your workshops, make sure to celebrate when a group finishes an exercise with a simple high five. Get everyone up and out of their seats and praise their efforts by taking a nice break outside of the office space. Take them to get ice-cream or go for a nice walk together. In a recent workshop, we rented an ice-cream van and let the group know that on their 15 minute break they could go grab an ice-cream and sit in the sun. This is a peak moment that they won't forget!

Hello Facilitators!👋 We are so EXCITED to announce that we’ll be hosting a virtual meet-up next Thursday, March 9th at 7PM CET. This is the perfect opportunity for us all to come together, get to know one another and chat about Facilitation and Workshopping in a super casual way! The purpose of this call is for you to meet and learn from other community members in a friendly, open, and relatively unstructured format! This call won’t have a ‘theme,’ but we will draw from conversations happening within the community. As the format is so unstructured, if you’d like to discuss any successes or challenges you’re experiencing in the world of facilitation and workshopping, this is the space to share. We want to make this community as unique as possible and make genuine connections with you so we can all grow and learn together as Facilitators so meeting virtually is a great step in the right direction! If you’re interested in joining, here's the link to this call. The link to join is also in the Skool calendar 🤗 Hope to see many of you at this call. I'm SUPER excited to meet you all 💛

Hello there! I'm brand new to Facilitator Club and of course felt compelled to diligently follow the suggested activities (who doesn't love activities right?!) and write a little introduction to myself and how I have come to be in this wonderful place with all of you wonderful people. Some career/work-related facts and stats: - I have worked for 1 company my whole career (17 years and counting!) - I have held 5 different 'job titles' in that time but in reality have probably done 10+ roles - Most of my roles have been IT-related, from the helpdesk, through software development and PM'ing to Head of Data and Analytics and all in the UK arm of the company - My current role is where I pivoted slightly from IT and moved into digital transformation across the global supply management function Some me-related facts and stats: - I am super creative and have an inordinately long list of hobbies - I can't get enough of learning about new things, and I LOVE hearing other people talk about the things they know and explain them to me with passion. Like their love for their subject is like a song for me. - I am a mother of 2, age 5 and under which makes work-life balance... interesting but has lead me to have a strong word with myself and make sure that the work I do (and need to do for myself) is something I really love and that really speaks to my values of connection, making a difference to people, making them feel valued and moving them forward. - I work from home (with all its pros and cons) which is near Manchester, UK What brings me to this wonderful place? When I returned back from maternity leave to my current role and didn't settle back into the daily grind I knew it was time to seriously rethink about what my values, passions and strengths were and start on a proper journey towards them - and although I have never had any official job title of facilitator, or coach, or workshopper or anything like that the areas that I always find myself drawn to and the experiences I remember most fondly generally link back to the beginning of projects, or starting committees, or leading groups on a short-term project (basically, new shiny things at the beginning of their life).

I was wondering if anyone might be willing to share examples of briefs they have been given. After completing the AJ&Smart Facilitation Fundamentals course, and completing their example, I'd like to get a little more practice using the 4P's and 4C's methods as well as trying out a few different exercises. Practice makes perfect :-) Any category is welcome. It might also open my eyes a bit more as to what to expect from companies in the future. 🤩 Thanks