Hello Facilitators👋 I'm really curious about where everyone is from. I'd love to make this a mega post where we can see how diverse the Facilitator Club community is. Who knows, you might find a lot more people in your area than you thought! Once I have lots of answers on this post, I want to make a nice graph!

Hey Workshoppers, I'm VERY excited about this: As many of you already know, I usually only do coaching inside our high-level paid community "Inner Circle"... BUT today I'm announcing a little experiment: I'm going to run a free, 1 hour, weekly coaching session right here in this community, starting next Tuesday (August 22nd)! 👉 Watch this video if you don't feel like reading! You can join these calls and ask me anything you like about: - Building your facilitation career - Running specific workshops - Getting help with running workshops/troubleshooting - Getting advice on working with clients - Sales and marketing tips - Whatever you like! The first call starts NEXT TUESDAY (August 22nd, 4pm CET) and you can see the full schedule of upcoming calls right here on the Skool Calendar. I'll decide if I'll keep doing these based on how many people show up/ whether you all find them useful! ⚠️ 2 important bits of information: ONE: These calls will be strictly ONE hour long. We'll get through as much as we can in that time. I do a 2-3 hour coaching session every week in our "Inner Circle All-Access" community (these are recorded & transcribed), for those who want to go deeper. We can talk about this in more detail next week if anyone is interested in learning more! TWO: There won't be recordings of these free Q&A sessions. Why? For lots of reasons, but in short: just come hang out live! Hope to see some of you next week, let's go! Cheers, Jonathan

Hi there! I'm very new to facilitating workshops. I'm a UX designer working in a product company and would love to hear feedback. I have planned a workshop (after lots of research) to help a couple teams and major stakeholders to feel like their ideas are heard in-regards to improving our current app navigation. 1. I'm starting with the sail boat exercise. And from the top voted "When it comes to our navigation what is weighing us down" activity, I will reframe the main one into HMW. 2. For the top HMW I will ask everyone to come up with as many ideas as they can. Choose top 5 (bin the rest) and randomly stick on wall. 3. categorise them (to encourage everyone to read them) 4. vote 5. rearrange to with top voted on top. I'd like for it to take an hour. I don't know if it's worth taking it further like crazy 8s or wireframes. Would love to hear any feedback!

I just joined the Facilitator Club from Piteå, Northern Sweden. I've worked as a digital business developer at an IT company for the past 5 years running sprints and workshops, IR and remote, of all sorts. I look forward to learning more how other people work and growing my network in the workshopping community :) Event though I have been at this for a couple of years I still can feel really insecure sometimes of how to best go about picking the exercises to get the most out of a group in the best way. But there is no better feeling than when you get the group working, everyone is engaged and they see how much more they can get done in that setting than in a old fashioned meeting 🤩

Saturday, September 30, I am presenting at a local event being jointly produced by the Design Thinking and Innovation, Houston Product, and Houston UXPA groups. The event runs from 10 AM - 12 Noon. It's an interactive event where we'll have some short presentations on facilitation tips and then break into groups to learn two activities participants can run with their teams: https://www.meetup.com/dt-i-org/events/295869682/ I am looking for two co-facilitators to help manage groups. Each co-facilitator would probably have one group, but if turnout is higher, you might have two groups to support. I will pay $50 for your time. Happy to have experienced co-facilitators, or if you're a new facilitator, I can walk you through how to run the activities and manage your group ahead of time, and then you can get some practice. Please email me at ag@agux.co if you are interested. I would appreciate the support in making sure this even runs smoothly.

Hey all! I chuckled this week hearing Jonathan refer to affinitizing as fancy-company speak, but the more I facilitate the more I'm finding a nuance between the two that make a great deal of impact on my applications. I define the difference currently as: - Clustering attempts to just make the data more visible / neater - Affinitizing attempts to find hidden connections and deeper meaning. But I'm curious... How do you all think of clustering?

Hi, I am very green on facilitation and I am looking for some recommendations to add to my reading list- you can never learn enough right?!

I've noticed over the last few months the level of engagement on here has dropped off, and some of the earlier leaders on the Leaderboard now rarely participate. It doesn't take much to appear on the Leaderboard. An average of 1 post per day over a month will have you on the 30-day Leaderboard... in the top 20 of over 3,500 members. Though, appearance on the Leaderboard is just one criterium to measure engagement. I took screenshots of the Leaderboard 7 days apart to see what the differences actually are. Take a look at the changes. Quite a lot on the 7-day, some shifts on the 30-day, and very little movement on the All-time board. So, what do you think could be added to the site to increase the level of ongoing engagement? The point system is meaningless by the time you get to my level and no incentive (I have about a year to go at my current rate of contribution to move up a level). What else do you think needs to be added here to maintain a higher level of engagement, particularly for those who have been on here more than a few months? I'm tagging those on the All-time Leaderboard to get their thoughts on this. @Kerri Price @Shannon Wagers @Will Stammers @Joao Ribeiro @Benedict Odjobo @Hassanein Ismail @Sam Pettersson @Jeff Panning @David Finnegan @Jakub Michalski @Rebecca Courtney @Ren Yee Quek @Andrea Browne @Salah Bouchma @Claus Höfele @Austin Govella @Alina Balan @LaYinka Sanni @Abdelrahman Hussien

I am designing a Strategy Design Sprint for our organization to use with new clients. We are an Azure IT consulting firm and often works with client who don't have a strategy to accomplish their desired state. The dream for this workshop is that we would move from general technical idea, to a backlog that satisfies the business need. I am thinking the workshop can take a couple days but no more than 5-6 hrs per day. The image below is a bit more verbose than I would present to a client, I added additional commentary for clarity with this group. I would love to hear a few things from this community 1) If you have done this before, what do you see working and not working? 2) What should I add, change, or remove? 3) Do you have any fun ideas for decomposing chunks of work?

Hey Guys, I´m excited to join the Facilitator Club and looking forward to getting to know you. I work as a remote facilitator from Ibiza, Spain and specialise in facilitating service design thinking workshops, leadership workshops, and remote meetings. My clients are almost all spread across Germany. I look forward to exchanging ideas with you and learning with each other. Saludos Markus

I'd love to know where Facilitators invest their money to elevate their sessions and businesses. Is it tools? Software? Continuous learning? Props & materials? Marketing? Hiring spaces? Working with co-facilitators? Or perhaps travel and networking? Let me know in the comments...

Sometimes when people hear the word 'icebreaker' they cringe or might feel super anxious about taking part in one. Yes, icebreakers can make you feel a bit awkward initially, but they are proven to help enhance relationships and encourage creativity. 'Icebreakers can help increase team bonds, boost performance and creativity'—Harvard Business School study Integrating icebreakers into your workshops or meetings is a great way to get everyone relaxed and ready to participate. But how do you choose the right ones so that you avoid those dreaded awkward silences? Here are my Top 2 Icebreakers that are easy to implement (in-person or online): 1. My First Job Ask everyone in the group to write down their name, their first job, and what they learned from that job. Then go round the group and have everybody read theirs out. 2. Pointless Questions Prepare a few fun questions ahead of the workshop, then go round the room and have everybody take turns answering the questions. It’s as simple as that—you don’t even need to write anything down! Here are some question suggestions to get you started: - If you could invite a celebrity over for dinner, who would it be and why? - What is your most prized possession and why? - You can have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life. What do you choose? Here are some more icebreakers for you to explore! What's another great icebreaker that I can add to my list?

If you missed the @Aj Smart session yesterday on the 3 secrets to building a successful facilitation career, the following three books were recommended. I found the discussion of group dynamics really interesting and all this time and who know there was science to back up the skill. But I digress…. Here are the books that were recommended by @Rebecca Courtney . What other books are you reading.. or can recommend to the group?

As some of you may know, yesterday Alex Hormozi launched his newest book $100M Leads…And he had over 500,000 registered attendees…With over 100,000 people actually showing up watching live. By all accounts, it was a massive and overwhelming success…A masterclass in how to overload people with value… And then at the end, he gave away digital copies of his book for FREE along with a legit $12k course… How can we apply his $100M frameworks to our Facilitation Offers?

Hey Facilitators! Inspired by a recent post from @Jonathan Courtney about urgency (read and watch it here), I'd love to know... Which ONE task have you been procrastinating on that you're determined to finish this week? This could be in your work, business, or personal life. Let me know in the comments!

In any meeting or workshop, I always start with some kind of activity to engaje people within each other and with the theme of the event. My favorite is Blind Portrait: a game where, in pairs, people try to draw each others faces, but without looking at the paper! That way, anyone can make a drawing full of character and surprises. In the end, each person have to choose their favorite drawing and introduce themselves with that! What about you?

I purchased these about a year ago. Anyone else use these to map out their workshops? If so, what do you think of them?

Hello from Seattle, WA! I've been asked to facilitate a virtual (MS Teams) workshop for my department next week. Our team is new to Miro, and it's been a while since I last ran a session. I was wondering, do you usually provide the Miro link ahead of time to participants? If so, how early do you typically send it out? Also, I'd love to hear any best practices and tips you have from your experience. Thanks in advance for your help!

If you're just yelling: "Can I have your attention please?!" you're probably gonna end up losing your voice and damaging the trust with your participants. In my weekly #icemelters email I shared today 4 different methods for making sure participants stop talking and focus on you, that: 1. Don't require you to raise your voice 2. Quiet a room in less than 10 seconds 3. Boost engagement I am curious what have been your go-to methods to quiet down a big group during your workshops?

May I know how everyone deal with the sticky notes if it didn't stick well on the white-board! I already bought 3M sticky notes but some pieces didn't stick well and really cause trouble flying multiple times during the workshop! And how do everyone keep the sticky notes and tidy it up after the workshop/session had completed? Thank you everyone for sharing your experience in these two situations!

Hey guys 😉 As a Customer Experience Manager i wanted to know if there are facilitators in the club that had already made Customer Experience Design workshops ? If yes please let me know how did you conduct it, how did you feel and were your client happy with the result ? Thanks in advance 🙏

Been using and getting used to my Time Timer to help me manage the overall pace of workshops. Instead of having to do math when you look at the clock, you see, visually, how much time is left. Today, I added sticky note flags for key times when I needed to transition. Worked really well. I hit every single mark. Usually I hit the end time, but there's more flex in the middle. Seeing the markers really made it easy to manage time within activities.

Hey all 👋, if you could recommend one book about questions, what book would that be?

Most of my work is currently deliverred online. I am writing a justification to get a touch screen so that I can do better whiteboarding and then smuggle facilitation into more meetings and events to boost the audience's feedback. Do you know if anyone makes regular use of these tools? I am also working on my own "app" or organising ideas and chat to facilitate online meetings. Images borrowed from the DTEN website. https://www.dten.com/ BTW these are the ideas from AI via grammerly 1. What specific touch screen is the author considering for whiteboarding and facilitation? 2. What features does the author's self-made app offer for organising ideas and chatting? 3. What other online meeting tools do people use for interaction and group work?

Hi all! I left my full-time consulting job to start a business earlier this year. One of my main offerings is workshop design and facilitation to help teams solve complex problems more collaboratively. So things like brainstorming, pain point identification, stakeholder alignment, etc. I define workshops as collaborative working sessions with targeted activities that encourage attendee participation and more focused discussion on specific challenges. They are alternatives to traditional meetings to help teams spend their time more productively and reach actionable next steps in a short period of time. However, as I’ve been researching and conducting informational interviews, I’ve realized that “workshops” means something different to different people. Some think of it like I do, others like a training session, and still others have a different definition. While I understand that we could call these workshops anything we want (we could even make up a name!), because the important part is the value we bring, I’m still finding it hard to connect with potential customers at times because of the disconnect with the term “workshops”. So my question to all of you who are facilitators offering similar workshops….what do you call them?! If you call them workshops, how do you communicate with people what that means on your websites and in your conversations? We’ve had some suggestions from people to call them “working sessions” to indicate that work is done in the workshop and it’s not just training. Or, do you stay away from mentioning the “method” (which is a workshop) entirely on your website/marketing materials and use your introduction conversations to focus on the value you bring? For example, something like “We can help your stakeholders create a shared vision and kick off this initiative on the same page and with the same priorities" and then just talk through my definition of a workshop. I am curious to hear any advice from you all!

And this awesome community member, Jan Keck came to the rescue on my request. I've got an interview this morning for a facilitator contract role and I am pretty sure a big problem for the company to solve is engagement. Keck is the king of engagement, so I asked him for some top tips last night and it got back to me, in the eleventh hour, literally. HE apologised he only had time to share this link for me to read. https://www.jankeck.com/crickets-guide/ This linked PDF has really empowered my to feel confident about the 'how would you engage a very unengaged group?' question. Wish me luck. Thanks @Jan Keck

If you sell your services at market price, then you automatically position yourself as a commodity. Great facilitators should be so unique that their customers have no obvious reference point.A famous and talented Romanian singer told me the other days that he sometimes finds himself in awkward discussions about how much he charges for “just” 45 minutes. It got me thinking that the same goes for facilitation. Often, the client looks at the “man-days” that go into a project. But what if you can create a workshops design in “just” 3 hours because you have so much experience that it’s now easy for you to do that? And what if you can save your client a significant amount of money through a one-day workshop? Should you charge “man-days” with a fixed price? Whether you are a singer or a facilitator, if you find yourself in the position to explain why you charge X amount for your services, think about this:- The client doesn’t understand the value you are creating => make it obvious (ex. the stress and costs you eliminate, the time you save, the money you help them make etc)- The client doesn’t understand the process you go through to create that value => explain what goes into your work (knowledge, creativity, and time to think are the core pillars of the services world)- The client has chosen a wrong reference point for your services => discuss what you and only you can bring to the table, so it becomes obvious that your services are quite unique (the assumption being that they are 😎 )The conversation about value is an important one! And we should have it with our clients before we set the price of our services. Different projects = different value creation = different pricing.Would you pay The Rolling Stones the same as a basement band, for 45 minutes?Credits go to Adam Davidson who wrote an amazing book (The Passion Economy), that gave me a brand new pair of lenses 🤓

Hey FC'ers! Long-time admirer...first-time facilitator. Can anyone recommend specific workshop exercises for helping a senior leadership team align on its USPs (unique selling points), mission / vision statements, and value propositions? For context, the company in question (a medium sized advertising agency) is growing its clients and service offering extremely quickly. So quickly that it's becoming a different type of agency entirely. Aligning on these elements will be crucial during such immense change. Huge thanks in advance 👊🏼 JB

Hello! My company is putting on an"HR Roundtable" event in which we're inviting clients and prospective clients to an evening conversation around the future of leadership. It's very lightly facilitated (we want it to be community building and discussion-based) and not salesy. While we don't want anything too structured/facilitated we are trying to figure out how to end the event (it's 5-7pm) in a way that isn't just the CEO saying thanks for coming and people mingling as they leave. Any ideas for a casual/not highly structured way to close out that leave people feeling energized? Thank you!!

Hello lovely people! ☀️ Here is my very first playlist for workshopping sessions after completing the first part of the program 😊 I organised it so that the rhythms and tones would match different 4C phases, so we have divergent phases with dynamic tunes, encouraging ideation and production of information, then slowly transitioning to a more composed and slow phase for convergent thinking. The idea being that slower tunes encourage pausing and thinking for voting. Very curious to know what you guys think! Does that reflect how you like to work too? 🌟 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7fn7M3LZz351bEQpolnw2K?si=6vj5MqZVT5y9fKTvOGpqlg