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 hey Facilitators! I flipped through a couple of my old facilitation books the other day. It got me thinking about all the "pre-digital" resources and approaches out there, and how we might revisit and adapt them for our new hybrid now. One I turn to from time to time is called "The Essence of Facilitation: Being in Action in Groups" by Dale Hunter, Anne Bailey and Bill Taylor. It was published in 1999! Chapter 7 is called "Power-with" "Power and control issues lie at the heart of facilitation. You cannot get away from them. Facilitation is about releasing the group wisdom, and to do this requires every person in the group to be fully empowered and participating. Personal power, and power with others is essential for a powerful group." I agree! What do you think? Do you have books about facilitating in your collection that you turn to? What's on your shelves?

Hey Facilitators 👋 I'm compiling a list of the best resources for facilitators (free or paid) for potential future content, and I would like to ask you all if you have any recommendations. It could be books, materials, tools, blogs, podcasts, or communities. Any resources that you've come across that you find helpful as a Facilitator. I'd really appreciate your contributions to this post. Rebecca 💟

Hey Facilitators! I want to take a moment to express our gratitude for your dedication, collaboration, and enthusiasm in the Facilitator Club community. Your consistent engagement, insightful advice, and willingness to share your knowledge have been instrumental in nurturing the growth of the Facilitator Club. We are SUPPPPPPPER grateful for the amazing energy you bring to this community and can't thank you enough for your contributions. Huge shout-out to everyone on the leaderboard! 🥳 @Shannon Wagers @David Finnegan @David Newman @Jan Keck @Benedict Odjobo @LaYinka Sanni @Kerri Price @Msoo Mee @Brendon Cappelletti @Austin Govella @Tomoo Okubo @Shaul Nemtzov @Joao Ribeiro @Donna Benjamin @Will Stammers @Jeff Panning @Hassanein Ismail @Sam Pettersson

Andrew here! The new guy saying Hi! Originally from Sydney, now living in New York. My parents were refugees so i feel like i’m a long way from home. Glad to be here. Just wanted to reach out too, to see if anyone else is into story. I’ve realized with everything that’s happened so far that it’s what im trying to pursue, finding stories to tell, and helping guide them and then making my own. I was wondering if anyone else feels the same way or tries to incorporate storytelling (kind of a buzzword at the moment I know) into their communication and facilitation? So much of who I am revolves around Narrative Driven Decision Making. Whether that be operations, Marketing or Branding. I somehow find I’m always chasing the “why”? Why does this work the way it does? Why did they do that, so digging into the structure of the why, how stories shape decision making, and how stories scale to solve problems from the smallest to the biggest. I just recently found out I have Adult ADHD, which secretly at times has been the biggest curse but a superpower at times too. Obsession with patterns and why things work. So understanding what makes us tick, and how my brain and the brains of others make decisions this felt like home as soon as I saw it. I'm really excited to be part of this amazing community of facilitators. I'm here to connect, learn, and share whatever I can to help. Be great to hear how how has facilitation impacted your career or work, and what drew you everybody in? Or if anyone wants to talk shop about story too. I'm also a filmmaker, working on a podcast on decision making and a photographer. Looking forward to hearing your stories and connecting with you all!

Check out this lovely poster on the website of the Australian Facilitators Network! http://www.afn.net.au/2017%20AFN%20poster_fin.pdf It poses "questions we can ask ourselves as facilitators working with and between cultures" in 8 areas - Preparation - Purpose - Time - Process - Space - Deep listening - Language, history, and protocol - Awakeness/Awareness Some great prompts there for reflection and readiness.

To all the folks working in Corporate Innovation domain, just wanted to check from this elite group of facilitators - What kind of facilitation you have been doing majorly? It could be multiple items as well, but wanted to understand what's that 1 thing which you are passionate about and you do your best while facilitating 😊 Looking forward to see your responses !

I love running workshops. And I'm delighted to stumble my way into this club filled with other people who do too! I've been doing facilitation of one kind of another for a long time now. I'm based in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm on a mission to master Hybrid workshops. For work, I'm an engagement lead at Red Hat, and I'm currently the maintainer and product owner of the Open Practice Library I never really know what to write in these sorts of things. if you're curious, please just ask me questions here! 😊

I am currently facilitating a conceptual design process for my cross-functional team (Product, Engineering, Design, & Research). We just finished the second round of concept testing and I want to run an exercise to validate or invalidate the informed assumptions we formulated after the first round of testing (and applied to the concept). Does anyone have any suggestions or approaches you are aware of? For context: Everyone on the team has been taking notes during the sessions and we are affinitizing those notes to facilitate conversation. I was thinking of then giving everyone individual time to reflect on each item we want to validate, applying the affinitized data to their perspective. Then share and vote. I would love thoughts and feedback on this!

It's great to be accepted into this community. I look forward to learning from you all. Besides the Workshopper playbook, and Sprint. What are your favorite facilitator development resources? Also, is the paid Master Class provide the value worth the price of admission?

What are some of your favorite techniques or resources for creating effective visualizations in your work, and how do you use them to communicate complex ideas or data to others? I'm really interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on their favorite visualization techniques and resources. Personally, I'm a big fan of Bikablo techniques, which use a combination of simple drawings and text to create engaging and memorable visualizations.

Are also facilitators here who are freaking nervous and anxious before their meeting, session or workshop starts? Do you have any advise how to not freak out before? 😅 Although I would say I am always pretty good prepared and my sessions are running smoothly I get so anxious before, struggle with my imposter syndrome and expect the worst to happen. As soon as the meeting starts I get very calm and confident, so it is actually the time before which is really stressful for me although I really love what I do and I love the role of the facilitator.

Here's a blog post I wrote back in Jan with a follow up video I shared on LinkedIn. The intent of facilitation is to "make meetings easier." It's a people process that allows participants to focus on their goals, but there are three easy hacks anyone can make to have better meetings. The 1st hack - Agenda Have an agenda, ask all participants to agree to, or amend the agenda at the start of the meeting. Why? This gives everyone an opportunity to align their goals, and focus on the same desired outcome. The 2nd hack - Outcome Have a clear objective, or intended outcome for the meeting. Why? When everyone is clear on the purpose, they are less likely to get distracted, or derail the meeting. The 3rd hack - Good manners Explicitly invite people to attend, welcome them when they arrive, and thank them at the end for participating, and paying attention. Why? This gives everyone a sense of ceremony, and acknowledges the value of their time, and their presence as human beings. Bonus - action steps Ask everyone to agree to take an action step, and promise to hold each other accountable for taking action. Why? When people take action, they are more likely to feel the meeting was worth their time. When they hold each other accountable, they are more likely to collectively accomplish their goals.

Hi all, great to be here with all these inspired facilitators! Question for you - do you have experience of using whiteboards with clients who work in global companies with aggressive IT firewalls? If so, what do you use for post-it type exercises? My current client teams are on MS Teams :-) but the whiteboard seems really clunky. We used Miro the other day, but only those who were physically in the office could edit - seems like their VPN did not allow those working remotely to become editors of the board, despite al receiving the same link. My co-coach and I could not edit it either, perhaps because we were external to the client organisation. Often we've ended up sharing a powerpoint slide in edit mode and having a scribe edit it in realtime to collect ideas, agree on vision wording etc. Which works, but surely there's a better way . . So - if you are an external facilitator/coach working with a well--firewalled global organisation, have you found a workable solution? Would love to hear!! Thank you - have a great Wednesday. Annabelle

Hello everyone, my name is Blessed Usmanking, am new hear and looking forward to learning alot from you all. Thanks!!!