Hey there! 👋 Facilitator Club is THE community for Facilitators or those who want to learn the skill of facilitation, where you can… ✅ Talk about facilitation and workshops (like the Design Sprint!) ✅ Talk about facilitation careers and how to build one (and make $$$ as a Facilitator!) ✅ Share workshop/facilitation insights, experiences, and resources ✅ Ask the AJ&Smart team questions about facilitation & workshops! These documents contain important information about the group rules and getting the most out of this community, so please read through everything before you get started! 👇👇👇 👮‍♀️ Group rules 🚨 💃 How to get the most out of the Facilitator Club community 🕺 Really happy to have you here, hope you love the community as much as we do! Lots of love, The AJ&Smart team 💛

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! Just thought this might be a useful tip/warning for those of you using Chat GPT a lot: It's pretty easy to tell when someone's using it! I see a few posts here in the community which I'm 100% sure were "generated" and they not only lack any sort of personality, but they also get no engagement. As in, nobody replies to them, they just take up space. The same thing will happen if you email people/clients, create posts on Linkedin etc. They won't respond. Believe me, I get 50 messages a day on Linkedin trying to sell me stuff/get a job and I can always tell when they are Chat GTP generated. You're writing needs to have some personality and authenticity for people to care enough to interact with it. Sure, I get it, if you're non-native English speaking, it's super helpful to be able to use something like this... but to be honest, I think it's better to just write how you write and then use Google Translate. So yeah, just a note to those using it as a "silver bullet". It's very obvious, it's not enjoyable to read and it can make you come across as being very dull. Cheers, Jonathan

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?

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?

Hola a tod@s! I am really excited to be a part of this awesome community, not only as a "taker" but also as a "giver" since I am a seasoned facilitator with lots of experience and tools & frameworks under my belt (Design Sprint, Design Sprint 2.0, Design Sprint 3.0...), that I am more than willing to share with others. What I am looking here? - Meeting and getting to know like minded awesome people that are over average interested and almost obsessed in facilitation as a craft, art and science. - A safe place for inspiration, support, help, interaction and collaboration with each other - Share professional expertise, experiences and "best-practices" - Have tons of fun and laughter - Do crazy stuff together - Being the best facilitator and workshopper that I can be Who I am? I am a Spanish guy (Barcelona) that is living and working in Norway. I am married with my lovely wife Aru from Kazakhstan, and together we have 3 kids: Pau who is 6 years old, Emil who is 5 and Adal who is 3 months.... so it is kind of crazy right now in our place 😜🤯🤩😍😤🤪 Looking forward to getting to know you all, being inspired and being of service of this community.

What are some of the best certification courses (internationally accredited) for Facilitators ? I see there are lot of International Coaching related, but specifically to be recognised as facilitator what do you recommend? Also, mention the benefits if you really feel it's mandatory to take it up for persuing full time career or bring you great credibility.

Hi everyone, I am French, located in Munich DE (2/3), and Grenoble FR (1/3). I started doing facilitation as a UX lead and migrated to workshop creation and facilitation also bringing change management and innovation into the picture. I am currently interested in visual practices like scribing https://www.u-school.org/visual-practice#vp-programs (from Theory U) and how it relates to workshop facilitation. Are there any visual facilitators in the group? I have no scribing experience but I used to draw a lot during boring meetings, so I think I should give this a try 😁 Looking forward to interacting with the group.

Could we share our best moment for facilitation. Once I supposed to drsign and run 2 hours workshop for 300 participants about corporate values, the time was limited and I was very busy preparing for another training, here how my design went: 1. I started with an ice breake, igrouped them into trios and I used the cmon game 2 lies and 1 truth since integrity is one of the values, I used it as a transition to the main workshop, even a simple lie people detect you, what about major things at the workplace. 2. I went through quick review of their values through direct facilitation with interaction with the audience, concluded that with a video explaining the values again. 3. I invited a guest speaker psychologist who shared an interesting session about belief system, the interaction between ideas, emotions and behaviors. 4. I used kahoot game using the meaning of their values, since they are too many, every pairs or trios will log in as a team, it was super exciting session to recap what they could retain from their understanding of the values 5. Last activity, made 8 groups and each will have to write a poem, add lyric and practice in order to perform on stage, it was super creative and amazing, my secret I'll be moving around in order to sequence their performance, the one that seems best ll perform last and vice versa, definitely there are some surprises. 6. Closed with prizes for winners during the different activities and wrap up session.

I would love to open an overview list for worldwide facilitation and facilitation related events and gatherings. A dear friend an colleague invited me to a beautiful opportunity to surrender into playfulness this weekend at https://play14.org – a facilitation-related movement/franchise piece/micro TED for facilitators, this time in Berlin. It was inspiring, refreshing, uplifting and energising, especially as there were a lot of cross-industry and cross-institutional fans of PLAY! Play14 happened irregularly across major European cities but is open for anyone to host along their guidelines – it was held as an Open Space. Fifty people played, exchanged, observed, promoted, tested and had fun while learning. Which events and event series of comparable kinds do you know?

Any ideas on how to facilitate business continuing sessions and providing some tools for participants, we may have weak internet.

During one of my team building programs, a very exciting participant wasn't satisfied about the result and she argued loudly and aggressively demanding extra points for her team, and this is the moment for us as facilitators to show our strength and wisdom, it was very tough moments for me, how to handle it, because if I let it go it ll ruin the whole program, I changed the debriefing around that point and linked it with the objectives of the game and involved her at the discussion along the way several times, later I had a conversation with the manager who were attending, she told me that I was watching and waiting for you to handle it :) - Have you eve faced a vert tough participant or similar situation ? - How you handled the situation, or what tools you used?

If you're looking for a new way to do group introductions, check out my all-time favourite activity in the slideshow I probably spent way to much designing today 😄 As someone who loves deep conversations and hates small talk, this activity keeps things interesting not only for the participants but also for myself. I feel like I am learning so much from the types of questions someone asks. I've included some of my favourite questions I have used and heard from the participants in my workshops and trainings below. What are your favourites? PS: I prefer calling this an #icemelter, but in case anyone is searching for #icebreakers later, I'll include this in the post as well 🤣

Would love to hear from anyone involved in Design Thinking and how you apply it to facilitation. Curious also about the resources you have access to, courses you've learned from and any DT community you may be a part of (I myself am a part of IxDF). Do share!

Hi workshoppers, I am looking for L&D role as I need to flee the country due to the war, if you could spot any opportunities around or through your network please let me know, thank you in advance :)