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!

One of the great things about what we do is you can do it as an employee or go out and become your own company. Whilst the later comes with amazing benefits there are a lot of areas that need to be considers… Like - What does it take to set myself up as a business or do I just contract in. - If I am setting myself up as a business am I a sole trader.. registering by business - Defining your purpose and setting clear goals yearly, quarterly - Defining your target customers, products, services and financials. Whilst this is a passion space for a lot of us, you still need to understand your revenue needs. - Branding and marketing - What do you need to set yourself up… physically, technology - Contracts for engagements - How to build a pipeline, managing you customer base Making sure you get work life balance! Would be interested in hearing and learning from each other on what made sense for you and what you would like to share with the rest of the community…

Hey everyone, is there a way that participants in different breakout rooms can all work on the same whiteboard? EG Zoom Whiteboard while in Zoom breakout rooms? I can only see the option of working in separate whiteboards in each breakout room. Trying to have everything in the same app - eg not having to bring in Miro - possible? Thank you all

My absolute favourite icebreaker is called draw a duck, it’s as simple as it sounds. 🦆 1️⃣ Give everyone post-its and a sharpie 2️⃣ Give them 60 seconds to draw a duck 3️⃣ Have them all put their ducks on the whiteboard 4️⃣ Briefly review your ducks as a group. That’s it. I love it because it’s a quick and effective way to inject a bit of fun into the start of the workshop. Plus, it lowers the bar for visualising ideas later, showing that ability to draw doesn’t matter. Want to practice? Grab a post-it and drop a picture of your duck in the comments, then tag someone in Faciltiator club do the same! 🦆 I'll start us off in the comments! 👇

As I do research on the topic of facilitating and consider what I do I have had to ask myself this question, "What is the difference between a facilitator and a trainer." What am I doing that is any different from what I did as a NCO in the Army or as a minister. My job title is facilitator yet I am not called in by any company or organization to sit with a board of people to work through an issue or a project to help find a solution to what they are dealing with. I enter rehab centers and correction facilities to conduct classes that help our clients change their life.

Hey everyone, what's your 'go to' workshops to support change to new operating models and org structures? In this situation, there are no job losses - it's a strategic repositioning. There's 2-3 months to design and implement a series of facilitated workshops to support the change. It's somewhat a blank page on what needs to be done from sharing a deeper understanding of this change to roles, responsibilities and reporting arrangements to ways of working amongst all teams and management levels to new process design.

Helloooo Facilitators 👋 This is a question that comes up A LOT and I would love to hear your answers to it. What's the value of Facilitation? In other words, why do teams need Facilitation/Facilitators? It's so important to be able to answer this question because it will help you convince potential clients of the value you can add to their teams as a Facilitator. Leave your answers in the comments. Looking forward to getting a discussion going on this. Rebecca 💟

Hey Facilitators, I would like to hear your opinion. 3hrs online workshop 200+ attendees (corpo client) with a "basic level of knowledge" Goal: - To Embrace DT as a problem-solving tool that attendees can apply - To experience DT through exercises in a limited amount of time.  (To show ---------- To explain and put theoretical knowledge about DT is clear. Question: What do you think is the best exercise to experience DT (90min max)? - I was thinking about the Stanford model to work in pairs in breakout rooms. - I was also thinking to go with LDJ - but it's risky (need to "onboard" multiple facilitators inside groups) What exercise would you choose?

Hi all, just wanted to connect here with any facilitators working in or originating from this part of the world. Sharing, collaborating, and learning from one another is great here but facilitators who may share similar time zones may also face many similarities and challenges that are unique. And we are here to find out. Anyone from a different timezone is also welcome to share and learn together.

Hi Facilitators 👋 Has anyone heard of Concurrent Design yet? And has anybody got experience with facilitating Concurrent Design Sessions? Especially within a CDF (concurrent design facility). I would really love to chat about this topic with you.

I'm curious. How many of you offer/provide coaching following on from workshops? My observation has been that workshops (training) get people energised and excited, but the effect drops off fairly quickly without support following on (typically coaching)?

How often have you led a workshop or session, and found it difficult to keep everyone engaged? 😵‍💫​ Next week, I am hosting a free workshop on Butter.us - a very cool virtual meeting platform that is built for facilitators and has lots of cool engagement tools, plus you can build your agenda right inside the platform. I am excited to share my step-by-step methodology ("The Engagement Spiral") to make the most of every voice in the room, ensuring that even the quietest participants feel heard and valued. This balances the voices of all participants, ensuring that loud participants don't take over the meeting, while also helping shy participants find their voice.​ By the end of the workshop, you’ll know how to create a space where everyone feels invited to share their ideas and perspectives, leading to a more productive, inclusive and engaging experience for all. In this session you'll learn:​ 🤩 Different methods to encourage participation and engagement from all participants.​ ✨ How to balance the voices of all participants, making sure that no one takes over the meeting and even introverted participants feel seen, heard and valued. I'd love to see some familiar facilitators from our club there 😄 You can register for free here: https://lu.ma/ButterMixer46 And if you can't make it, I am hosting a couple more events and workshops this month. I just posted about them on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jankeck_join-me-for-these-free-learning-opportunities-activity-7028715350359732224-oWRK

So, here is the story about how I created an intro video without actually creating a video using free AI tools available on the net. I asked ChatGPT to write a video script based on an article in my blog. Technically I copy/pasted the article and gave specific instructions about what is the purpose and how do I want it. Then I asked it to adjust the script for a video below 1 minute. With a little bit of back and forth communication, we agreed what to keep and what to remove! Next, I used Colossyan as a text to speech tool. It even creates a speaking persona but I preferred to keep the audio since the character doesn't look so natural. (I believe it will soon enough!) Finally, I took the script to Lumen and asked it to create a video while I added the audio instead of the background music. And boom! Here is the result so what ya'll think?

What’s your best advice for tools, techniques and sessions to run for a process improvement workshop? My colleague and I have a half day workshop coming up for around 10 people, all from the same team, all looking to walk away with an agreed process, built from pieces of their individual knowledge and experience. We have some work to do to set expectations that we may not reach an agreed version, that’s manageable, but how do we best formulate a workshop to facilitate process improvement? Thanks all.

I realized that I never did a formal introduction, so here we go! I'm Sam and recently started my own solo consultancy focusing on facilitation for product, service, and strategy development. Previously I have worked in production development and industrial design engineering, I am based in Luleå (in the sub-artic part of Sweden🏂). I discovered Aj&Smart due to their youtube channel being written as a reference along with sprint stories on a whiteboard at university that the instructor had not erased after some lecture in the distant past (2018) and I have been devouring their content and guidance ever since.

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.

Hi there, planning a massive sprint campaign for my business in Nigeria. Currently sending out proposals public and private organizations; and collating contacts and all. Any tips and collaborators out there? Would love to here from you.

Hi everyone! One of the things we do in the WorkShopper Master Skool community is that new members introduce themselves. This is a great way of getting to know others and to find people with similar interests and challenges. I hope we can do this same in the Facilitator Club. For me, my background is in Information Technology as various positions like IT Manager, Senior Project Manager, Scrum Master, etc. I've been facilitating as part of my role for a long time, but decided to up my game in 2022 and joined the WorkShopper Master program from AJ&Smart. If you want to learn how to facilitate for any audience on any subject, I would encourage you to check out WM. Along with outstanding training and coaching calls, the community of people is so supportive and encouraging. I love it there. The reason I joined this community is to continue to learn from others, support all of you, seek input from you on my challenges, and to hopefully grow more professional connections to my network. I work full time for an engineering company as a senior project manager/scrum master and have a side gig for training & consulting focused on helping project managers learn more about how facilitation can help them be more successful.

How I could buy Design Sprint Process book?

AJ&Smart.. How cool is this?! I'm already excited to go climb the ladder and see what else you have in store for us. I do hope there's more 😏 My hopes are high. Very high.

The level and quality of engagement is insane and still only week 1. Like most, I'm a member of various communities and there is nowhere near this level of engagement - gaining so much value from the exchanges 💪🎉

Do you facilitate anything or are you specialised in some particular kind of workshop or event? What kind of events do you facilitate? What would you say if someone would ask you the following: " I see in your LinkedIn profile that you are a facilitator. Umm.... interesting. What do actually do by the way? In which situations would I be needing your facilitation services?"

Closing date is 3 February - roles are advertised as worldwide though elements of IAEA are in Vienna. Interesting part about this is the description of the purpose of the role ... even if the day rate is low it sounds like a clever use of a Facilitator. First time I've seen such a role for facilitators in direct support of management - seems almost like a 'business partner' role At the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), we are looking to create a talent pool of Facilitators to support the development of IAEA managers and leaders. As a Facilitator, you will use your facilitation skills to support the Agency and its managers to design and deliver team-based activities in areas such as team development, performance management, leadership and change management. In addition, you will address specific work unit needs and deliverables, generate ownership, and motivate all managers to bring enthusiasm and priority to management and technical issues. https://iaea.taleo.net/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?job=PIP-MTHR-003&tz=GMT+00:00&tzname=UTC

Hey everyone, super pleased to be here in what is already an obviously amazing place to share and learn all things facilitation. I'm interested in the non-technology factors and the role of facilitation for successful digital transformation - digital ambition, vision, capabilities and maturity, team skills and culture. Happy to exchange experiences and ideas on any of these.