A couple of things

2 minute read

I recently did a couple of days training in creative facilitation for a lovely group at the University of Suffolk.

I love sharing facilitation as a practice and a performance, and the conversations with the group got me thinking about the ways my own practice is changing.

Here are a couple of things I shared at the training that feel like they still have a lot of mileage in them.

A network model of meeting
I learned this idea from Johnnie Moore and Viv McWaters and it has been a game changer for me.

Lots of meetings, workshops and conferences control the flow of communication by using ‘one-to-many’ formats like presentations and panel discussions but these limit the interaction between people, and in the worst cases are non-participatory.

I favour using ‘any-to-any’ distributed formats that foster intelligent networks in the room as they bring meetings to life by getting people moving, talking and making their own decisions.

I’m often amazed at what people can do when given the chance to interact as an intelligent network (instead of yet-another-presentation).

The creative heartbeat
I find that the creative heartbeat is an endlessly useful idea that helps me to be deliberate about designing phases of activity that are either divergent (opening up/exploring) or convergent (focusing/judging).

I compared these phases to the accelerator and the brake pedal in a car. When you are driving you use these pedals alternately – not together. And yet we muddy our thinking by trying to do both at the same time.

So when you want to encourage curiosity and creativity it helps to be clear about whether we are diverging (inviting ideas, invention, imagination) or converging (inviting judgement and decisions).

I learned so much from this group and I’m especially interested in following up on how to measure the impact of workshops and events over a period of time (not just immediate feedback). I’ve always found this hard (OK, impossible) so if anyone has any ideas on how to do this I’d be glad to hear them.

In-house training
I run this training for in-house groups who want to bring their meetings to life. If that sounds like it might be interesting, drop me a line.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

A few more ideas