55 Guidelines for group facilitation
- Start the meeting in the group chat you are facilitating.
- Activity: Help participants introduce themselves (You can use the Photo Walk activity and invite participants to talk about their photos without judgement).
- Agree with the group how you will be working together and principles of respectful behaviour (housekeeping rules, code of conduct, etc.)
- Introduce the scenario.
- Help participants to make connection to the scenario and identify the dimension they want to solve.
- Ask participants to consider the learning outcomes they hope to achieve.
- Each day, signpost how the FISh model is used. Day 1 is ‘Focus’, Day 2 is ‘Investigate’ and Day 3 is ‘Share’ solutions.
- Start each day in groups: Recap of what happened the previous day so that participants are up to speed with developments (if someone misses a session, they need to know this).
- Use questions and prompts to spark discussion.
- Help participants identify resources for problem solving (brainstorming techniques, lenses activity, double diamond, etc.)
- Remind participants that they can use what they learnt in the workshop session about problem-solving, creativity and power asymmetries to help them solve the challenge.
- If there is conflict, help participants to navigate around it and ask them to move to a new task.
- If participants have specific questions that you can’t resolve, post these in the hidden channel so that other facilitators and organisers can help.
- Ask the participants how long they want to stay in the meeting – it is up to them to decide. We offer them up to two hours of facilitated time and this should be made clear to them in the first group session.
- Notify participants that they can decide if they want to meet independently outside of the scheduled time spent in their channel (without facilitators being present), and if they want to do work on their own.
- Help participants develop the creative prototype of the solution, post photos and description on the Padlet with the solution outputs, and select one person to pitch it in the final session.
- Make sure there is a representative from the group in the final pitching session, and that they record the feedback from the panel using the Padlet.
- Respect the timings – know how to progress to the next task in each group session so that the participants make progress/complete specific items that need to have happened at specific times.
- If you need any help or are unclear about how to deal with a specific situation, reach out via the Facilitators’ hidden/backchannel in Teams.
