FACILITATION SKILLS. Jump into... A short guide on delivering facilitation skills to young people.

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1 Jump into... FACILITATION SKILLS A short guide on delivering facilitation skills to young people. Registered Charity No

2 The information and activities in the Jump in to booklets are a combination of resources that have been collated and used by youth work staff at Focus Charity over the last 25 years. Activities included here are from discussions with young people as to the most effective activities and learning they have gained as a result of participating on the Explore Leadership Programme. This collection of experiential learning activities have enabled groups of young people with Focus Charity to not only develop their skills in leadership, communication, team work etc but has also raised their self-confidence, self-esteem and their physical, mental and emotional well-being. To fully utilise this booklet, please use in combination with our other Jump into booklets. Keep a look out for our other Jump into booklets.

3 What is facilitation? Facilitation is the process where a facilitator guides its group members in meeting to share ideas, opinions, experiences, and expertise in order to achieve a common goal and agree an action plan. The importance of facilitation skills: Focuses on a higher level of thinking and planning. A process to discover the wisdom of your team. Enables a group to come up with ideas, experience, and advice. Develops a higher level of commitment. Develops people skills. Basic skills of facilitation. Making everyone feel comfortable and valued. Encouraging participation. Preventing and managing conflict. Listening and observing. Guiding the group. Ensuring quality decisions. Ensuring outcome-based meetings.

4 Stages of group development. The inner workings of every group tend to vary; that is except for the stages of group dynamics. Where project planning, communication, conflict resolution strategies or member roles vary from group to group, every group goes through the same five stages: Forming, Norming, Storming, Performing and Adjourning. Dr. Bruce Tuckman in 1970 Understanding this model can help you to lead, manage and facilitate teams and work groups more effectively. Some group leaders find the stages uncomfortable they can be challenging to handle. Some stages seem slow and a waste of precious work time. But going through them means that a more cohesive and efficient working group is formed a group that allows everyone to contribute their best! A skilled facilitator can observe the stages happening and help the process along. That means you get the best outcome for all in the least time.

5 Facilitator skills and tips Here are a few points to remember that will help to maximize your role as a facilitator: 1. Don t memorize a script Even with a well-prepared agenda and key points you must make, you need to be flexible and natural. If people sense that you are reading memorized lines, they will feel like they are being talked down to, and won t respond freely. 2. Watch the group s body language Are people shifting in their seats? Are they bored? Tired? Looking confused? If folks seem restless or in a haze, you may need to take a break, or speed up or slow down the pace of the meeting. And if you see confused looks on too many faces, you may need to stop and check in with the group, to make sure that everyone knows where you are in the agenda and that the group is with you. 3. Always check back with the group Be careful about deciding where the meeting should go. Check back after each major part of the process to see if there are questions and that everyone understands and agrees with decisions that were made. 4. Summarize and pause When you finish a point or a part of the meeting process, sum up what was done and decided, and pause for questions and comments before moving on. Learn to feel out how long to pause -- too short, and people don t really have time to ask questions; too long, and folks will start to get uncomfortable from the silence. 5. Be aware of your own behavior Take a break to calm down if you feel nervous or are losing control. Watch that you re not repeating yourself, saying ah between each word, or speaking too fast. Watch your voice and physical manner. (Are you standing too close to folks so they feel intimidated, making eye contact so people feel engaged?) How you act makes an impact on how participants feel. 6. Occupy your hands Hold onto a marker, chalk, or the back of a chair. Don t play with the change in your pocket! 7. Watch your speech Be careful you are not offending or alienating anyone in the group. Use swear words at your own risk! 8. Use body language of our own Using body language to control the dynamics in the room can be a great tool. Moving up close to a shy, quiet participant and asking them to speak may make them feel more willing, because they can look at you instead of the big group and feel less intimidated. Also, walking around engages people in the process. Don t just stand in front of the room for the entire meeting. 9. Don t talk to the newsprint, blackboard or walls--they can t talk back! 10. Always wait until you have stopped writing and are facing the group to talk.

6 Good ground rules for facilitating Most meetings have some kind of operating rules. When you want the participation to flow and for the group to really feel invested in following the rules, the best way to go is to have the group develop them as one of the first steps in the process. This builds a sense of power in the participants ( Hey, she isn t telling us how to act. It s up to us to figure out what we think is important! ) and a much greater sense of investment in following the rules. Common ground rules are: One person speaks at a time Raise your hand if you have something to say Listen to what other people are saying No mocking or attacking other people s ideas Be on time coming back from breaks (if it s a long meeting) Respect each other A process to develop ground rules is: Begin by telling the group that you want to set up some ground rules that everyone will follow as we go through our meeting. Put a blank sheet of fliupchart paper on the wall with the heading Ground Rules. Ask for any suggestions from the group. If no one says anything, start by putting one up yourself. That usually starts people off. Write any suggestions up on the flipchart paper. It s usually most effective to check -in with the whole group before you write up an idea (e.g. John suggested raising our hands if we have something to say. Is that O.K. with everyone? ) Once you have 5 or 6 good rules up, check to see if anyone else has other suggestions. When you are finished, ask the group if they agree with these Ground Rules and are willing to follow them. Make sure you getthe group to actually say Yes out loud. It makes a difference!

7 The Affinity Process Is it ever a bad thing to have too many ideas? Probably not, but if you ve ever experienced information overload or struggled to know where to begin with a wealth of data you ve been given, you may have wondered how you can use all of these ideas effectively. When there s lots of stuff coming at you, it is hard to sort through everything and organize the information in a way that makes sense and helps you make decisions. Whether you re brainstorming ideas, trying to solve a problem or analyzing a situation, when you are dealing with lots of information from a variety of sources, you can end up spending a huge amount of time trying to assimilate all the little bits and pieces. Rather than letting the disjointed information get the better of you, you can use an affinity diagram to help you organize it. Affinity Process Theme 1 Theme 2 Theme 3 Affinity diagrams can be used to: Draw out common themes from a large amount of information Discover previously unseen connections between various ideas or information Brainstorm root causes and solutions to a problem Because many decision-making exercises begin with brainstorming, this is one of the most common applications of affinity diagrams. After a brainstorming session there are usually pages of ideas. These won t have been censored or edited in any way, many of them will be very similar, and many will also be closely related to others in a variety of ways. What an affinity diagram does is start to group the ideas into themes. From the chaos of the randomly generated ideas comes an insight into the common threads that link groups of them together. From there the solution or best idea often emerges quite naturally. Affinity diagrams are not the domain of brainstorming alone though. They can be used in any situation where: The solution is not readily apparent You want to reach a consensus or decision and have a lot of variables to consider, concepts to discuss, ideas to connect, or opinions to incorporate There is a large volume of information to sort through

8 Energizers and basic games for facilitators The shakedown In a circle, everyone shakes out their left arm, right arm, left leg then right leg, starting with 16 times for each limb, then repeats all four limbs with 8, 4, 2, and then 1. Count out loud for full effect counting in other languages encouraged! Short meditation Everyone is invited to take a minute of deep breaths with their eyes closed. The big wind blows Create a circle of chairs with one less chair than the number of participants in the room. One person starts in the middle and gives a prompt such as the big wind blow for anyone who speaks more than one language at which point everyone who is multilingual has to leave their seat and find a new seat, leaving a new person in the middle. This is a good game to recognize diversity in a fun and safe way. Lifeboat Lifeboat is similar to big wind blows you have the group mingle around and then prompt them to get into lifeboats with people who have the same number of siblings, speak the same number of languages, have the same favorite color, etc. The last group to form is out. Yes Lets Walking around, people take turns calling out what they want people to do Lets climb a tree then everyone says Yes lets! and pretends to climb a tree. Mirrors In pairs people mirror each other, then switch leaders. Party guest Someone is hosting a party, everyone else is a guest at the party with a secret identity/ occupation that the host has to guess. Birthday lineup Ask the group to line themselves up in the order of their birthday (or height, for example) without speaking. Systems game Walking around a designated space (room, field), everyone secretly chooses two people, and try to remain exactly in between both of them the ensuing organized chaos can be a good analogy to the organized chaos of interdependent living systems!

9 Using an agenda and taking minutes It can be all too easy to begin complicating meetings with lots of forms and lots of writing, to track what people have said, when and whether there is something that needs to be done in response. If you are facilitating a group of young people, just keep it simple. Merge both your agenda, minute taking and targets together for ease of distribution. For example; Group Attendees Youth Action Team John Doe, Jane Doe, Mickey Mouse, etc Date 6th October 2014 Time 5pm-7pm Location Focus Charity, Church Gate, Leicester Item No. Item Notes To do/targets Recruiting peer mentors for the next Explore Leadership programme. Advertising places for young people to be part of the next Explore Leadership Residential. Leicester Day event. Date, time and location of next meeting John spoke of 3 places available for peer mentor training and for those recruited to go on the next Explore Leadership Programme. Jane has begun advertising places for the next residential training. She has approached 2 schools to go and run a recruitment campaign. Mickey talked to the group about Leicester Day. It is on 31st October in the market. 13th October, 5pm-7pm at Focus Charity. John to send out adverts to volunteers by 10th October. Jane to confirm a date for this and prepare a stall by 7th October. All - Find out who wants to rep at the event and begin to plan the event stall by next meeting. Reviewing the minutes and targets Ensure that you bring the previous agenda notes and targets to the next meeting and allow adequate time to review and approve minutes and to follow up on the targets.

10 Things to consider whilst you are facilitating a meeting Guiding the group Delegate a timekeeper. Refer back to the meeting objectives and agenda. Stray from the agenda when necessary. Challenge their assumption. Encourage them to go beyond (creative tension) and think outside the box. Instill the concept of Effectiveness. Instill the concept of Initiative. Ask them about short term, long term and milestone goals/targets. Ensure quality decisions Remind the group of decision deadlines. Review criteria and supporting information. Review the decision-making process. Poll the group before major decisions. Review the decision. Ensure commitment to action Review objectives for each agenda item. Record decisions. Develop an action plan. Ensure the team leader follow up.

11 Registered Charity No Focus Charity 73 Church Gate Leicester LE1 3AN T: F: E: