Facilitators Network Gathering

All facilitators,

The next facilitators' network gathering will be held in Sep 2008. Here are the details:

Date: 13 September 08 Saturday Time: 8:30am – 1:00pm
Place: Focus Conference Room,
#15-08, Sim Lim Towers, 10 Jalan Besar, Singapore 208787 (This is NOT Sim Lim Square!)

Registration website: http://www.fns.sg/

Fees:
Normal registration (deadline is 1 week before forum date or earlier):
Full-time tertiary students S$5.00
Others : S$10

After the registration deadline:
Full-time tertiary students : S$15
Others : S$15

Agenda:

8:30 am Arrivals & Registration

9:00 am Part 1 – Propless Games

10:30 am Tea Break & Networking

11:00 am Part 2 – Cafe Conversation on Games that work

12:30 pm Special Announcements

12:40 pm Closing Circle

1:00pm End of Session

Part 1 – Propless Games® - Have you ever been in a situation where you needed a simple ice-breaker before the start of a lesson or a quick energiser to "warm-up" the participants after lunch during a workshop, but have neither the idea nor the prop to do so. Allan will be sharing with you several propless ice-breakers, deinhibitisers, energisers and problem-solving games to help you to inject fun and excitement into your lessons, workshops and programmes.

Part 2 – In this segment, using the World Cafe approach; all participants will share their experiences in using games during workshops and the characteristics that make up a successful 'game'.

The Facilitators:

Part 1:

Allan Lee has been involved in the training and development related profession for the past 16 years. His other industry experiences include human resource management, organisational development, finance, marketing and business development. He is also currently the Associate Lecturer for the Republic Polytechnic for its Diploma in Outdoor and Adventure Learning. As a trainer, he has conducted and facilitated hundreds of courses and programmes. As a game specialist, he has written and published a game resource book called Propless Games®.

Part 2:

Prabu K Naidu is the co-founder of FNS and has 19 years of MNE experience (1980 – 1999) with Philips, AT&T and Compaq spanning diverse functions in Engineering, Materials, Project Management, TQM, HRD, Managing Change and Supply Chain Re-Engineering which set the foundation for his current ten years of training, facilitation and consulting work. Throughout these 10 years developing workshops and facilitated sessions; he has accumulated a wealth of what works and what does not when it comes to games & activities in the learning room.

If you are unable to register on-line please email our Forum administrator - Ms. Emily Ng at emilyng_fns@yahoo.com.sg Fee is payable at the door.

Once registered, the forum fee would be payable regardless of actual attendance. Cancellation or withdrawal is not permitted. We welcome replacement.

If you require directions, please log onto the following website to download the map of the venue.
http://sg.pagenation.com/sin/Sim%20Lim%20Tower_103.8545_1.3037.map

If you have enquires, please email our Forum Administrator - Ms. Emily Ng at emilyng_fns@yahoo.com.sg

Understanding the Facilitated - A Key Role of a Facilitator

As a facilitator, it is always good to find out more about the needs of your participants before you start the facilitated event. The information gathered is useful in designing the process of the workshop, creating the language of the facilitation and generating the questions-stems for the event.

I usually send out a pre-course survey to my participants and here is an extract of this survey that I use.

Learning Profile

1. Look at the words in the four red boxes in the diagram below. Please circle the box that best describes the way you learn.

Level of Emphasis

2. This 1-day workshop will cover issues related to your organisation’s vision, mission and values. Please read the three statements provided in the box below and rank them in running order according to their importance to you (the statement that is most important should be ranked 3 and least important as 1):

Learning Methodologies

3. A number of methods will be introduced to help you achieve the outcome mentioned above. Please look at the diagram below and circle your most preferred method.

Refreshments

4. We will be providing tea breaks. Our menu is provided below. Please tick off any two items you like included in the tea breaks for this workshop.

Measure of Success

5. Lastly, could you write a paragraph of not more than 30 words, in the box below, describing what you consider to be a successful facilitated session?

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 14 Aug 2008.

Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Consensus Workshop Method

The Consensus Workshop Method is the second most important facilitation process for any facilitator.

The method taps into the wisdom of the group and creates common ground among participants against a backdrop of diverse opinions, values and perspectives. The consensus reached at the workshop enables the group to forward its conversation.

The workshop embeds the question that seeks multiple, agreed-upon answers. For example, “What are the challenges you faced when dealing with customers?” At the end of the process, the facilitated group will have generated and considered a number of possible answers to the question and come to an agreement on several of them.

The five-step process begins by:

Creating the Question where Answers are Needed – This is a relatively complex process which may involve the person who activated you to facilitate the workshop. In the discussions with your ‘client’, you determine the purpose of the workshop and the expected outcome.

After the discussion, I discovered my ‘client’ wants to know the top three challenges his staff is facing when interacting with its customers. He wants to use this knowledge to acquire the most appropriate customer service training programme for his company of about 100 staff.

So, the question that needs answers is “What are the challenges you faced when dealing with customers?”.

Generating Answers for the Question – Here, the staff is invited to dig into their individual knowledge pool to provide answers for the question. There are many techniques that could be deployed to increase the efficiency of answer generation among the staff.

There are also rules of engagement for this step:

• This is an individual exercise
• Enter a answer on a slip of paper
• No debating or evaluating of answers
• Quantity is more important than quality

Gallery Walk – Next, the facilitator invites the workshop participants to look at the answers that are pasted on the wall. The objective of this step is to encourage them to create more answers by building on the answers of others. So, it is a good idea to ask them to bring along with them writing instruments and slips of papers when they begin on their gallery walk.Grouping Answers into Clusters – The facilitator lead the facilitated into the next step of the process by organising the participants into small teams and inviting them to group similar answers into clusters. Depending on the available time, two teams could be formed to do this part of the exercise.

Naming the Clusters – A third team is organised and tasked to analyse the groupings to create an agreed-upon header for each of the cluster. All the clusters have been named.

Voting to Reach a Consensus – voting is a decision-making tool that enables a group to sort through a long list of answers to identify priorities. This is an individual exercise and no discussion between participants about their vote is encouraged to ensure it takes on democratic and participative path. Because the delicate nature of this final step, the facilitator needs to identify some criteria to guide the vote so that people don't vote at cross purposes. The criteria used for deciding on the vote could include one or two (no more than two to avoid making the exercise complex):

• easiest items to complete
• lowest cost items
• first items in a logical sequence
• most important items
• most innovative items
• most important to the customer

The participants could vote more than once. This is a decision of the facilitator based on the number of clusters already identified.

At the end of the process, the facilitator leads the group into a conversation on the resolve of executing the next appropriate step.

Practice makes perfect. Good luck.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 14 Aug 2008.
Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Focused Conversation Method

The Focused Conversation Method is one of the most important facilitation processes for any facilitators. The process allows the facilitator maintain a conversational focus on a topic with the facilitated while personally remaining content-neutral throughout the facilitated session.

The method, which has four stages, progressively leads the facilitated into a new space of awareness, realisation, learning, and for commitment to action through participation. The method is most useful for causing the facilitated to commit to action without the facilitator coming across as being preachy or instructional to the facilitated.

The Focused Conversation Method has been introduced to many learning communities in many different forms, stages and jargons. However, the root to all these variations can be traced to one of the Institute of Cultural Affairs’ technologies for participation called ORID. ORID stands for:

• Objective Recall



• Reflective Consideration



• Interpretive Analysis



• Decisional Intent

The facilitator begins the session by asking questions to elicit data and information on what is known about the topic. The questions invite the facilitated to participate and share their initial reactions, past experiences, and associations linking other issues to the topic. Usually, the topic is embedded in a stimulus, like a video clip, role play, sound bite, newspaper cutting, or case study, which points the facilitated towards the topic to be discussed.

Following this, the facilitated are encouraged, again through questioning, to considerate the alternative ways to interpret all the information shared and heard, experiences collected, and associations uncovered to form some kind of personal or collective conclusion about the topic. In the process, they gain awareness, realisation and learning. Towards the end, the individual or group makes a decision about how they will respond to the topic.

Let me demonstrate the use of ORID

This is a training video I usually use when I talked about the source of creativity and innovation. Let’s us begin by taking some time watching this short video chip.

Objective Recall – The facilitator asks questions to help the facilitated recall information and details observed and heard from the video clip to re-create and form a collective memory about the event.

• What words or phrases do you recall from the video clip?



• What visual images do you remember?



• What did you observe?



• What did you heard?

Reflective Consideration – Here, the facilitator encourage the facilitated to share their emotional responses and thought associations about the experience they have with the video clip.

• What really frustrated you?



• What was the high-point for you?



• Which part of the video clip makes you excited?



• What do you remember about the reaction from the other participants?



• What past experiences do you recall as you watch the clip?

Interpretive Analysis – The facilitated now thinks about the meaning, value and impact of the issues presented in the event. The purpose is to allow them to put these into perspective.

• What message the video chip attempts to send to you?



• What was the greatest learning for you?



• What was the key insight for you?



• How would you acted differently with this information?

Decisional Intent – In this final step, group or individual conceives a response, in the forms of decisions and actions that are required, and their resolve to see to their implementation.

• What could you do tomorrow to demonstrate that you have internalised the learning gained today?



• What change is needed?



• With whom will you work with to demonstrate your learning?



• With whom will you share the learning gained today?

Preparations for executing ORID are important. Time is usually needed to identify a stimulus that is workable with the topic to be discussed.

In addition, the questions need be developed in advance. I normally create a template to store these questions, which I use to prompt me through the session.

Practice makes perfect. Good luck.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 14 Aug 2008.

Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Facilitation Practice Opportunties

Harris Interactive, a market rearch company, needs qualified female facilitators to moderate a series of Focus Group Discussions on beauty and skincare products.

The details are as follows:

Date 26th and 27th of August 2008.
Time: 6pm to 10pm.

Please email Venu Reddy directly at vreddy@harrisinteractive.com if you are keen.

Good luck!