Group Dynamics and Facilitation

Using the Knowledge to Design the Facilitation Process

After writing about the Facilitation Star and Facilitation Competency Wheel and putting them onto my blog, several facilitators had asked me about the things they should be mindful of when putting together the facilitation process for a facilitated event.

I had suggested the need of finding out from the participants about their learning profiles. While this is a piece of good information, facilitators need to know more. Our understanding of group dynamics is useful.

What is group dynamics? This is a branch of social psychology that studies the psychodynamics of a social group.

Amongst social scientists who had studied group dynamics, Dr Bruce Tuckman's model of Team Development provides a good framework in helping us comprehend the impact of a team's growth and maturity has on the psyche and psychodynamics of its members.

According to Tuckman, he believes that one of the four stages teams have to go through before delivering high performance is the storming phase.

Watch this video clip and try answering the following questions:

• Who was leading?
• With whom were they aligning themselves with?
• Who was playing the ‘credential’ game?
• Who was competing based on his own personal agenda?
• Who had fought?
• Who had taken flight?

Some teams are stuck in the storming stage for a long time and many never pass it, which eventually cause them to be reconstituted or disbanded. As faciltiators, we must be aware of the stage the team is currently at and apply the most appropriate facilitation process to the participants we are facilitating.

I have create a set of slides on group dynamics and their impact on facilitation.

Group Dynamics and Facilitation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design processes)

In these slides, I have introduced a design guide, which facilitators could use to shape their thoughts when they develop their facilitation methodologies. Facilitators must attempt to discourage disruptive behaviours and conflicts brought about during the earlier stages of the team's development and towards the later stages of its growth we must be careful not to let the groupthink gets in the way.

I have also suggested the psyches team members could experience at each stage of their growth. These may be good indicators for detecting and determining the position of the team.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 9 Nov 2008.
Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Invitation to the 26th FNS Forum

Dear facilitators in Singapore,

You are invited to the 26th FNS Forum and the details are as follows:

Date: 15 Nov 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!)

Fees:

Normal registration 1 week before forum date or earlier:

Full-time tertiary students S$5.00
Others : S$10

Late rate after registration deadline:
Full-time tertiary students : S$15
Others : S$15

Agenda:

8:30 am Arrivals & Registration

9:00 am Part 1 – Introduction to AI

10:30 am Tea Break & Networking

11:00 am Part 2 – Continue on AI

12:30 pm Special Announcements

12:40 pm Closing Circle

1:00pm End of Session

About the Session

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a process tool that forges a positive path for change. Deliberately starting away from a problem-solving focus and its deficit-based discourse, AI brings individuals and groups to discover their positive core; elements which are life-giving and sustaining. This positive core in turn informs and directs energy towards an affirmative topic; the focus of the change effort, which no longer is framed in 'problem' terms. About 20 years old, AI is growing in popularity as a change process. In the context of an Appreciative Inquiry of their own facilitation practice, participants at the November FNS Forum will experience for themselves AI's 4 stages of Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny, and place themselves on a positive path for change.

The Facilitators

This session will be co-facilitated by Fiona O'Shaughnessy, Noel E K Tan and Denise Wright

Fiona O'Shaughnessy is a Singapore-based Trainer and Facilitator. Some of the client projects she has recently used Appreciative Inquiry for include: a planning meeting for the Executive Committee of a charity who wanted to review their vision and strategic thrusts; an A*Star Institute who needed to implement major organisational structural change; and a regional customer service management team who wanted to review progress at the beginning of their annual regional team meeting.

Noel Tan is a recovering idealist and philosopher. In recent months, he has used AI in such settings: with a not-for-profit group seeking to chart a change strategy to improve its core services, with an educational institution seeking integration of existing stove-pipe divisions into a larger collective identity, and with a group of middle managers in a public service organisation articulating common hopes and dreams about impending organisational change.

Denise Wright works with organizations, teams and individuals across Asia and beyond to facilitate leadership, team and organizational development and inspired, positive change. She brings a true passion for her work, a stretching and supportive solutions-focused approach and 18 years of rich Asia based global corporate experience. Her area of expertise includes Leadership Development, Team Learning & Development, Team Coaching plus Peer / Group Coaching, Career Planning and Transition, Systemic Coaching & Mentoring, Change Solutions-Leading in challenging situations, Solutions Focused Strategy and Organizational Development-building new levels of organizational purpose, vision and contribution.

Register on-line at www.fns.sg

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 enquiries, please email our Forum Administrator - Ms. Emily Ng at emilyng_fns@yahoo.com.sg.

SFC 2008 - Pre & Post Conference Workshops

Singapore Facilitators Conference 2008 12 & 13 Nov 08

"Rainbow of Facilitation"

BENEFITS
CREATE different experiences
ACQUIRE processes + techniques + methods + tools
USE processes + techniques + methods + tools in practical way
COMPEL people into action
STRENGTHEN relationships
PROMOTE learning + collaboration

140 Registrants so far!

Gate closes on 31 October 2008!

Please book now to secure your workshops!

Here are more details of the pre and post conference workshops:

P1 - Learning to work with complexity, seeing what we cannot see by Ms Sheila Damodaran

Have clarity of some of the tools of Learning Organization. See life examples of the tools in organizational contexts Internalizing the understanding the tools in learning to apply it themselves. Seeing the shifts in the ways one may think and seeing its impact on what does. 3-legged stool. Framework of the 60 tools. Structural Tension Model. Systems Thinking building blocks - Reinforcing / Balancing Loops. The 11 Laws of complexity. Case-study work. Introduction to the legs of Mental Models & Personal Mastery.

P2 - Creating a Rainbow of Service by Ms. Audrey Goh

"Some where over the rainbow, skies are blue, & the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true!" ~ brace yourselves for a decadent "dessert" of a session ~ sweet, sincere & service-oriented! This gourmet Asian facilitation channel will explore the different service roles we undertake ~ as service providers to internal and external customers, both @home & @work; the service-related issues, concerns & challenges that we encounter and grapple with daily; and our rainbow strategies for coping. Make time to indulge in a slice of my authentic, home-baked facilitator's P.I.E & partake in a participative, interactive & engaging gastronomic service session, seasoned with creativity, infused with metaphors and garnished with rosettes of rainbow service!

P3 - Consciously Competent Meetings for Facilitators and Leaders by Ms. Nadine Bell

Effective, collaborative meetings don't just happen. There are millions of meetings a day in which countless hours are lost, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent and the desired results are not achieved. Consciously Competent Meetings for Facilitators and Leaders provide the tools to significantly enhance your meetings and accomplish your business objectives. Whether your meetings are same time, same place or geographically-distributed conference calls, this highly participative workshop will prepare you to employ:Constructing the Foundation- Productive planning and preparation. Materials for Building - The elements of effective, collaborative meetings. Framing the Structure - The importance of context for an effective meeting. Laying the Floors - Methods to elicit information and inspire open discussion. Creating Space - Communication tools that move the discussion forward. Installing the Power - Ways to encourage participant engagement and buy-in. Putting On the Roof - Techniques to keep the group on track and on time. Applying the Finishing Touches - The value of an effective wrap-up.

P4 - Positive Epidemic of Large Scale Transformation by Ms. Christine Whitney Sanchez

Is there such a thing as large scale transformation? What are the essential design elements for inviting transformation? How can we work on large scale transformation while keeping personal and group transformation in the foreground? This workshop will explore the heart of Large Group Facilitation and Blending the Essence of Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, Open Space Technology and Reflection Circles. Use the principles and practices of Methods for Strategic Collaboration to design facilitative processes. Tap large group facilitation best practices. Craft questions for Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, Open Space Technology and Reflection Circles. Develop a personal action plan for using large group methods.

P5 - Rain or Shine: Achieving Flow in Facilitation by Mr. Azim Pawanchik and Dr. Suraya Sulaiman

As facilitators and change leaders, we have a great responsibility to create the context and space for meaningful and fruitful conversations to happen. Today's participants are easily distracted or irritated, at times, exhibiting symptoms of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). With the participants already being inundated with technology, heavy workloads and stress, the task of creating flow is an uphill battle. As facilitators, we have to deal with this distraction and still ensure that there is good and engaging communication flow. Facilitating is not about being a traffic police; directing who to speak when to speak or when to stop speaking; its also not about timing everything to the final second or have everybody follow the rule. This would be a flawless session in terms execution but devoid of the heart and energy required to have a meaningful outcome. We believe that to achieve greater results, a facilitator needs to help their client or participant achieve `flow' during the sessions whereby they are fully connected and engaged in achieving the set goals.

P6 - Exceptional conversational skills and their underpinning by Alan Stewart, PhD

Conversations are not just something we do among other doings; they are our human niche, we live in a world formed through conversing. Conversations make one world or another; not only in how we relate to each other, but in how the whole lived world arises around us. The associated social experience helps to promote understanding and to destroy barriers between us. This workshop is about the skills of being a competent conversationalist, integral to the rainbow of facilitation. Is this vital to you? Appreciate how vital people skills are to success as a facilitator. Discover the attributes of a competent and effective conversationalist. Be aware that conversational skills are not `givens' – they can be learned and practiced to good effect. Recognise which elements of your own pattern you would do well to develop. Speak so that the hearer is dancing with you. Know the importance of asking the right questions before it is too late. Notice who has particular skills as a conversationalist and learn from them. Be confident in letting your true personality shine.

Download details & Register now on-line at: http://www.fns.sg

Moving from Idea Dumping to Idea Generation

Enhancing the Value of Brainstorming Sessions

A typical brainstorming session, one where session participants are asked to think and write down ideas that may be considered as solutions for a given challenge, does not usually generate breakthrough ideas. While the session produces a good volume of ideas, the ratio between usual ideas and creative ideas leans more towards those that are already largely known. This observation empirically points to the limited capability and capacity of typical brainstorming sessions in generating unique ideas.

Why such dynamics are in place? This is because most brainstorming sessions are organised as idea dumping rather than idea creation sessions. By idea dumping, participants are encouraged to recall and release ideas that they already had. This is far from doing idea creation. While we cannot discount these ‘already had’ ideas, they are still nothing more than just old ideas.

To create new ideas in these brainstorming sessions, we need to train session participants to go beyond idea dumping, and Visual Connection is one such methods.

Process

Visual Connection uses the technology of forced association to help session participants think beyond set patterns and prevent the digging of old memories for already known ideas.

There are many ways to execute the Visual Connection process. I am going to show you one approach, which I had used in a recent workshop.

Stage 1 - Choosing a Set of Visual Connection Cards

These could be pictures you had taken during your overseas trips or gleamed from the Internet.

The pictures may be from different themes and topics but they need to comply with the following rules:

Each picture needs to be focused on a specific theme or topic.

It has to be expressive; capable of conjuring emotions and thoughts.

It is always good to laminate the cards to reduce wear and tear from prolong use.

Stage 2 – Laying Out the Cards on the Table

The cards should be laid out on the table prior to the brainstorming session.

It is good practice to limit the overlapping of cards. Use a bigger table if this practice could not be achieved.

Where possible, avoid placing the cards near the window to reduce light reflecting from the laminated cards.

You may present these pictures as powerpoints as well. Just that you may not be able to display as many cards if they are presented in this manner.

Stage 3 – Inviting Session Participants to Select Cards

This is the stage where the session participants are invited to the table to view and select two to three cards that they like. It is always good to produce at least 1.5 times the number of cards to the number of attending session participants to offer them a wider choice of cards during this stage of the workshop.

Stage 4 – Using the Cards, Create a List of Sensory Perceptions

Here, session participants are asked to produce a list of words that immediately come to mind while looking at the pictures they have collected from the table.

They will be asked not to self-censure the words that are coming up and are encouraged to write down as many words as possible on their working sheets.

It is expected that each participant should be able to write about 10 to 15 words for each picture they had looked at.

Here is an example of this section of the process:

Chosen Picture


List of words

Old, Lonely, Green, White, Chair, Wood, Cold, Windy, Memory, Waiting, Calm, Contented, Thinking, Happy, Resting

Stage 5 – Introducing the Problem/Challenge Statement

It is at this stage that the problem or challenge statement is introduced. The owner of the problem/challenge could provide a short introduction on its background, and session participants could clarify. Conversations about its solutions should be refrained at this stage.

Stage 6 – Generating Ideas Using the List of Sensory Words

With the problem/challenge statement as the context, the session participants could now use the list of words generated earlier on to develop some ideas for the problem/challenge.

Each of idea could be written on a slip of paper and pasted on the wall to enable the Gallery Walk

Use another word on the list once no more ideas could be created from it.

Here is an example of how the list of words could be used:

Problem Statement

Besides imposing a surcharge of S$5.00, how else could taxis be encouraged to pick up passengers at designated taxi stands near the F1 racing arena?

Word Taken From the List

Happy

Idea Created

Give each taxi driver a F1 collectable to reward them for coming into the designated taxi stand.

Here is a slideshare on the technique.

Visual Connection - Ideation Through Word Association

View more presentations from Xiaohao .

Do give this technique a try when you are conducting a facilitated brainstorming session and good luck.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 27 Sep 2008 and the SlideShare is added on 10 Feb 2010.

Copyright 2008 and 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Looking for Facilitators

All Facilitators,

Ms Beth Macdonald is looking for a facilitator who could helm a one-day change programme in Shanghai on September 19th. The materials are to be presented in Mandarin.

Those who are interested can contact Beth directly at beth@hcd.com.sg.

Good luck.

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.