Library of facilitation techniques

Count fast down from 8 to 1 while shaking each body limb as a group

Roses, buds, and thorns is a quick and simple team exercise that can be performed at the start of a group meeting. The idea is to evaluate a project, team task, or even your day by having each team member come up with a Rose (positive highlight), Thorn (struggle or challenge), and Bud (opportunity for improvement). The goal of this activity is to open up discussion among team members and acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of others. This can allow you to put measures in place to do more of what's going well, and fix what needs fixing. As well, this activity inspires creativity and debate within teams. Discussing Buds can encourage new, creative ideas to come to the fore. Finally, the activity allows you to gain insight from all members of the team as communication and honesty are important for every group!

Use this exercise to introduce people to analyse and solve problems together. Everyone feels engaged and is part of the solution.

In any good brainstorming session, there will come a time when there are too many good ideas, too many concepts, and too many possibilities to proceed. When this time has come, dot voting is one of the simplest ways to prioritize and converge upon an agreed solution.

Beginning a session with anonymous sharing of possible problems

An engaging variation on a feedback activity that focuses on future changes and positive action, rather than dwelling on what went wrong.

What made success possible? In less than one hour, a group of any size can generate the list of conditions that are essential for its success. You can liberate spontaneous momentum and insights for positive change from within the organization as “hidden” success stories are revealed. Positive movement is sparked by the search for what works now and by uncovering the root causes that make success possible.

Individuals or groups prepare a collage of photos, icons, or quick art that reviews the concepts and skills previously learned in the program. Others interpret what the art and images mean based on their own learning.

The objectives are to build group member relationships through verbal and nonverbal cue-sensing and effective adaptation to others' displayed emotions through entertaining and nonthreatening skits.

The object of this game is to introduce event participants to each other by co-creating a mural-sized, visual network of their connections.

This exercise can be used as a warm-up for project and other planning processes. It can also be used in team building.