Facilitation for smooth group work

Facilitating our process

The Process-team both ensured a good flow of the meetings, using a number of techniques, and enabled newcomers to facilitation to learn, practice and improve their skills.

Some of the facilitation techniques we used are listed here:

Circle Work

The first session of each EPT meeting started in circle, this allowed us to reconnect with each other and to focus our attention on the topics set for discussion. The purpose of working in circle is to create a level playing field, one in which every person is equal to all others.

Open Space Technology

Using the Open Space approach participants create an agenda together around a question or topic. Participants put suggestions for conversations or workshops forward and a market place of options is created of topics to be discussed. Although a number of conversations take place at the same time participants are free to employ the “law of two feet” any time, which states that someone is not bound to any one session for its entirety. One may choose to leave and move to a different group to contribute as desired. Each session is written up and contributes to the overall documentation harvested.

World Café

A World Café consists of a number of rounds of questions. Participants are seated around tables with paper to write, doodle or draw on as they discuss the questions that has been posed on this table. Each round lasts for approximately 20 minutes and after the round participants move to different tables, with the exception of the table host, who leads the discussion and remains at the table for all rounds. The World Café methodology is a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue.