Pears Foundation

Date: 20 June 2024

Venue: Pears Hub (Lunch Provided)

Time: 10:00-14:30

Facilitator: Shoshana Boyd Gelfand

Unless you only ever have meetings with yourself, knowing how to facilitate a group discussion is an essential skill. Most of us learn how to facilitate simply by being part of families, teams and organisations and have already picked up some techniques for running meetings, brainstorming ideas, managing conflicts and helping our group come to decisions. That being said, good leaders have a toolbox filled with a variety of facilitation techniques which they can draw from as needed. In this workshop, we will explore a number of these techniques, along with discussing the situations that each is most suited to. The techniques we will cover include:

• Case study presentation protocol (used to help a group provide constructive feedback on a particular issue)
• Open space (used when you want participants to generate and take responsibility for the direction of the conversation)
• De Bono Thinking Hats (used when you want the group to collectively make considered decisions
• “Portrait gallery” sharing (for when you want people to engage in small group discussion without the dreaded “reporting back” follow-on)
• Sociograms (for sharing and creating understanding of the diversity of attitudes and positions on various issues)

In addition to learning and practicing these techniques, we will reflect on the fundamental dispositions and skills that are cultivated by excellent facilitators.

Finally, we will touch on how to translate these techniques to an on-line environment using Zoom and other on-line tools.

Who is it for?

This workshop is suitable for participants from Pears grantee organisations at any level in an organisation who want to build their confidence and their personal facilitation toolkit. It is highly participatory – we will be practicing these techniques and taking turns leading them. So please come prepared to engage and enjoy facilitating and being facilitated.

Capacity: 30