Facilitation Case-Study: Remembering the Future Together
Recently, we were asked to facilitate a working session for a leadership team. They were at the beginning of a major organizational change that they… Read More
Facilitation
Our Favorite End-of-Year Retro Format
A couple weeks ago, we recommended using the end of the year and start of the next as a time to zoom out and do… Read More
Great Facilitators Accomplish These 6 Goals
Surveys show people say less than a quarter of the meetings they attend are a valuable use of their time. In this recording of the August Humanizing Work Meetup, Peter introduces the 6 goals an effective facilitator achieves in every meeting and how to use those to ensure your meetings are reliably worth the participants’ time. Read More
Framing a Meeting Right
Ever facilitated a meeting that just seems to keep going off the rails? A framing statement is key to starting a meeting strong, and a… Read More
How to Get the Quiet Ones to Engage
“How can I get the quiet people in my meetings to speak up? Especially since we’ve gone remote, it feels like maybe a third of… Read More
Review Agenda
In this episode, Richard and Peter share an agenda you can use for a Sprint Review meeting—or for any meeting where you want to share and get feedback on complex, meaningful work-in-progress. Too many Sprint Reviews are a demo with no useful feedback or a deep dive into the weeds on problem-solving. The best review meetings combine a deliberate demo with a well-structured feedback session. Learn how you can have this kind of review. Read More
How to Give Clear Instructions When Facilitating
It's a classic facilitation blunder: You start giving instructions for an activity, and as you're talking, people begin the activity. You try to reel in those eager participants so you can get the rest of your instructions out. Then, as everyone starts, you realize you forgot something important and need to get the group back together for more instructions. The best facilitators are extremely deliberate about how they give instructions. Read More
Talking About Our Feelings—Potentially Awkward, Definitely Important
Last week, I described how to do the observation step of Focused Conversation without having to talk about all the details. At this point, many facilitators would naturally want to guide the group through interpreting the data. But the Focused Conversation method prescribes another step in between: reflection. Read More
Ask Humanizing Work: When the Observation Part of Focused Conversation Gets Boring
The Focused Conversation method asks us to start with observations before assigning labels - good, bad, effective, worthwhile, motivating, etc. In real-life facilitation, it can feel a little slow to start a retrospective with a simple "What happened this sprint?" Read More
80/20 Facilitation (or, all the study on facilitation most people need)
In response to my recent post on developing your skills in 2016, several people mentioned facilitation as a skill they want to grow. As with many things, you can become good enough as a facilitator in a short time...and you can spend your life refining your skills. For most ScrumMasters, internal agile coaches, or agile leaders, I recommend two resources to grow enough facilitation skill so that facilitating’s not your constraint. Read More