Variations I

If you're like most people, you'll find after you've been facilitating for awhile that you're using the same activities over and over.  You've tried out many different ones and through experience found particular activities that work for you - they fit your time frame or temperament or groups or work culture or whatever.  You've discovered how to facilitate them well - and that's GOOD NEWS.  I have a list that I go to first whenever I'm designing a session, with my favorites for openers, trust, initiatives, etc.  At the drop of a hat, I can pull together an agenda for a new group that is exciting and educational.  I suggest you do this too and keep that list handy.

But what happens when you have the same groups who want more training?  Perhaps you facilitate leadership development for your organization, your participants are executive level, the same throughout, and the training is spread out over several months.  You try to incorporate experiential activities into all of your sessions, and they need to be good ones.  You can always try something completely new and risk it all in front of your bosses ... or you can present your favorites again, with a variation that changes the nature of the task and which forces groups, who think that they've already "got it figured out," to re-engage and learn.

I was prompted to develop this column by my experience two weeks ago at a Facilitator Training that I led (see pictures from that event here).  In this course, would-be experiential facilitators experience many of these activities and learn how to sequence, present, and debrief these for participant learning.  Since we believe in learning by doing, all of the participants in the course must present, facilitate and debrief one activity for the other participants, and then receive feedback based on the models and concepts that they have been taught.  During these activities, I assume the role of a quiet participant, playing along but not leading the group in any way.

I provide a manual with numerous activities for participants to pick from, and most of the time the student-facilitator chooses to go by the guidelines exactly as they are written.  New to others, but somewhat  *boring* to me, because I already have it figured out (just like your returning participants).  In this particular facilitator training, however, two of the students presented variations to two of my personal favorites, they worked fabulously for the group as a whole, and I was a learner again.

So, this month I present to you Gary Brandt's and Jacob Brown's variation to Keypunch; next month, I'll share Julia Levy's variations to Human Knots. 

Keypunch Variation

(Review the original first so that the notes below make sense)

Setup: same as listed in the original.

Changes

1. Change: rather than allowing all members to cross beyond the boundary rope, initially you will instruct them that only one person may go into the computer room (past the starting cone) at one time, as the instruments are very sensitive and the combined heat of all of the bodies in the computer room raises the temperature so that the hard drives crash.
2. Change: rather than allowing only five attempts, give the group an unlimited number of attempts, but the whole computer must be disinfected within a half hour time limit or the damage is irreversible.
3. Change: after approximately 15 minutes, walk into the area, act like you're adjusting an imaginary wall thermostat, and then note to the group that you just turned down the room temperature ("Sorry, I didn't see it earlier ... I'm with the IRS, remember?") and that they are now free to all enter the area at one time if they so choose.

Anticipated Result

1. Result: Most likely, your group will develop a system initially; they will work on this, fine tune it, and be feeling pretty good about themselves.  Then comes your change, and even though it frees them up, expect some participants to resist the new freedom and express a desire to stay with the old system.  They then have to decide, if they accept the change, how they want to develop a new system.  Can they do this within the remaining time frame?  Should they just keep working their old system?

Debrief Topics

1. In addition to the usual topics of the group's communication, planning, leadership, decision-making process, etc., this variation forces your group to deal with changing circumstances (and how's that like life?).  How they evaluate potential changes, how they embrace (or not) change, how they gather support from the group/momentum to initiate change ... all of these and more should be very evident in the group's experience and therefore topics for your review.

Waddya think?  Great variation, yes?  Go ahead and give it try!