What really happened
Following up my last post, here’s what actually happened when I had an opportunity to do some connecting activities with the 80+ people I’m working with this week.
As is often the case, 60 minutes became around 40 minutes. Because I believe it’s important to honour the finishing time (in this case a morning tea break where people were itching to catch up with their mates) I adjusted my plans accordingly.
I started with a few words (phatic communication) and a two sentence description of my role as facilitator.
“Thank you for inviting me…You might be wondering why you need a facilitator for this meeting? Good question. Some might say to ‘make things easy’. We have C, T and M to do that. So let me describe my role in two sentences. No need to take notes! Ready?
One: My role could best be described as making the best use of the living, breathing bodies here (you) and disrupting set patterns of thinking and acting.
Two: Or…I could just do it!“
And here’s the activities I did (once I had everyone on their feet and down the back of the room).
* Birthday Clumps
* World Map: where you currently work; where you were born: where you would like to go for a vacation (then pair up with someone nearby)
* Story of Your Name and Speed Dating (4 rounds)
* Back of your name tag (thanks Chris Corrigan for the reminder): I asked them to write on their name tag something they’d like to talk with others about. “Ask me about…”
And then we broke for morning tea.
Thank you for sharing! Birthday Clumps is not known to me, it propably has something to do with grouping accordign to criteria regarding birthdays like month, year etc.?
Hi Jani – yep,spot on. It was a large group (80+) so I asked them to find others who shared their birthday month. Once they were in their groups I got each month to call out. They started slowly and by the time we got to December, they were singing Jingle Bells!