Facilitator Labs

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A space for improvement

Welcome to the Facilitator Labs. This is an online forum for you to experiment with new facilitation and teaching methods, testing the water with your peers before jumping into the deep, and sometimes hostile corporate waters.

Read more here: How does a facilitator inspect and adapt?

Who should attend?

Those who interact with groups of humans in a meaningful, creative way would benefit from these labs. This would include team coaches, scrum masters, organisational change agents, those who conduct group interviews or onboard new employees, teaches, trainers, managers, leaders and those in many other groupwork capacities. Participants lead the sessions themselves, using whatever techniques they choose.

Experimentation is encouraged, but the space can also be used to rehearse a previously learned technique, or to improve on an exercise that has been tried and didn't go well. Failure is embraced. This is not a place to show off!

You can attend as a facilitator/participant, or just a participant. Each role is equally valid. Without participants a facilitator can't do much!

The core requirements for attendance, if they can be named as such, are a desire to learn, and a willingness to fail.

Format

Each lab will offer 3-6 sessions, each one facilitated by its proposer. Proposals can be made in advance, or simply brought along on the day. Feedback will be offered by the group at the end of each session. All participants present are responsible for the learning, and each lab itself is an experiment, with the learning from each one helping to improve the series as a whole.

The labs are hosted by Tobias Mayer and Noel Warnell, both experienced facilitators. The hosts will open and close the lab, but otherwise their role here is simply to prepare and hold the space for creativity to occur.

Purpose

The labs offer multi-way learning. Through regular attendance at these labs the students will become more confident and skilled in their ability to facilitate groups, while also gathering new ideas from others with which to experiment further.