Research indicates that our memory of an event or transaction tends to be colored by our experience of its ending. If the event was challenging, difficult, or boring, but wrapped up with a satisfying conclusion, we will come away with a more positive memory than if it was good in the beginning but ended poorly. […]
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As a facilitator, I am always pushing my clients to put announcements and reports into a memo and reserve their F2F meeting time for the things that people in groups do best: generate ideas, make decisions, solve problems, plan strategy. So I am always interested in new methods for ideation and problem-solving. Daniel Pink’s blog […]
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I am a big believer in the power of play. Children aren’t the only ones who benefit – we all are able to learn and create more effectively when we approach our tasks in a spirit of playful inquiry. I frequently use graphic and manipulative tools with my clients – one group in particular has […]
I’m preparing to teach a two-day workshop on group facilitation in a few weeks. When I plan a class, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that I would love to impart to my students; I can never cover it all. So I make a practice of distilling it down to about […]
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Tags: Facilitation Tools, Practice
Life provides us with multiple opportunities for misunderstandings, conflicts, and hurt feelings. A well-done apology can go a long way toward healing a strained relationship, while a poor one can create even more disconnection and distress. After witnessing and experiencing both very good and very bad apologies in my life, I began studying good apology […]
Tags: Apology
I’ve been blogging via Google’s Blogspot for awhile. Google makes me nervous. There are a lot of things about their new policies that are bugging me. I trust my local internet service provider (Sonic.net) and the open source WordPress community more than I trust Google. So, I’m moving! I’ll do all my new posting over […]
Tags: Google Is Evil, Ranting and Raving
I arrived at the client’s location and was being given the grand tour, as well as my hosts’ perception of the conflicts I was there to mediate. As we chatted about the upcoming session, one of them smilingly asked, “Are we the worst group you’ve ever worked with?” Almost EVERY group asks me something along […]
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I was really tickled to come across this list of Improv Tricks That Will Make You a Better Business Person. One of my declarations – “Don’t work at it, play with it!” – comes from the life lessons I’ve learned from years of studying, practicing, performing,and teaching improv. Stop for a moment and think of […]
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I’ve been working on a piece of homework assigned during a presention by my Australian buddy Donna McGeorge at the 2011 IFVP Conference. One of her recommendations to us was to make a list of fifty declarations: statements that we know, through our professional expertise, to be absolutely true. This list can then be turned […]
Recently I had two fairly challenging gigs back to back. Immediately after each one I floated on a high of exhausted euphoria…I love my work, I did cool stuff, the client had a major breakthrough, etc. This was followed by a complete crash, in which I picked apart every possible thing I might have done […]
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Tags: Evaluation, I Was Wrong