Tag Archives: Facilitation

ALC Tools

GameShifting tools for Group Self-Facilitation

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This weekend I’m facilitating the community retreat at Quaker Intentional Village Canaan and Eric Harris-Braun and I just customized a GameShifting Board for Quaker communities to use during the retreat.  I’ve watched GameShifting perform magic with groups for kids and adults alike. So far, we’re off to a bit of a rough reception when introduced this evening, but I’m still hoping it will play out well in use tomorrow.

This had me revisit, revise and update some of our GameShifting Documentation and parts of the Agile Facilitator Training Manual.  So, I’m going to post some highlights here.

Here’s the layout plan for the Quaker Gameshifting Board I made. (I still need to take photos of the real one we made.)

QIVC GameShifting Board

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Blog Post

Reflections on Convening an ALF Training

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[[ cross-posted from ALF Summer 2014]]

Facilitating this fast, intensive, and immersive event has brought surprises both in the form of challenges and blessings.

Our interpersonal bonding and connection happened quickly and pretty effortlessly. The “If you really knew me…” exercise helped us move into a space deep authenticity and vulnerability. The people who missed our first morning seemed less able to be vulnerable with the group for the whole first week.

One challenge we faced was avoiding getting pulled into abstract tangents where people want to solve theoretical problems for imaginary children in some Utopian educational setting. We may have lost about 20% of our group work time to these sidetracks, and I intend to be much more diligent about interrupting those discussions more quickly. Luckily, things moved quickly into actual practice with the kids at the camp, and the abstractions have largely been replaced with actual relationships with children.

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