The question is

Our series on facilitation continues with one of the most difficult things that anyone running a meeting or facilitating a session has to deal with, people!

There are a number of reasons why someone might not be playing along with the process or playing nice with the group, and as the facilitator, you are the person who is best placed to intervene. However, this is more than just laying down the law, and a little understanding of what might be causing the issue will help to identify strategies that may make life better for you and for them.

Rob and Richard explain to Paul some of the reasons why people come across as difficult in sessions and share some of their strategies to get the back on board.

In the business world, getting people to stop, think and contribute can be a challenge. Yet, somehow, great facilitators manage to get everyone chatting, contributing and feeling heard.

In this podcast, Richard and Rob explain to Paul all of the tricks that they have picked up in the years that they have been facilitating. By using some of these tricks, you can get even the quietest person to contribute to your next workshop.

Continuing our series on facilitation, Paul asks Rob and Richard how they create the trust and 'safety' required to get honesty and openness from workshop participants.

Creating a safe space is one of the primary responsibilities of a facilitator.

If you get the environment and dynamic wrong, it may cause people to close down, limiting the ideas, challenge and acceptance of the group. Getting it wrong makes the facilitator's role harder.

A series of simple interventions, from the room layout to the first few minutes, can make all the difference, even though the group may not even notice you are doing it.

The Thinking Focus team have facilitated workshops all over the world. We facilitate thinking for companies large and small, as well as charities, and government bodies; if you have something that you need the team to think about, then the team can help.

In this short series, Paul talks to Richard and Rob to understand how master facilitators work, giving you some inside tips on how to be a better facilitator, so you can get better outcomes in the meeting you are running.

This first podcast explores the thinking of the facilitator when they are planning the workshop, from the goal to the group; what do you need to know?

Every time we learn something new we have to connect that to our world, to understand how that new piece of information or skill will work for us. Knowing is not enough, we have to integrate the new into our existing understanding of the world. That takes reflection. In this podcast, Ricky and Rob explore why reflection is so important and offer up different strategies that will help you reflect, and therefore embed, your learning.

How many goals should you have? Should you have goals for everything, or just focus on one thing? Ricky and Rob have one goal in this podcast, to talk about how many goals should have if you want to make sure you achieve all of the goals that you set yourself.

Ricky and Rob get ARCI in this podcast, looking at how (and why) people often confuse accountability and responsibility.

The RACI model is a great tool to help understand different roles and responsibilities, but is Responsible (the R in RACI) really the place to start, or should Accountable go first?

Someone, probably a past manager, will have talked to you about time management at some point in your working life. You won't be alone if these conversations have left you feeling that if you could just organise your time a little bit better, you would suddenly become so much more successful.

In this podcast, Rob and Paul explore this idea and pull apart the myths behind time management, suggesting that the alternative might be just to be better at managing your attention and choices.

Ricky and Paul consider why the typical motivational strategy of rewards and consequences (Carrot and Stick) might not be getting the best out of your team. They consider why this approach is so common when it has such a limited impact, and discuss alternative strategies that will create more engaged and motivated team members.