Delivery Matters

Stories behind workshop plans,
sticky notes and markers.

Author: James Smart - page 5

Creative games and exercises to spur creativity in the workplace

Think that only traditionally creative roles like artist, designer, and writer benefit from using creativity in the workplace? Think again! Innovation, growth, and change are powered by creative thinkers throughout an organization, whatever their role. Using creative games, creativity exercises, and brainstorming can help you shift perspectives, try new things, become more open-minded, and free any creative blocks too! If you’re feeling a lack of creativity in the workplace or want to find new ways of thinking creatively as a team, the creative activities and group exercises below are a great way to jumpstart your creative process while also having fun and building better team connections. It’s so easy to…

19 Creative Thinking Skills (and How to Use Them!)

In a fast-moving world, being able to find new perspectives and create innovation is an increasingly valuable skill. Creative thinkers are often at the forefront of driving change, solving problems, and developing new ideas. Not only that, but those who bring creative thinking to how they work are often happier, more productive, and resilient too! So you might be asking yourself, how can I develop my creative thinking skills and think more creatively at work? Whether you want to supercharge your interpersonal skills, advance your career or be happier and more satisfied in the work you do, it pays to learn to think more creatively. For many people, creative thinking is…

How to use the 5 stages of team development (and build better teams!)

All groups are composed of individuals with different needs, communication styles, and working practices. When bringing those individuals together and engaging in team development, leaders will need to find ways to help everyone work together effectively and grow as individuals and as a group. Helping a set of people progress from being strangers to becoming a cohesive, well-oiled team can be a tricky process but thankfully there are team development frameworks, activities, and exercises that can help! In this post, we’ll explore Bruce Tuckman's theory of team development while also offering practical advice, actions, and team building activities you can take to help your group grow and work together more…

Using Asynchronous Learning to Engage Online Learners (Case Study)

For many facilitators, trainers, coaches, and teachers, transitioning existing content from live workshops to a remote setting has become a massive and necessary undertaking. As the facilitation landscape has shifted to online formats, asynchronous learning, or blended learning environments, those leading courses and workshops have needed to adapt. While redesigning for online learning is a challenge, it's also an opportunity. With the right approach, design, and process you can make your remote workshops as vital, engaging, and productive as their live equivalents. This might mean switching to a blended learning approach where students or participants work primarily in an online teaching environment with some control over the pace or direction…

Remote Problem Solving Webinar & Resources

Online workshops are an evolving field. Many facilitators have had to adapt to designing and leading workshops for remote teams but we still have room to grow and improve. In this recorded webinar, we'll design a remote problem-solving template from the ground up. You'll see first-hand how to design workshops quickly and easily, as well as picking up some valuable tips and tricks for facilitating remote workshops in virtual environments. Alongside the recording, you'll find the workshop template also see a collection of questions and answers from our previous session concerning everything from session design to online tools and remote facilitation. Let's dig in! Watch the webinarSessionLab templateMural board Q&A…

Survey report: online facilitation and virtual meetings

We are in a transition where leaders have canceled all their in-person events (due to coronavirus) and don't yet know what their teams need. Many institutions have frozen spending and so there is a lot of unknown as to what my client landscape will look like as we go forward. 95% of my existing contracts were canceled so there's a lot of transition and adaptation going on. Survey respondent It’s no secret that the current global crisis is affecting the world of facilitation. Organizations are freezing budgets, canceling live meetings, and figuring out how to restructure their businesses for remote working environments.Facilitators are having to adapt too. Transitioning from running…

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How to improve your problem solving skills and build effective problem solving strategies

Effective problem solving is all about using the right process and following a plan tailored to the issue at hand. Recognizing your team or organization has an issue isn’t enough to come up with effective problem solving strategies. To truly understand a problem and develop appropriate solutions, you will want to follow a solid process, follow the necessary problem solving steps, and bring all of your problem solving skills to the table. We’ll forst look at what problem solving strategies you can employ with your team when looking for a way to approach the process.We’ll then discuss the problem solving skills you need to be more effective at solving problems, complete…

17 Tools to Improve Office Productivity

Recent statistics show that 85% of the global workforce is actively disengaged at work, causing a global impact of $7 trillion in lost productivity. With this in mind, it’s vital to the success of your organization that you find innovative methods of engaging your workforce to increase productivity. Implementing these productivity tools could have a positive effect on improving employee engagement and achieving your organizational goals. There are thousands of productivity tools to choose from that will help your office excel. It’s essential, however, to select the ones that best fit the needs of your business and employees. 92% of employees agree that when a company optimizes the right tools…

Facilitation skills for team management: 30 managerial skills to learn from facilitators

Team management often requires people to wear multiple hats and occupy many roles at once. A good team manager is a leader, a coach, a trainer, a mentor and much more besides. But what can team managers learn from facilitators and the world of facilitation? Can you be a better manager by learning techniques from expert facilitators? We think so! After a conversation with Myriam Hadnes, founder of Idayz and host at the Workshops Work podcast, we thought about some facilitation concepts and skills that a team manager could use when working with a team. Here, we’ve collected 30 management skills and tips that can be learned by taking the…

We Facilitate: Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable – an interview with Martin Gilbraith, freelance facilitator

Facilitation can sometimes be a lonely profession. Whether you are a freelancer or part of an in-house team, you will often be one of only a few people practicing facilitation and who truly appreciates the value of facilitation techniques. As Martin Gilbraith, a facilitator with over 30 years of experience noted in our interview: “the vast majority of facilitators work alone or in very small teams and very small practices. Even those that work in big companies are generally the only in-house facilitator or one of a very small team. Mostly, what we do is pretty lonesome.” Learning from other facilitators and experts in the field can not only help…

We Facilitate: 20 facilitation tips to help you be a better facilitator with insight from Martin Gilbraith

Being a great facilitator is all about listening, learning and growing so that you can guide others towards achieving their goals. But how can you get started as a facilitator, and what resources are there to help you improve your facilitation techniques? In a series of interviews, we are speaking to expert facilitators and thinkers about their experience of facilitating, some of what they’ve learned, and the challenges they’ve faced. In this first interview, we spoke to freelance facilitator, trainer and consultant Martin Gilbraith on the subject of facilitation and got to thinking about some of the habits of effective facilitators and some of the insights that stuck out to…

What is an Agile coach and how do I become one?

Have you ever felt lost in a conversation because people were talking about a topic with such confidence and jargon that you were afraid to ask for clarification? This is how many people first encounter Agile coaching and development concepts and it can be a little overwhelming! This post was created as a roadmap for anyone interested in Agile roles or methodology. Here, we’ll answer some common questions - like why you’d need an Agile coach - and to show you how you can apply this knowledge to your role and maybe even become an Agile coach yourself. What is an Agile coach? An Agile coach helps teams and individuals…

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