No matter what you’re facilitating - a team bonding workshop, a group brainstorming session, or an important decision-making conversation, facilitators tend to find two things challenging in particular:

1. the diversity of their group

2. creating value for every participant

At NewCampus, we believe that good facilitation creates space for meaningful conversation by valuing diversity of thought. We approach facilitation through a three step process:

1. Create space for divergent conversations, exploring multiple perspectives. This is space for unfiltered thoughts, and open-ended conversations without restraint.

2. Next, define space by converging upon commonalities and increasing buy-in through resonance, reiteration, and affirmation. Facilitators often struggle with this step, as conversation seems to spill into new and unrelated territory. Group voting can be a good way to rein the conversation space back.

3. And finally, connect the dots by acting upon shared beliefs, finding connections to values, and articulating next steps. Often, meetings can lose effectiveness simply because the next steps are not well defined.