I attended CATDC's "Becoming An Expert Facilitator" from August 7 - 9, 2023 at the Jewish High School in San Francisco with presenter, Eric Hudson. He was not the scheduled presenter, but he did accomplish the goals of the workshop and did so well. We did a deep dive into the four core components of expert facilitation: Building psychological safety, designing useable agendas, making thinking visible, and facilitating inclusively and responsively. I had so many "take aways" for the planning of my weekly AT cohort workshops. In fact, on the last day, work time was included to plan a meeting. I was able to plan the first four meetings I will facilitate in Septemeber!
Some things that anyone would benefir from using:
caliing foir an "inclusivity pause" in a meeting - if decisions are being made and there are stakeholders in the community not present (who would be direcctly affected), pause the conversation to acknowledge and decide next steps (What research do we need to consider, do we need to request more voices at the next meeting, etc.)
Labels and how to meet Meeting Pitfalls w/Making Thinking Visible with a Concentric Cirle Venn Diagram, a timeline, a pyramid (of understanding hierarchy), making a 2 x 2 graph, an iceberg or process flow.
Investing the time to create a community allows others to participate more fully in meetings can easily be acco mplished by additing opening and closing protocols.
All in all, I took away many tools to finesse meetings to make them more participatory, effective, and efficient. I was also introduced to the Facilitating Courageous Conversations Visuall Toolkit by Rosetta Lee, Kawai Lai, and Tamisha Williams. I have attached a sampling if anyone is interested in checking it out. It's a fabulous resoiurce.