Connecting: Facilitation techniques keep presentations lively

The difference between a lively meeting and one that puts everyone to sleep is audience involvement. Lecture is out; facilitation is in. That's reason enough to start involving your audience, whether that audience is made up of company employees or associates at your club.

Advances in technology have created high demands and low attention spans. Several facilitation techniques are useful when planning a meeting, providing educational training or simply distributing information.

Ask questions first

It takes a bit of planning, but the well-placed question involves your audience and helps them learn the material on a deeper level. Let's say, for example, you are teaching a technology class the difference between the cut-and-paste function and the copy-and-paste function. You can either tell the difference (lecture) or you can ask a question: "What is the difference between cut-and-paste and copy-and-paste?" Then you might follow up with another question: "How could confusing these two functions cause problems later?"

Work in groups

After the answer is given, you might divide the participants into small groups of three to six. Instruct them to work on a problem together. "Give an example where one might choose the copy-and-paste function over the cut-and-paste function."

This kind of question creates a procedure where the participants are discussing and processing how it applies to them in the work place. If time is limited, another technique is to give each group a different problem so that it keeps the discussion lively when the sub-groups report to the entire group.

Work in pairs

If you have several shy participants you can create 100 percent involvement by having participants work in teams of two. Be sure to time each side and clarify whose turn it is, otherwise the stage hog will take all the time and you still will not have accomplished your goal. Self-assessments and short tests are great tools to use as a pairs activity. The teams of two can discuss their learning with each other without fear of disclosing information to the entire group.

Brainstorming

To add some fun and creativity apply brainstorming. Make sure you are clear about rules of brainstorming: everyone participates, no one judges any opinion or idea, any idea is valid and someone writes down the results.

Brainstorming activities use the right side of the brain and will give the audience a break from intensive left-brain activities. Brainstorming can be done as an entire group or you can divide participants into sub-groups to see which group generates the most ideas.

Secret ballot

When there are sensitive issues or too much competition, the secret ballot technique ensures that everyone is heard. The secret ballot can be used in the place of brainstorming or in addition to brainstorming. Ask participants to fold their paper and place in a basket to be read by the group leader.

Role play

Adults love to get involved. The purpose of role-playing is to teach empathy and to help participants experience a role or task that might be foreign to them. Participants get the opportunity to practice certain skills without the fear of failure.

Role-playing works well in management training or leadership development. Common topics for role-playing are networking, listening skills, sales skills, cold calling and conflict management. Role-playing lets the participant learn by doing and it creates excitement when participants know they might be called upon to role-play.

Use games to review

Without a lot of preparation you can create a game to wrap up your meeting or training. Using the questions technique, create a list of questions and place those questions in a hat to be drawn at random. Award the participants with candy or prizes for correct answers.

Get creative and make up your own jeopardy or trivia game to be used as a review after a long training session, or simply delegate and let participants form teams to create their own games based on modules of the program.

(Marlene Chism, president of ICARE Presentations in Springfield, works with companies that want to build strong business relationships and with individuals who want to be better communicators.)