The document discusses several facilitation techniques for making meetings more productive, participative, and cooperative. It provides details on brainstorming, which encourages creativity and involvement by generating ideas without criticism. Guidelines for brainstorming include reviewing the topic, allowing silent thinking time, freely generating ideas without discussion, and writing all ideas visibly. It also describes check-ins to assess participant energy levels or needs, affinity grouping to cluster similar ideas, and World Café for dividing into small groups that discuss a topic over multiple rounds of conversation.

1. Facilitation Techniques
There are thousands of good techniques to make our meetings productive, participative, friendly,
and cooperative. But we discuss few of them. So below are few group idea facilitation
techniques which we used for achieving our goals.
 Think and Listen
 Go-Round
 Brainstorming
 Check in
 Mind Maps
 Affinity grouping
 Multi-voting
 Six Thinking Hats
 World Café
Brainstorming:-
One of the easiestandmostenjoyablewaystoquicklygeneratealotof ideasisto brainstorm.A
successful brainstorm helps:
 Encourage creativity
 Involve everyone
 Generate excitementandenergy
 Separate people fromthe ideastheysuggest.Whatbecomesimportantisthe ideaitself,notthe
personwhosuggestsit.
Guidelines:
 Start by reviewingthe topic;make sure everyone understandsthe issues.
 Give people aminute ortwoof silentthinkingtime.
 Whenideasstart to flow,letthemcome.Freewheel-don'tholdback.
 No discussionof the ideasduringthe brainstorm.Thatwill come later.
 No criticismof ideas - notevena groan or grimace!
 Hitchhike - buildonideasgeneratedbyothersinthe group.

2.  Write all ideasona flipchartsoeveryone cansee them.
 Check In:-
A facilitatorwill needtoknowhowthe participantsata meetingare doing.Istheirenergylevel OK?Do
people needabreak?Canpeople keepgoingforanother10 minutessowe can finishthisitembefore
lunch?Are people warm/cool enough.Isfreshairneeded?
As an alternative tohearingfromeveryone,aswhenusingago-roundfora check-in,the 'thumbs'
methodisa swiftalternative.Asanexample forknowingthe energylevelof the group:show your
thumbup forgood energylevel,thumbdownif youneedarest,andthumbanywhere inbetweento
showhowyou are.
 Affinity Grouping:-
Step1. Write a sentence orquestiondescribingasituationandpostiton a wall orflipchartwhere
everyone cansee it.
Step2. Brainstormall the ideasorissuesrelatedtothe situationoransweringthe questionandwrite
each ideaona stickynote.Dependingonthe size of the group,thiscan be done as a full group,insmall
groups,or silentlyasindividuals.If the topicissensitive,workingindividuallyprovidesanonymityand
allowscontroversialoremotional thingstocome to light.
Step3. All groupparticipantsworksimultaneouslytosortthe ideasinto5-10 clusters.The sortingis
done withoutspeakinganditisonlyafterit isfinishedthatthe logicof the groupwill emerge.If the
groupis large,the original sortcan be done insmall groupsand thenmergedintoa large group.
Step4. A group consensusisusedtocreate a label tosummarize orgive a title toeach cluster.
 World Café:-
The big group is divided in small groups of 4-5 people sitting around a table with a paper tablecloth
to write, draw, or doodle in the midst of the conversation— and talking about a given subject
presented under the form of a question. In each table there is a table 'host' who stays at the same
table throughout the process. After 20-30 minutes the general host invites participants to change
tables. The table host explains briefly the essence of the previous conversation to the guests who
arrive for the next round. After three rounds of progressive conversation there is a dialogue among
the whole group with the intention of gathering and recording key ideas, questions or insights that
might be useful for action planning or other purposes.