Tools

It is not unusual to find yourself facilitating what I call a “hybrid” online group. Instead of everyone connecting individually with their own devices (what I call individual connect format), or everyone but the facilitator together in one room (what I call group connect format), with a hybrid format you have some people connecting as individuals and some people connecting in groups...

A favorite tool! Maximize/Minimize Learning is a powerful tool to help participants take responsibility for their own learning and identify personal strategies for them to make the most of the training. Given that people have been taught not to take ownership of their own learning, this tool helps people take that ownership back.

This approach to strategizing serves bottom-up preferences in building social movements. In Starhawk's terms, it serves power-with rather than power-over, and is inherently democratic.

Here's an alternative to lecturing about a topic when you want important information to be transmitted: have people find their own successful experience! This tool uses individual work, small groups and then large group to help the group access its own wisdom about a particular topic (you decide the topic based on the elicitive questions you use: fundraising, carrying out a successful protest, leading a group, overcoming a challenge).

Looking for fresh ideas for your closing circles? Here are some of our favorites that we have used with different groups! E-mail us with new closing circle favorites.

A tool to connect many activists favorite topic -- tactics -- with larger questions of strategy. It uses tactical thinking to help connect to larger frameworks for social change.

"Strategy -- in the face of impending war, financial crises, time crunch, staff changes or despair -- is impossible." Well, I don't think that's true, but certainly lots of us do carry that belief! So here's a one-hour tool that I've used when all of those factors were true! -- maybe it can work for you and your group, too.

Now a kinesthetic way of getting into the concept of comfort zones: step in and step out. This tool can be placed early in a workshop as a way of concretizing the concept of comfort zones -- as a bonus, this tool is a way to both talk about comfort zones and simultaneously builds the container as people actually step outside of their comfort zones through personal self-disclosure.

Groups can love sharing stories of their worst meetings! Here participants get to act out the worst meeting ever, and then what a good meeting looks like. It's light and playful, and a great way to get into a discussion about how to make group meetings work well.

If you are used to training or facilitating people in person and are asked to train or facilitate online or over the phone, you might understandably feel a bit nervous. The good news is that most of what you already know and do as a facilitator in person also applies online and over the phone. With an understanding of the challenges and opportunities of this different medium, you can adjust the tools and approaches you already use, resulting in engaging and effective trainings and meetings online and over the phone.