Facilitation Lab

Facilitation Lab is a weekly virtual meetup focused on helping facilitators hone their craft to help improve the quality of meetings.

It exists to create a safe and experimental space for facilitators to learn, network, and evolve. This is a free community open to anybody who is curious and wants to grow. In addition to supporting GV Design Sprint enthusiasts, we present and share many different methodologies, including Liberating Structures, Game Storming, Thinking Wrong, MG Taylor, Improv, and much more.

The Lab provides a safe space for an inclusive community of facilitators to openly come together as a collective to ideate, troubleshoot, and experiment with both tried-and-true and cutting-edge facilitation activities and methods.

Each week, we have a different Lab leader. We highlight practitioners who share case studies with tips and tricks; present opportunities to get hands-on with tools for better meetings; and engage in deep-dive, skill-building workshops. Be a part of the active conversation and join us at Facilitation Lab.

We’re honored to be part of the Google Global Sprint Chapter program that aims to build and foster a Design Sprint community by providing awareness, resources, and connecting people. For a look inside the Facilitation Lab, check out a preview below.

Interested in leading a Lab session as a guest facilitator? Sign up here.

Control the Room Community

The Lab is part of the Control the Room community—a gathering of facilitators from around the world. The community offers opportunities for facilitators to gather in a safe, judgement-free zone to learn from experts and one another. It offers many levels of engagement and exclusive resources for facilitators, whether you are a beginner or a Master Facilitator. Our weekly Facilitation Lab sessions, Slack channels, happy hours, live virtual workshops, and annual facilitation summit are unique opportunities to connect with facilitators and enhance your facilitation toolkit. The Control the Room network provides you the space to build professional relationships with others, share resources of facilitation tools & techniques, and grow in your craft as a facilitator.

Facilitation Lab

Speakers Spotlight

Since the first Facilitation Lab, we have been blessed to feature some of the world’s top facilitators. Here are a few of our past guests:

Keith McCandless

Founder of Liberating Structures, led a session called Griefwalking. The group dove into self-reflection with our personal experiences of coping with grief.

#HeardInTheLab:

“In hearing other’s stories, I hear my own story. Empathy is around us, the choice is to invite others. To be seen is healing.”

“Someone recently told me that listening to another person’s story that resonates is almost as gratifying as saying it yourself. The same can be said for listening to stories of grief.”

Brave Legend & Megan Rose

Relational facilitators, coaches, and co-founders of the Alchemy of We, led an activity called “Honing your Relating Superpowers: Curiosity”. In this session, the group tapped into their superpowers of Curiosity, including simple tools they could take away and immediately improve their interpersonal relationships with.

#HeardInTheLab:

“Free-flowing curiosity as a first-round created momentum and positive inertia.”

“Megan and Brave were able to observe this in the same space and created a two for one experience with facilitating in the same area side-by-side.”

Sunni Brown

Founder of Deep Self Design, led an activity called “Circle of Trust,” uncovering what trust means to us as people and displaying the layers trust can evolve into through our personal relationships. She posed the question, “What does trust mean to you, and what different meanings does it hold for you?

#HeardInTheLab:

“I connected with my experience of bewilderment with the technology and just staying in the flow of the exercise and TRUSTING that I could find value, contribute, and build some personal resilience—which translates into self-trust.”

“I loved the opportunity to define trust for myself: the ability to be my truest self with others.”

Therese Miclot

Director of Facilitation Excellence at Proteus, led a session surrounding the importance of feedback from facilitation. Her session explored the behaviors that defined facilitation excellence, what to observe, and how it can accelerate your ability to make a bigger impact when working with groups. We focused on five key contributions: Mindset, Balance Risk & Safety, Engage with Presence, Engage Through Story, and Keep on Track.

#HeardInTheLab:

“I will improve the way I use stories—I love the idea of telling stories in segments dispersed throughout the event.”

“I loved the reminder of going a bit deeper with story-telling and real-world examples.”

Sara Ness

Master Facilitator of Authentic Relating, led an activity called Skeletons & Angels, which tapped into self-reflection on our experiences of this past year in our 2020 quarantine closets. She created the opportunity for the group to connect with one another in triads to openly discuss our own journeys from the pandemic. There was an overwhelming therapeutic feel to this individual and group reflection.

#HeardInTheLab:

“I like hearing personal stories and felt like everyone led with vulnerability.”

“I will use my group’s experience to keep an open mind about my specific situation.”

Paula Rosecky

“Your Future Self: What is the Future You are Working On?” centered around imagination and exploring what you could do if you operated at your highest potential & ultimately create the steps to build the future of your dreams. Here are some key questions from the session: What is one step in the direction of your goal that you can commit to now? What comes to mind to you immediately?

#HeardInTheLab:

“I loved talking about goals and how to get there.”

“I will have the motivation and clarity to take new steps.”

“I loved the thoughtful nature of this exercise.”

Free Resource

The Facilitator's Guide to Questions

A pocket reference for facilitators to always know what questions to ask to keep your meetings magical.

Free Resource

Personal Facilitation Growth Plan

Use this template to curate your own facilitator development plan. First, explore your strengths as a facilitator, and then dive into opportunities around growing from your weaknesses.

The Books

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Innovation can seem complex or reserved for the exceptional. But we believe innovation is for everyone. We’ve set out to illuminate a path for you to generate bold ideas, visualize and share them, overcome obstacles, and turn them into reality. Our books are equal parts guidebook and stories from years of experience helping companies adopt an innovation mindset and culture. They’re practical & actionable, so you can get started now. We hope they’ll help you on your journey to realizing your biggest, boldest ideas.