Hey Facilitators,
Welcome to March!
We’ve got lots of events to tell you about and a round-up of everything we got up to in February. It was a short month, but it was dense. Let’s get into it.
📆 Community Events Coming Up This Month!
All community events are free to register.
🤓 March 9 - Foundations of Facilitation
If you’re looking for a session that starts at the foundations of facilitation and works toward specific techniques that invite participation and interaction, this is the session for you!
In this one-hour workshop, we’re going to dive into what facilitation is and how you can start thinking like a facilitator, then we’ll explore concrete ways to improve the very next thing you facilitate. Totally free, just RSVP!
🤸 March 10 - Facilitator Cards Playground
The Playground is where Meg facilitates a few Facilitator Cards and you have a chance to riff on what works, what doesn’t, and all the nerdy facilitation details we so rarely get to talk about.
This session is totally free, you don’t need Facilitator Cards to attend, and it’s limited to 25 people, so snag your spot now!
🛑 March 23 - But You’re Wrong…
There’s a lot of times (especially during facilitations) when we have to work with people who are saying things we fundamentally disagree with.
Very few people teach you what to do in those moments to help them be more successful.
But You’re Wrong… is a session designed to help people see…
- unhelpful thought patterns they get into when faced with disagreements (particularly heated political statements)
- two major strategies for how to navigate those moments and set you (and the person you’re disagreeing with!) up for success in that interaction
- what we do that gets in our own way
This session will involve a mix of storytelling, live polling, a breakout room chat, and solo reflection time. RSVP (totally free) here!
📆 Trainings This Month
🦈 March 16 - Become a Card Shark
Want to make sure your Facilitator Cards don’t just sit on your desk looking pretty? This is the session for you. Card Sharks is our getting-started-with-your-Facilitator-Cards session and is guided hands-on practice time with your deck that will leave you feeling ready to use the cards anytime (whether you’re planning an agenda in advance or pulling them out last minute in a training).
It’s a quick one-hour session and all you need is your deck and to RSVP here! There is no cost to attend; this session is included with your purchase of Facilitator Cards.
☕️ March 29 - One-Day Facilitation Intensive with Facilitator Cards
It’s not every day that we get to hang out with other facilitators from around the world to talk facilitation and practice using and thinking through scenarios with our Facilitator Cards. But that’s exactly what the one-day intensive is about! A space just for facilitators to come together, sink our teeth into the art of facilitation, and build a thorough understanding of how to integrate Facilitator Cards into our processes as facilitators.
This session is limited to just 12 spots and registration ends March 27. Learn more and register here!
🔴 From the YouTube!
This month, our YouTube channel (subscribe here!) was focused on a software we’ve been digging called mmhmm (click here to watch our short vid on why we are loving mmhmm). Here’s a round-up of the videos with particular time stamps you might be interested in!
🧑💻 February Facilitator Cards Brain Jam #11
In this Brain Jam, we built our first scenes with mmhmm, got it set up on our computers for virtual facilitations, and then explored some pretty existential questions in the second half (no really, they were big life questions). If you want a guided walkthrough, check out the other videos below. If you want to see where the existential questions came up, hop to this time stamp.
🧱 Using mmhmm for Virtual Facilitations
If you missed the Brain Jam and you’re wanting to play around with mmhmm to see if it might be a great fit for your facilitations, this is for you. First check out Getting Started with mmhmm in Virtual Facilitations, and then if you want to dig more into the software, you can watch Fun Facilitator Features of mmhmm.
Also if you want to see how I use mmhmm in my virtual facilitations, you can watch this behind the scenes video.
👐 Using Facilitator Cards to Bring Out Communal Curiosity
Our friend Chad Littlefield, who makes wonderful YouTube videos on facilitation, put out a video this month all about two words that can make a huge difference when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This video sparked from a conversation Meg had with Chad more than seven years ago, and in it we talk about a few Facilitator Cards and processes you can use to spark communal curiosity in your participants. Click here to jump to that part or watch the full 11 min vid here!
_Got a request for something you’d like to see us do a video on?_** Drop it in the idea bucket!** 🪣
📸 From the Insta
🐙 The Tiny Guide To Facilitator Cards
It can be easy to get overwhelmed by 60 different cards to choose from when you open your box of Facilitator Cards. But if you follow this three-step process in our Tiny Guide, you’ll narrow your options down to just the few essential cards you need.
also…
💻 Pro Tip: have your participants fill out a tech-specific pre-survey
☀️ Creating an agenda with Facilitator Cards is as easy as 1-2-3-4
🎯 The Four Categories of Facilitator Cards & how we use them!
*Just For Fun -** S%t Facilitators Say
This twitter makes us laugh in the nerdiest ways. We were first turned on to it by Priya Parker’s Instagram (also a worthy follow if you’re in the Insta world) and we’ve been enjoying them ever since. Some of our faves:
Alright facilitators, that is going to do it for March’s monthly mailer. If you’re like, “dang, that was a lot of links,” you’re totally right. And if you need to find any of these links in the future, know that, starting this month, you’ll always be able to find the monthly mailer on our Facilitator Cards blog too! No more searching through your inbox 🤠
Hope to see you at some of our events this month; otherwise, until our paths cross again, happy facilitating!
Meg & the Facilitator Cards Team
p.s. if you didn’t hear, we’ve got a Facilitator Cards scholarship fund and we’d love you to read all about it here!
p.p.s. final link