Welcome to the Jewell Facilitation Blog
A place where you can find tips, ideas and insights into the world of facilitation and beyond.
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Constraints, creativity and making the most of it.
There are not too many ways to put a positive spin on the Covid-19 sweeping the world at the moment. It's a bit of a nightmare, no one knows exactly what will happen next and even the best laid contingency plans are probably in for a bit of a...
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Creating the space to make decisions.
How good are you at making decisions? Some people find this really rather easy. Others take an age to decide, procrastinate, cogitate, contemplate and tie themselves in knots. And when it comes to involving a group of people in decision making, you...
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Breaking rules to embrace disruption.
What book are you reading at the moment? I'll be honest, finding time to read can sometimes be a bit of an effort. I'm also a bit fussy - I need a book to be engaging and peak my interest. I don't have much patience of dry tomes. The book I'm...
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Facilitating you through your comfort zone.
As facilitators there are often lots of conversations about participants being in or out of their comfort zones. Certain ice breakers for example (this is not a post about ice breakers) can leave people feeling distinctly outside their comfort...
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When group communication seems broken, what can you do to make it better?
Well there are a lot of things! But before we can start unravelling a few of the possibilities, it might be good to outline what group communication actually means. Group communication is any kind of discussion, conversation, dialogue, exchange or...
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Are you struggling with group communication?
There's nothing more frustrating that unclear communication. Communication that is a fruitless, exhausting and repetitive. Where you feel like there is a lot of information circulating but it doesn't make any sense. Or where there is a dearth of it...
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Help your team to feel part of its purpose.
Working for yourself has a lot of perks - my boss is nice (even if I do say so myself!) and I get to make all the key decisions, work on my own plans and define my own way of doing things. It's quite liberating. But I do miss being a part of a...
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How can group facilitation help save your team relationships?
You have worked hard to build your team, getting the right people for the job. You know which people will pick things up at the drop of a hat, which people will take the strain, which people are slow and steady and which people are the doers, the...
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Can creative spirit and logical structures exist in the same space?
Can you be creative, innovative and inspirational, and well structured, logical and organised at the same time? Many people think that the two don't really go together, or worse that they absolutely can't co-exist. The notion that the creative...
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How much do you know about group facilitation?
When people ask what I do and I say "facilitator" I am often met with a look of either curiosity or bafflement or both. This is frequently followed by the question "so what do you facilitate?" (a fairly sensible question) and when I say something...
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So why is communication so important anyway?
We sort of take it for granted that communicating well is something good and we intrinsically know that we need to communicate to the best of our abilities. Extraordinary communication skills are a spectacularly brilliant thing to have and there's...
read moreNon-verbal Communication – why’s it so important?
What is it? This is the communication that isn’t spoken words. It adds meaning and emphasis to our conversations and we use it a surprising amount. Various studies suggest that around 90% of our communication is non-verbal, although actually this...
read moreEverybody’s talkin’ at me, I don’t hear a word they’re saying……..*
Communication; it’s that hard to define, often slightly intangible yet ubiquitous word that anyone can say they’re good at. We all communicate, how can we not be great at it? Don’t we do it every day, all the time, everywhere we go? We tweet, we...
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The Luxury of Thinking Time
There is no doubt about it, we are very much in the age of efficiency. Everything is right there in front of us, at our fingertips (quite literally). Many people are online all day every day and even now as meeting people "in real life" once more...
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Sorry About the Meetings….What Should we Change?
I came across an article the other day, talking about something that is, I think, fairly well known, about the way women often struggle with meetings, are perceived as bossy when they speak up and often use apologetic language. I am sure...
read morePeople Centred Meetings
A few weeks ago I wrote about bad meetings. The types of meetings you really don't want to go to. The types of meetings that make people cringe and roll their eyes and wonder why they bother. But what about good meetings? Have you ever been to a...
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What does it mean? MISSION
Back on the planning road once more, and here for part two.... let's talk this time about missions! I don't mean the Tom Cruise 'Impossible' kind, or the evangelical kind, but the intent or driving force behind the work you or your organisation...
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What does it mean? VISION
There are so many terms for all the things we do when we plan. When we plan, we look into the future, not in the crystal ball sense, but in the 'where am I going' sense. We make plans to help us get from A to B, to move forward, to help us achieve...
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Feeling part of a virtual group – the webinar experience.
For today's slice of blog activity I thought I'd share my recent experience of attending a webinar. When I say attending, what I mean of course is dialing in, or more precisely, logging on. In case you are not up to speed with the whole webinar...
read moreSWOT analysis video blog
http://youtu.be/KrtmW9XXS6g
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Valuing the Facta Non Verba.
I have in the last couple of days discovered that my family moto is Facta Non Verba – in good olde Latin. For those not conversant with the ancient language of the Romans (myself included) this means “Deeds not words”. At least that's what I have...
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A facilitated workshop in LEGO
So there I was mulling over some more concrete ways to explain facilitation and I got sort of side tracked by the toy box...... I have let the LEGO people say it all today - I have set up a small workshop for them although I am not truely sure what...
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Training and new toys
Last week I went on a Technologies of Participation (ToP) training course in Manchester with theInstitute of Cultural Affairs. I have been on quite a bit of facilitation training over the years, but I do love to be able to get new ideas and meet...
read moreInteresting links
As I peruse the interweb for all the exciting things that I can find I always come across interesting websites, resources, ideas, thoughts, comments........and I do like to share what I find. So here are some of the links that I like:...
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