Top Tip: Let Your Group Create Its Own Energy

 

This week’s Facilitator Tips episode discusses the value and importance of permitting your group to generate its own energy and momentum.

 

<< Go to Episode 12   Go to Episode 14 >>

 

Prepare to learn some sage advice from an experienced practitioner who hit the wall several times before working this lesson out.

Click the play button above to learn more.

 

Want to join the conversation?

 

Please leave a comment at the bottom of the page (you must be logged in.)

Don’t have a playmeo account? Join today.

 

Useful Links & Resources

 

  • Empowered Teams – a simple yet dynamic strategy for empowering your group to create its own energy and select its own small teams.

…

Video Transcript

 

Hi there and welcome to Episode 13 of the Facilitator Tips video series.

My name is Mark Collard. I work as an experiential trainer and an author, and today I want to share one of the most important learnings I had early on in my career and that is let the group create its own energy.

I’m sure like you you’ve gone through a lot of effort to create the most contagiously fun, engaging, and appealing program, and yet a bit like how you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink it, sometimes a group just doesn’t get it. And so in those early years, I went to a lot of effort of creating the energy and momentum for the group artificially hoping that would be enough to get them across the line.

And I hit the wall so many times in those first five years. I would go to bed and be exhausted and not realise that I didn’t even turn off the light before I’d collapsed. And so that was telling me something and I just needed to stop and this was the next piece.

I really got that I needed to give the group permission to create its own energy and also allow myself permission to let that happen. Yes, I was a facilitator but I wanted the group to be able to make their own decisions if I created the right environment.

Of course, we all know that every group is different. But here’s the key of why this is so important. Instead, I was disempowering the group. When I could give the group permission to be the cause of its own outcomes, the results I was achieving were far more powerful.

And so it took about five years but from that point on I can see it, the change that was occurring and the transformation that was possible in the groups I was working with. So let the group create its own energy and we all know every group is different.

My last-minute tip, relax. In the early years if I had just understood that and could embrace it I would’ve just perhaps gone in with a lot less stress and a lot less need to wanting to do this for my groups. So relax, take a breath, and appreciate that they’ll find their own way.

And that’s it. If you want to get more information, find some more links, go to www.playmeo.com Episode 13 and you’ll be able to find all that information there.

Please leave a comment and if you happen to have found some value in this, share it with your colleagues and your friends as well.

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you at the next episode. Have fun.

Bye-bye.