My friend and collaborator Chris Corrigan has some good tips on how to give directions to a group of people without leaving them totally lost feeling pushed around or bored to death. Chris long ago got me enthused about the notion of facilitation as a practice, in which we keep paying attention to the details of our work and see what we can improve. You might think that “telling people what to do” is a fairly simple task, but there are lots of nuances to it.
Chris compiles lots of good ideas, and I’ll highlight this one:
What I often do is give the instructions, ask for a show of hands for who is clear (rather than asking for question if people need clarity) and invite those who didn’t raise their hands to take their lead from those who did.
That’s something I have done occasionally and I think now I’ll do it some more!
