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Global Flipchart #17

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December 2019

Sustainable Facilitation

Elena Wallén Björkenäng, CPF

Have you ever thought that face-to-face facilitated workshops are necessary and that visualization in the room is important? And have you ever the ramification of that workshops’ climate footprint?

We often encourage participants to meet up face-to-face at a location to which many must travel, and some venues even so remotely located that no public transport is available. Once we are all gathered, we excel in using post-its and writing flipcharts which in the end usually covers the whole room.

But is this really the only way to ensure involvement, engagement and commitment in a group?

We believe that facilitation for real change can be accomplished with the support from digital tools. We also believe that digital facilitation makes a smaller footprint on the climate. That’s why “Chloe” was introduced to a client.

The client wanted to develop their global team-leaders’ skills in how to build high-performing teams. And they wanted to do this quickly. We designed a program with two half-day workshops with 6 weeks between them for the leaders to go out and put their learnings into practice. Usually we support the participants with written material of the tasks we expect them to do. But we know from experience that it can be difficult for some to find a good structure, process and the courage to go home and introduce new concepts to their teams. We also know that some leaders want to be active in the discussions rather being a facilitator; thinking about the next steps.

We introduced them to “Chloe”, our digital facilitator, this time on the topic of building high-performing teams. The digital facilitator is a live facilitated session run on your computer. You press start and “Chloe” welcomes the team and introduces the agenda and exercises. When it’s time for the participants to work, a clock is shown, indicating how much time is left for the exercise. When time is out “Chloe” calls the group back and continues the session. And yes, it is possible to pause if more time is needed for some discussions.

So why is the digital facilitator a good idea?

  1. It offers a structure and content while keeping the benefits of facilitation of being involving and result oriented
  2. It gives the leader an opportunity to be part of the teams’ discussion, not having to worry about time and process
  3. Participants found it easier to raise sensitive issues as there was “someone else” in the room asking the questions
  4. It supports virtual meetings for teams and organisations which are geographically dispersed
  5. It lowers the climate footprint from less face to face meetings and less material needed

How are you thinking through your climate footprint?