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Facilitation Toolkit
Our Facilitation Toolkit is intended to support your facilitation needs from the early planning stages through to debriefing with your research team.
Browse through the interactive pages in our Plan, Facilitate, and Debrief chapters, or use our search and filter features for quick access to guidelines, tools, and templates to help you and your research team plan and deliver highly effective collaborative engagements.
Access guidance and tools to help design and plan an effective collaborative session. Identifying meeting objectives, context and available resources will set you up for a successful session.
Find leading facilitation approaches, tools and templates to guide meeting participants and enhance objectives for interdisciplinary and high impact research collaborations
Get access to ideas and material to ensure important meeting follow-up. Debriefing and following up on a collaborative meeting is critical to ensuring action items are assigned and addressed.
This resource provides an introduction to the role of the facilitator.
An important part of leading a facilitated discussion, meeting, or session is to identify the purpose of the effort.
A list of key questions to ask to help define process and product objectives for a session.
Jointly developing facilitation goals and objectives with participants (co-creation) can be an effective strategy to create buy-in or support.
An important process in preparing for a facilitated session is to identify relevant participants.
Guide to planning and assessing the impact of inclusive scientific meetings.
Practices and advice for facilitating meetings that allow everyone to participate fully.
York University has created the Inclusion Lens Event Management Tool. This tool is divided into planning, advertising, implementing and evaluating components.
An email template for invitation to participate in a facilitation meeting.
A checklist to track your progress towards an accessible event.
A sample agenda template for use in a facilitation meeting
A sample facilitation planning template for use in a preparing for a facilitated session.
Taking notes during a meeting can be an intense process, this resource will show you how to take effective meeting minutes.
An efficient method of taking effective meeting minutes.
Supporting materials sent ahead of a facilitation session can accelerate meaningful discussion.
Consider the logistics of where and how you will deliver the facilitated session in advance.
A modifiable preparation checklist for in-person and virtual events. Use this template to prepare for your next in-person or virtual event.
Ensure the facilitator and support staff understand their roles in advance of the session.
Best practices for getting started in a facilitated session.
Sample script for a facilitator to introduce a session
Start a facilitation by reviewing meeting objectives and establishing ground rules
Take time to develop meaningful facilitation questions to initiate productive discussion.
Recommendations to establish a cohesive and collaborative facilitation
Solutions to address some common challenges that might arise during a facilitated session
Consider how group interactions may affect your desired outcomes
Brainwriting is an effective technique for idea generation in groups.
A visual hub and spoke template for idea generation
Six Thinking Hats is a technique that can be used during the idea generation process to analyse idea potential.
Six Thinking Hats template to help analyze ideas
POINt is a technique that can be used to strengthen or evaluate ideas during a facilitation session.
A template for POINt, an approach that can be used to strengthen and evaluate an idea
SCAMPER is a brainstorming technique used to support ideation and problem solving.
A template for SCAMPER, a brainstorming technique used to support ideation and problem solving
An Evaluation Matrix can be used to refine or select ideas by evaluating them against criteria that support facilitation objectives
A template that can be used to create an Evaluation Matrix
The Bingo Dabber is a voting technique that allows participants to quickly and efficiently identify the ideas that they find most appealing.
A thorough and concentrated 4-hour meeting approach to accomplish components of the research paper working simultaneously with team members.
Paper Sprint Manual to help collaborative paper writing.
A highly efficient and effective two-day process to develop and critique research proposals.
Grant Sprint manual to help collaborative grant development.
A method of selecting ideas by using a matrix with two parameters of originality and implementation.
How, Now, Wow template to help evaluate ideas.
An interactive activity to introduce new members to the team.
A quick virtual warm-up activity that can help a new group get to know one another.
A method to collectively reflect and identify areas to improve, continue, or halt.
Start, Stop, Continue template to help evaluate and reflect on ideas.
A quick visualization of prioritizing ideas in a team.
A quick visualization of prioritizing ideas in a team.
Part of the decision-making process is understanding factors that may play a role in supporting, or inhibiting, a decision. This force field analysis process can help with just that!
A decision making template that will help prioritize your time.
A decision-making tool that will help your team prioritize their time and tasks.
A decision making template that will help prioritize your time.
Moving through a structured reflection process ensures all participants have the opportunity to share their perspectives.
An activity for an interactive debriefing exercise.
An interactive activity to introduce new members to the team.
A quick warm-up activity that can help a new group get to know one another.
An interactive debrief template to facilitate small and large group reflection.
A structured debrief for both formal and informal interactive sessions.
A debrief template to close your session with options for in-person and virtual.
A team building debrief exercise.
Summarizing the key points of a discussion and reviewing action items as a group at the end of a session encourages reflection.
Creation of a post-facilitation report ensures key objectives, conclusions, and action items from the facilitation are recorded and can be shared.
After the facilitation, send a follow-up email to the participants to express gratitude, synthesize key points, and give an opportunity for feedback.
Follow-Up Email to Participants Template
A sample template follow-up email that can be sent to participants after a session
Post-Facilitation Survey Template
A template post-facilitation survey to gather feedback from your participants.
After a facilitated session, schedule an internal debrief meeting that includes the facilitator, support staff, and relevant stakeholders to discuss the facilitation process and outcomes.
