Creating Inspiring Workshops and Courses in Transdisciplinarity: A Guide - Manual / Resource - Page 33
Delivery
How will you facilitate effectively, con昀椀dently, and 昀氀exibly?
At the start of the training
Your participants are adults who have spent years in classroom settings — likely very traditional classrooms. You have set up
the workshop/training space in a way that is already shifting expectations: Participants are sitting in a circle with you, no podium,
no tables, no rows of chairs, no one up front — none of the normal indicators that they are about to hear a lecture or that one
person knows while the others are only learners. You need to put everyone at ease and enable the group to feel safe (enough) or
brave enough with you and with one another. This process is called “building the container” or “building brave spaces.”
Containers, quite literally, are spaces with clear boundaries that allow certain things to happen. People within them need to
know why they are there and who is in the container; and they relate to each other within given rules or social norms. To build a
container, you must clarify each of these aspects.
Provide a mechanism to quickly 昀椀nd out who is in the room
Wherever we go, we look around to find out if we know anyone and ask ourselves, “Do I belong here?” Make sure that
introductions are quick and status-free — for example, your first name and favorite ecosystem, type of food, or some
other prompt that goes with the training theme or with a sustainability issue people connect around. Or ask, “Are you a
coffee or tea drinker” or a similar forced-choice, non-threatening question. It is important that you go first to model it.
Long introductions don’t help people remember names or make connections. Instead, people stop listening and figure out
what to say or, worse, begin to feel like they don’t belong.
Basics of training design
Delivery
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