Tips on Facilitating Resilience Circles Webinar: March 19, 2012 Dakota Butterfield and Sarah Byrnes

Resilience Circles Welcome to our first facilitators’ webinar! We hope to help you build your facilitation muscles -- by sharing tips, responding to your questions, and connecting you with others who are also doing this work.

Members of your group rely on you as facilitator to do three things: Resilience Circles Overarching Principles Members of your group rely on you as facilitator to do three things: 1. Create a welcoming environment – “I belong here. This is a group I can be part of.”

Members of your group rely on you as facilitator to do three things: Resilience Circles Overarching Principles Members of your group rely on you as facilitator to do three things: 2. Maintain a fair and safe environment – “I’ll be respected and protected from abuse here.”

Members of your group rely on you as facilitator to do three things: Resilience Circles Overarching Principles Members of your group rely on you as facilitator to do three things: 3. Guide the group to be productive – “We use our time well together, and feel good about what we get done.”

Resilience Circles Overarching Principles The group relies on its facilitator to do three things: 1. Create a welcoming environment – 2. Maintain a fair and safe environment – 3. Guide the group to be productive – ….and in the case of a Resilience Circle – 4. Develop group members to step into leadership.

Resilience Circles 1. Creating a welcoming environment Checking in on absent members Checking in in-between meetings

2. Maintaining a fair and safe environment Resilience Circles 2. Maintaining a fair and safe environment How to avoid a free-for-all, dominated by a few? How to handle strong disagreements with co-facilitator? How to interrupt people? Watch out for over-talk of facilitator Dealing with issues of privilege and power

3. Guiding the group to be productive Resilience Circles 3. Guiding the group to be productive How to assess and redirect the conversation when outside the agenda? Avoiding a free-for-all

4. Developing new leaders Resilience Circles 4. Developing new leaders Prepare small tasks ahead of time to co-facilitate Ask if someone will handle evaluation, brainstorm, opening/closing readings Team with new facilitator Coach with pre-meeting planning/post-meeting debrief

Resilience Circles Our world is changing. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin The work that you are doing to help your neighbors become more resilient by learning about the challenges we are all facing and connecting deeply with one another is important work. Keep doing it!