Not Just Another Meeting: Creative Strategies for Facilitation

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THE ART OF DESIGN

For 35 years, we conducted a leadership development program in the wilds of Ontario, Canada, on Lake Temagami. People would fly in on a bush plane and stay between 10 and 15 days to learn how to be more effective leaders and facilitators as they attempted to create a high-performing community. The 16-20 participants took pseudonyms and shared none of their back-home realities, such as the nature of their work role, authority, or background. In addition, we used many Native American rituals to encourage participants to step out of their habitual and predictable back-home cultures and ways. For example, participants spent hours sitting alone in deep woods, listening to and observing the transition between day and night. There ...