VisualsSpeak blog

Recently I was asked to facilitate a day long leadership development session for high-level government leaders. The session was held at a retreat center. The group would consist of thirty-five people.

Ten days before the session, we visited the site. There were two meeting rooms reserved for us. Neither one of which would hold both enough tables and the participants. I could either have a room full of tables or a room full of participants. Not good. I had to have both. Did I mention that the rooms were on two separate floors? Oh my, I do love a challenge!

How do you accommodate space challenges?

First I requested each room have tables for part of the group, surrounded by chairs for the rest of the group. That way, even if they couldn’t all work in the same room, I could gather everyone together.

I was fortunate that the woman who directs the program would be on site all day, and she has top notch facilitation skills and had participated previously in a VisualsSpeak session.

She helped monitor one floor while I was on the other. She also had a staff member on-site to monitor details, and the retreat center staff took care of logistics and food. There is no way I could have pulled this off without all the support around me.

Redesigning the flow of the day

I had to re-look at the flow of exercises throughout the day. Normally I give directions for one activity at a time. After people complete one exercise, I give instructions for the next. Instead I had to think about how I could give guidance for a larger time segment. But not give so much that people could not remember everything they were supposed to do.

I needed to walk through the sequence and plan how to move the people between the floors in addition to moving through the activities.

I had to add time to my normal estimates to allow for people walking up the stairs and down the hall, as well as people drifting off in the process. I also cut back on the quantity of content to adjust for how much more tiring it would be to have people up and down multiple times.

I concentrated a series of reflection exercises in a segment right before lunch, and brought everyone in to one room to do them. The handouts included extra exercises that could be done on site if time allowed, or back at the office. This allowed some ability to adjust the time frames since it was difficult to determine beforehand how long the movement between floors would take.

On the day of the session

The day started with an overview of the plan, presented as a general framework. I asked the group to help me accommodate the space challenges. This way, I gave people a sense of the direction without setting up expectations for specific things to happen at a particular time. I could more easily make on-the-fly adjustments without continuously negotiating or explaining to the group the logistical shifting.

I ran up and down the stairs a lot when the groups were working on the two floors. Didn’t need to go to the gym that day. I kept communicating with the other facilitator about what my goals were for the timing and pacing, so we could keep the floors moving at a similar pace.

I asked the individuals to self select their small groups and which floor to be on. It seemed that some of the quieter and reflective people naturally went upstairs. There was a noticeable difference in the noise levels in the rooms. The upstairs also worked at a slightly slower pace, which was helpful to me. That way I had time to run upstairs after giving new time prompts downstairs. The downstairs group was larger, so having them finish an exercise earlier gave them time to all get upstairs while that group was finishing up for large group report outs.

Take away lessons

• Careful planning can overcome space challenges
• Communicate with participants, facilitators, and staff continuously to keep everyone informed to accommodate a shifting pace
• Plan sections with flexible amounts of content
• Make handouts detailed enough that people can continue with the exercises at home if they desire
• Reflection questions work well for flexible content sections
• Five hours of content fits comfortably in one day with breaks and time to accommodate logistical movement.