The Facilitation Diamond

If you're at all interested in teamwork, thinking, creativity, decision-making, or facilitation - you should read "Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making" and keep it on your shelf for reference.

The book is full of good stuff, but my favorite tool in the book is the Facilitation Diamond.

Everytime I schedule a group facilitation, I have a pre-meeting with the session sponsor.

In the pre-meeting, I draw the Facilitation Diamond on the white board to show how the session will progress.

At this point, I open my toolbox and we decide which tools will work best.

I use seven (or so) sections to the session:

1. Opening: Go over the agenda. Share the diamond flow. Perhaps a quick exercise.
2. Diverging Activity 1: Present traditional or evolutionary ideas.
3. Diverging Activity 2: Stimulate non-tradition, revolutionary ideas.
4. Transition: A break or a brain-cleansing exercise.
5. Converging Activity 1: To narrow the multitude of ideas to some actionable ones.
6. Converging Activity 2: To chose the best one (or 3 - 5 ideas).
7. Closing: Decide on next actions

I have large posters of the image above that I label with the tools that we'll be using. I hang these as the session agenda. 

It allows everyone to see a map of the energy flow for the day.

Here's a pdf that outlines the method in more detail.