Scenarios with tools and roles

Some ideas on when you could use different facilitation tools and roles.

Scenario Tools Roles

Your group’s decided it wants to do something about GM, and is Agenda Mood
now trying to decide what. Two people in your meeting are having New voices checker
a disagreement about the way forward - one insists on lobbying an Go round
MP directly, the other believes that it’s best to hold a stall in the Small groups
High Street to raise public concern. Both have said the other’s idea Break
is a “waste of time”, and it’s all getting quite ideological and Throw it back to gp
heated. There are 7 other people in the room, including one for Common ground
whom it’s their first meeting. None of them have said anything for Active listening
quite a while, and at least one is fidgeting and looking like they
might leave soon…

Your group had a very positive meeting last month when you Notes from last Time keeper
decided as a group to focus on Climate Change as your priority meeting
campaign for at least the next six months. You agreed then that this Agenda
month you’d plan your campaign in detail, and people have come Groundrules
prepared with lots of info and ideas. However, an old group New voices
member who used to be very active on local transport issues but Active listening
hasn’t been to the meeting for about a year has come along to this
meeting. They keep putting their hand up and making lengthy
points relating to a local guided bus scheme, and questioning
whether the group should be campaigning on “national issues”.
Other group members are getting visibly frustrated. You need to
finish the meeting by 10pm, and you’re starting to worry you won’t
have hatched a Climate Change campaign plan by then…

Someone has left your group £5000 in their will. The group needs Brainstorm and Note-taker
to decide what to spend it on. At the first meeting after finding out prioritisation
about the legacy, how are you going to structure the discussion to Agenda
ensure a decision gets made? Go round
Active agreement
Small groups
Flip charts
Your meetings are usually energetic and enthusiastic, with lots of Brainstorm Time-keeper
different opinions expressed about a range of environmental issues, Go round Jargon-buster
but nothing ever seems to happen in between them. The same few Small gps/pairs Meeter and
people have been coming for years, whilst newcomers drift in then Think and listen greeter
disappear again. You bump into one such former newcomer and Agenda and Note-taker
chat about why she didn’t stick around – she tells you she felt your outcomes
group “was just a talking shop”. You mention this to the regulars at
the next meeting and they all agree it’d be good to take more action.
The discussion then moves on to what you should take action on,
and once more you have an energetic discussion about a range of
environmental issues, but don’t decide what you’d actually like to
do or agree to do anything. How can you help the group make a
decision next month?

One member of your group is very long winded, and frequently Groundrules Time keeper
takes up a lot of meeting time talking about irrelevant though Agenda Mood
vaguely environment-related subjects. You only have an hour and Active listening checker
a half each month for meetings, and she probably takes up about a New voices
quarter of that talking off the point. Go round