Tuesday 31 March 2015

A Fishbone on Glos County Training Day

Example of a Fishbone diagram to illustrate the issues around transitioning between the sections

 
I was fortunate enough to attend a workshop this month on using a variety of techniques to encourage attendees to participate in discussion so I thought I would give this idea a go. At our recent county training day I was given 1 hour to run a workshop on celebrating a smooth transition process - it was cross section so I had to try and get something in for everyone. I thought by charting all of the pitfalls on the fishbone we could usefully use the hour to focus on the positives and the celebration aspect. However I was knocked off course immediately in that the preceding workshop overran so both I & the Leaders were waiting outside the classroom to go in. Which meant I didn't get time to prepare so was literally facilitating the workshop in the order it came out of the bag for life - not good. There was plenty of discussion but there were some very very experienced Leaders who had a lot to share, so it was difficult to get the majority of the group contributing,
 
Next time I will insist on either being the first workshop after lunch or having an empty classroom to set up in advance. I would also split the group for part of the workshop into their section to make the sharing of experiences more meaningful. From some of the conversation I overheard whilst waiting for Taps I suspect there had been an overlap with the content of the afternoon workshops and some of the morning trainings - it will be interesting to see the feedback forms.
 
The first training on "Good Guiding is ....." and Adventure & Challenges - despite being bigger than I had anticipated went really well. The groups had to overflow into the corridor to work and I had to trim material from the end of my plan in order to finish on time. The old GG book on Wide Games was a real hit and I pointed them to a USA site selling a copy for $20!