Structuring our everyday liberation, because facilitation magic is not just for the workplace

It often feels invasive, particularly to the close relatives and friends of facilitators, to see facilitation ‘stuff’ (exercises, lenses, props) being applied to personal, private, moments.

It’s a pity really, because facilitation is a life skill. And it is magical too. It helps us improve our own and our bilateral or group communication, our empathy, our patience with silence, our staying focused on the other party and listening intently, our ability to build on each other’s point etc.

And on top of all of that, there’s the actual facilitation ‘exercises’ or structures or participation formats that can really help for ourselves (alone) and for our chats with other people, whether bilaterally or in larger groups.

Let’s take Liberating Structures and look at many ways that they prove handy in everyday life:

Individually:

• Get some answers about what feels stuck and what feels like it’s not moving fast enough with Ecocycle Planning – oh and you could even review your relationships through that lens 😉
• Think about what really matters for: your travel list, what you hope to get out of everyday, principles of parenting, conditions for saving money or investing, the criteria that matter to find a romantic partner, this new project starting… I mean, with Min Specs, the possibilities of applying this ‘bare essentials’ approach are nearly endless!
• Face your own demons and de-dramatise how they play up in your mind with ‘tiny monsters/demons‘
• Embrace paradoxes rather than function in simplistic ‘THIS OR THAT’ mode with Wicked Questions
• Imagine the future and find resilient ways of dealing with the risk and uncertainty with Critical Uncertainties
• Etc.

Bilaterally:

• Hear the unfortunate moments of not feeling respected, and get an opportunity to understand, and explore together how to prevent these moments from happening with Heard Seen Respected
• Find out what your preferred way of being listened to or listening to is with ‘helping heuristics‘
• Approach any question with a creative visual through Drawing together
• Help each other find out what is the rock solid foundation of something that has true meaning for you with 9 why’s
• Etc.

And on that note, Myriam Hadnes had already shared on LinkedIn how she could use Liberating Structures to go on a date.

In groups of 3 or more:

• Find and offer help to each other’s daily or more complicated problems with Troika Consulting
• Understand how you can do things with each other better (say in how your organise your family chores, how your group of friends is going to prepare for this trip or birthday party together, how your scouting association or book reading club is getting projects on the go) with ‘What I need from you (WINFY)’
• Realise together, before it’s too late, what toxic behaviours you and your relatives / friends / neighbours / sports mates are occasionally guilty of and what to do about it with TRIZ
• Share a lot of stuff with a lot of people in relatively little time and with a lot of dynamics and energy using Shift & Share – this could be handy for a local fair you organise, or even virtually with a group of friends that hasn’t been together for a while etc.
• Etc.

And all of these are combinable, and then some more!!

So what are we waiting for?

Indeed, I would really advise everyone and anyone to explore Liberating Structures, and facilitation more broadly. You will find a wealth of life hacks and ideas to live a healthy, productive, successful, fun life!

Are you interested to find out more about Liberating Structures, get a proper feel for them, understand more deeply how they work and how they could transform your life?

Come join us at this upcoming immersion workshop 3-4 + 24-25 November (online)

And we get to meet each other and open up our little backpack of magic together!