Facilitating Problem-Solving Activities with Lisa Hunt & Ryan McCormick

Description

Episode 101: High 5 team members Lisa Hunt and Ryan McCormick discuss the ways in which they effectively facilitate problem-solving activities with groups. Over time, their approaches and strategies have changed. In the next 20 minutes or so, you’ll discover insights, tips, and perspectives to consider in your group facilitation work to enhance your skills.

To kick off the conversation, Ryan delves into the methods that he uses to measure a group’s success in solving problems.  Furthermore, the pair explore how an individual’s problem solving accomplishments rank against the groups, and vice versa. Along the way, Ryan details his strategy for noticing and managing emotions. Specifically, he focuses on how this connects to a team’s debriefing process.

Midway through the episode, Ryan details how he selects educational activities that involve problem-solving initiatives. Similarly, the pair discuss how a group’s process for facing challenges can be successful, even when the objective of an activity isn’t met. This connects to the deeper topic of how individuals and groups think when presented with obstacles to overcome. These themes overlap with Lisa and Ryan’s conversation on potential indicators that are the mark of a good teammate later on in the podcast.

In closing, the pair focuses time on adaptations – asking you to consider the impact of making your own version of an existing activity. What’s the impact on a person’s motivation and ability to understand a subject. Moreover, how can a facilitator make an activity more useful for a specific group utilizing this concept? This coincides with the last major point made by Lisa. That being, how holding too much power as a facilitator can negatively impact participants engaged in a problem-solving activity. So many helpful ideas to engage your groups in problem-solving activities.  Enjoy!