Facilitation tips: how to avoid ‘death by group feedback’

Last year, I wrote a LinkedIn post about a major challenge I face as a facilitator: trying to avoid ‘death by group feedback.’

The responses from other facilitators were amazing, and I've combined their advice with my original ideas to create an updated version! Thank you to everyone who added their thoughts to the original post. It was such an inspiration!

What's the problem?

When facilitating, a common activity is to have people break into small groups for discussions and then bring everyone back together to share their reflections. This can often drag on, with groups repeating each other’s points, causing the energy in the room to drop.

My original suggestions on how I get around this were:

🌱 The 1, 2, 4, all method from Liberating Structures - asking people in different groups to pair up and share reflections briefly.

🌱 Doing a 'carousel': each group has a flip chart and one person is responsible for writing down the headlines from the conversation. Then the flip charts are placed around the room, and people can circulate to read what other groups covered.

🌱 Share back 'bingo', where as groups feed back other raise their hand to indicate if they covered a similar topic, and then as each subsequent group goes they only add new or additional insights. Tom Styles also said he has done this before - it is a popular option!

🌱 Forgetting about group feedback altogether, and ending break out group activities with a moment for individuals to write their own reflections / takeaways and add them onto a wall / flipchart for the group to read later / in their own time.

Then the real gems came in from facilitators far and wide!

🔥 From Benjamin P. Taylor there was a reminder to think about 'what is the purpose of the feedback'? Once we know this, then the design can follow.

🎉 Julia Roig shared an example of getting each small group to create a skit to act out the main points they wanted to share back, and in the same vein Carole R Spicer has asked groups to come up with a poem or limerick to sum up their findings and Mille Bojer has asked groups to share an image or metaphor instead of words (a great way to keep things quick!).

❤️ I loved this idea from Payal Parekh who has hosted a "talk show," asking different breakout groups different questions - again keeping things quick and engaging.

🖥 A few facilitators use tech to help them speed up the group feedback process. Lauren Green said she is using hashtag#AI to quickly cluster themes together and Monika Udeani has used Mentimeter to get groups to share their insights back without the need for a verbal 'go round'.

🐟 And one I am planning to try soon is from Marjeta Novak who suggested using an open fishbowl prompted by a question with one person from each break out group discussing their reflections in the fishbowl.