By Clive Hook of www.clearworth.com
That low tech, often abused thing in the corner, the
flipchart, is your most important tool, and your best
friend in facilitation. I often say I would pay
facilitators based on two things - and one of these is how
much they work to get information to be vertical and
visible.
Vertical - Most meetings have everyone looking at their own
papers in front of them horizontally on the table. No-one
really knows what everyone else is looking at or reading.
When a decision is made, or a resolution is reached, there
will be some who are not quite sure what was just said.
The facilitator's job is to bring everyone's attention to
where the action is - and that's on the flipchart.
Visible - For the flipchart to work, people have to see it!
You need to think about your room layout, but more
importantly, your skill in writing on a vertical surface
(which takes practice), and the techniques associated with
charting. Your writing has to be legible, and it's much
better to develop a way of working in capitals that is
reasonably quick, than to rely on your normal handwriting.
Creating Effective Flipcharts
Because the flipchart is your most important tool, make
sure you can actually use it. I always, always take my own
flipchart pens, by the way. You will not be able to give
the service you're there for, if your pens don't work.
Blue and black are, without doubt, the colours to work with
for text. Red and green are great for emphasis and
highlighting. Those are all the colours you need for your
job.
I used to be astounded how often people wrote in red and
green, then I realised that they were the colours always
left behind in meeting rooms - because the black and blue
had been used. These colours do not, repeat do not, work
for text. They are generally less visible against white
from a distance than black and blue, and some people
(particularly men) have difficulty distinguishing red and
green from each other, and from black or grey.
Intellectual Property
You are using the flipchart to write up what people have
said or proposed or thought. This is their property. When
people see their words on the vertical and visible surface,
they feel a connection to the meeting and its process.
Those words belong to them. This is a fundamental
principle for all facilitators, so treat them as anybody
else's property you have been asked to look after. Your
care in capturing exactly what they said, reflects your
respect. Never cross out contributions, unless you have
been specifically told to do so by the author. If there's
general disagreement from others, I use brackets or a
question mark, so it stays there, but is marked as "under
discussion".
Flipcharts as Group Memory
Part of your job is to help the group's memory, and that
works best with a structure and pointers to help recall.
Breaks in the meeting are for participants to relax - not
you. One of your jobs in the breaks, is to mark the
flipcharts with things which will help recall, and to
display them in a logical order, if they are likely to be
referred to in some way later. Titles, numbers and dates
in the top right hand corner, all help you and the group to
recapture the essence much more quickly.
So - lots of flexibility, no bulbs to worry about, no
electrical cables, no noise from cooling fans just some
care and attention from you and you'll provide a great
service to the team or group as you drastically improve the
way they do meetings. Oh - and of course you can
photograph the sheets at the end on your phone or digital
camera and then no writing up minutes and action points
either.
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Clive Hook is founder of http://www.clearworth.com which
specialises in offering high quality bespoke Management
development training programmes, Executive coaching,
F@sterclasses and team surveys.
We're all about learning. But not just learning for the
sake it - learning modified and improved by experience so
that it becomes really effective for both organisations and
individuals.
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