A list of expectations for how folks in the room want to interact with each other and the material. Consider going over the community agreements at the beginning of the event, starting the room off with some suggestions of your own and then engaging the group in a brainstorm to add to it. Write these guidelines clearly on flip paper or a whiteboard for all to view. Before moving on, ask the group if there is anything else they’d like to add, remove, or get clarity on. Consider asking for an affirmation from the group that you all will commit to these agreements today. If this is a group that will meet regularly, it can be helpful to bring these community agreements and post them on the wall at each meeting, or revisit and add to them at the midway or end point of your time together.

This is a form of active listening. Resonance asks the listener to pay attention to the moments in the storyteller’s story when they felt right there with them. After the story is finished, you say back to the storyteller those moments that you felt something in your body, usually using their same words. For example, “I was right there with you when you said…” or “I resonated with you when you said…” It is not necessary that you experienced the moments that you resonate with, it is about just noticing what came up in your body.

Resonance is NOT:  
Asking questions
Telling your own story
Making meaning
Sharing judgements, opinions, or giving advice
One upping or one downing

There is not enough affirmation in many group dialogue or discussion spaces. Everyone needs more affirmation in our society because of the ways systems of oppression tear us down. Affirming those who take the risk to speak in the space you facilitate is important. Affirmation is one of those tools best paired with other tools. Affirm and ask clarifying questions to anyone who speaks up in the space. For example, “I really appreciate you saying that, can you share more about what you mean when you say that word…” Or sometimes you need to affirm and remind someone of the group’s community agreements if they have spoken or acted otherwise. It is a versatile tool and can be used wherever needed.

Your learning objectives or goals for the space you’re facilitating come from asking yourself/your co-facilitator(s), what do we want people to leave with after this workshop, meeting, or gathering? What do we want people to feel after this experience? What are we hoping to accomplish as a group? These questions will lead you to your goals. 2-3 goals are usually all you can do in a 1-2 hour workshop and making them relatively simple can be helpful sometimes, but will depend on your context.

Some examples of learning objectives are:
Participants will begin to build community with one another.
We will cultivate spaces of knowledge and skill development around [these themes].

It is important to model whatever you are asking your participants to do. For example, if you would like people to be vulnerable in the space you’re facilitating, it is important to first model vulnerability. The same can go for a game or simple activity; model it first for the group before asking others to do it.

Being transparent as a facilitator allows your participants to know what you are doing and your role. It sets up a norm of transparency and honesty within the space. One way to do this would be to write out the agenda on a flip for everyone to see, so all can have a sense of what is to come and feel prepared. Another way to do this is when someone asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, affirm that question, be honest about your knowledge around it, invite the group to respond, and support them in finding resources towards answering that question.

Usually done in the beginning of a workshop, meeting, or gathering. This tool involves everyone in the space checking in about how they are doing and what they are bringing to the space. It’s a chance to allow and affirm each other as emotional and physical beings. Sometimes check ins can be paired with introductions and pronoun go arounds.

When you are making a decision as a facilitator about time or changing your agenda and want to get a feel for what your participants think, you can lead a temperature read. This is an exercise where everyone closes their eyes and either gives a thumbs up, side thumb, or thumbs down to indicate how they feel about the change you are proposing.

Sharing a personal story about your life and experiences with the group and in turn listening to others’ personal stories too. It is helpful to offer a structured prompt to guide people towards a story that recognizes support, though this does not always have to be your goal. Can be done as a big group or in smaller groups/pairs.

Depending on your space’s context and needs, it can be supportive to bring a reading, video, or other media that you’ve asked everyone to engage with prior or offer during the workshop, meeting, or gathering. This is a shared resource that can be used to develop understanding around a specific topic or have people share personal stories connected to the text. When we are in a new space there are so many things we can talk about because we are all coming from different places, literally and figuratively. Shared text can ground people in being in that space together.

Playful activities and games allow people to use multiple parts of their nervous systems and brains! Our nervous system is always checking for signs of safety in any social situation. Games, play, and laughter allow our nervous systems and our bodies to relax and feel connected, even if we are just meeting one another for the first time.

This tool makes sense for ongoing meetings or gatherings, in which having structured engagement after the facilitated space would support the overall work everyone is doing together. This can look like breaking bread or playing games together. It can also look like having meetings in beautiful spaces or going on field trips together.

This tool asks you to think about what kind of support you need to facilitate your best. Sometimes this means working with another facilitator that has complimentary skills and gifts to you. Sometimes this means asking a friend to help you with setup and cleanup. Sometimes this means having a different person in your group take responsibility for different parts of the facilitation – make sure people consent to this beforehand and feel confident about their role or what they are able to contribute. Usually support for facilitation involves more people. While reaching out for support and sharing leadership can be a growing edge for many of us, it can also make the process easier and more fulfilling.

An agenda is your plan for the workshop, meeting, or gathering. You can also choose to list the times for how long you want to spend on each activity or topic dialogue.

A check in, prompt, question, or topic goes around the group and each person is given the same opportunity to share their thoughts.

A pair share is when two people share with one another for a given period of time, usually responding to a prompt given to the group by a facilitator. Sometimes this can be an active listening activity or trust building activity, depending on the space’s context or the group’s needs. You can also do this activity as a triad (three people).

It is helpful to have a mixture of big group discussions and activities, as well as small group time. This allows people with different learning styles to participate fully.

This is when you invite the group to share together. Dialogue is different from discussion. Discussion involves a group talking about a subject with the goals of sharing information but not necessarily building knowledge. The key component of dialogue is listening to respond and build knowledge with what has already been said in the group. It is more focused on building knowledge together than only sharing information in a group.

If you are leading anything that offers storytelling or requires collective decision making, teaching active listening or creating space for people to practice active listening can be really helpful. Everyone needs to feel heard and listened to in order to be happy and healthy. A way to bring active listening into a space can be to ask the group to name ways they know someone is listening to them (this can be different for different people, culturally and experientially). Then do an active listening pair share where one person talks for 2-3 minutes and the other person just listens. Then switch. Afterwards, you can open up the space to let the group debrief how that felt.

This can also work in groups of three, where there’s 1 listener, 1 talker, and 1 observer. The talker speaks and the listener listens for 2 minutes. The observer notices what the listener does to show they are listening and then relays what they saw after the 2 minutes are up. Then everyone switches so each person gets a chance to be in each role.

So much of facilitation is about communication, so it is also important to recognize the ways you communicate nonverbally. Do you have open body language when you are facilitating? What do you want to communicate to your participants with your body language? It is equally important to pay attention to the body language of the participants. What is their body language telling you about their engagement with or experience in the space you are facilitating? Follow up questions can be a good way to assess if what you’re picking up from participants’ body language matches their experience.

If your workshop, meeting, or gathering is more than an hour long (and sometimes even in that time frame) it is important to offer bio breaks, breaks for our bodies to do whatever they need to in order to be present. This can be going to the bathroom, getting some water, moving around, or getting some fresh air, whatever folks need.

Having food/snacks at any workshop, meeting, or gathering can create a more welcoming space that invites everyone to feel nourished.

It can be helpful after people are vulnerable with one another to take a collective deep breath; sometimes more than one can be a needed release. Leading everyone in a deep breath or guided meditation can ground people in the present and in their bodies, which can support the work you are doing together.

Similar to breathing/meditation, movement can support people in releasing energy kinetically. This can be a movement game or a collective shake/wiggle to let go of stuck energy.

Having a specific space set aside in the room you are facilitating with objects or food that support wellness can make participants feel welcome and held from the moment they enter the space. This is a form of caring for people even before you begin to work together. There can be an electric kettle for tea, smooth rocks, flower essences to support the heart or body, aromatherapy like essential oils, or granola bars. These things and more can support a wellness station.

If planning a large conference or event, it could be helpful to create a physical station or space where differently abled folks and allies can find information that will support their accessibility needs. This information can include accessible bathrooms, workshop locations, support space and quiet space options, and any other information that will help participants navigate and engage with your event.

A person or group of people who is tasked with attending to needs that may be present in the space. They should be introduced at the opening of the space so that at any time they are easy to find and connect with. They act as point people for folks to find and request information and support throughout the event.

If you’re hosting a small meeting or group, consider using handouts, flipchart paper, white boards, and other visual tools to support participation. If you’re hosting a large group or event, consider making microphones available for speakers and for audience participation. Offer interpreters for American Sign Language and/or other languages for non-English speaking attendees. Look into headphones and/or live captioning options for those who are hearing impaired. If you’ve invited a speaker to your group or event, check in with them about any specific tech requests they have. If you’re screening a film, turn on captions.

For those who aren’t able to join you in the space or who would like to revisit the event, there are a variety of tech supports you can provide. These include: call-in, video-chat, live-streaming, recordings, or typed-up notes. If these are options, make this clear to folks in all outreach and publicity material, and get consent from participants present before recording.

Important considerations when making events and spaces accessible for folks who learn and communicate in a multitude of ways. The Universal Principles of Design include: providing multiple means of representation in order to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge; multiple means of expression in order to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know; and multiple means of engagement in order to tap into learners’ interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation.

A list of expectations for how folks in the room want to interact with each other and the material. Consider going over the community agreements at the beginning of the event, starting the room off with some suggestions of your own and then engaging the group in a brainstorm to add to it. Write these guidelines clearly on flip paper or a whiteboard for all to view. Before moving on, ask the group if there is anything else they’d like to add, remove, or get clarity on. Consider asking for an affirmation from the group that you all will commit to these agreements today. If this is a group that will meet regularly, it can be helpful to bring these community agreements and post them on the wall at each meeting, or revisit and add to them at the midway or end point of your time together.

Pronouns are an important access tool that can be introduced at the beginning of a workshop, meeting, or gathering to create a trans, non-binary, and genderqueer inclusive space. We can’t always know what someone’s pronouns are by looking at them. Asking and correctly using someone’s pronouns is one of the most basic ways to show one’s respect for another’s gender identity. As part of an introduction or check-in, you can ask folks in the room to share their name and pronouns, as well as any other question or access need. Some possible pronouns to share as examples are they/them, she/her, he/him, or ze/hir. Avoid saying “female/feminine” and “male/masculine” as pronouns because not everyone who uses she/her or he/him pronouns feels “female” or “masculine.”

Offering food at a meeting or event can be supportive for folks who may be rushing from other spaces, have low blood sugar, may be experiencing food insecurity, or just need a snack to feel grounded in the space. On any outreach material, make sure to note that food will be provided. If possible, send out an email or form before the meeting or event to ask about food allergies and dietary preferences. Nut-free, gluten-free, and vegan options are always welcome.

Maintaining to the best of your collective abilities an allergy- and scent-free space is critical to making spaces accessible to people with autoimmune diseases, asthma, chemical injury, and sensitivities. Some allergies to be aware of can include dust, mold, chemicals, and animal fur. You can mitigate these by making sure the room you’re in is cleaned and vacuumed beforehand. Consider using cleaners without harsh chemicals, strong scents, or essential oils. White vinegar is a better option than bleach as it is odorless and kills mold. Some sensitivities to be aware of can include scents, smoke, and light. You can mitigate these by asking participants to refrain from wearing perfume, cologne, or essential oils in the space and minimizing scented hair and body products. Make this information available in all outreach materials. Check in with folks about lighting options (overhead, natural light, curtains, etc.) in the space throughout the day.

Incorporating gentle, inclusive activities that invite people to connect with their senses and bodies can be engaging and helpful to your overall goals. You may also want to consider providing fidget toys, coloring books, small rocks, or pipe cleaners for folks to use during a longer workshop, conference, training, lecture, or other time when extended listening is expected. These can be supportive for folks across needs and spectrums.

Evaluate your physical space. Think about how a variety of people will be moving in and out of entryways, hallways, doors, rooms, and bathrooms. Make sure to keep clear paths to, from and within the room that are wide enough for all to move through. Have high-contrast, large-print directional signs throughout. ADA-compliant and gender neutral bathrooms with single stalls are best. Create quiet rooms outside of the main space, at least one for folks who need to step out for a minute and at least one for folks with young children who need to nurse or play. In these spaces, consider having dim lighting, soft seating, water or tea, and any other support resources, such as chocolate, stones, fidget toys, paper and pens, or pipe cleaners. Make this information available in all outreach materials.

Seating options can include some amount and/or combination of chairs, benches, couches, or cushions that are as large and comfortable as possible. Think about making seating available specifically for folks in wheelchairs or will mobility issues, folks with young children, and folks with scent or chemical sensitivities. Make sure there is enough space between seating so folks are easily able to navigate the space. Consider identifying a place for folks to safely put their belongings away from the seating.

We all have different experiences and perspectives on almost everything so it’s important to create a space where questions and curiosities are supported. Asking simple questions about what someone meant when they said this or to elaborate on that concept can really help the whole group understand more.

Asking people to reflect on an activity or exercise you do together can help deepen the experience and give everyone important information about how they were affected. This can look like a prompted free write or prompted pair share and then bringing the group back together to share out so people can hear what one another are thinking and feeling.  

Evaluation is an important tool for a facilitator to get information on how effective their facilitation was and how it impacted the participants. It can also help you know what people need in the space in the future.

KLPDQs are one evaluation tool. It stands for Key Learnings, Plus’s, Delta’s (it would be better if…), and Key Questions. This structure allows the group to share out different times in the facilitation that fit into these categories.

It is very helpful to have resources available to anyone in your workshop, meeting, or gathering relevant to the purpose of your space. It is very likely that what you are doing has been done before or is happening somewhere else in the country or world. Giving people more access to that can support the work you all are doing together. These resources can include readings, websites and blogs, podcasts, and other media, among many.