Most people have experienced a variety of meeting and collaboration experiences in their professional lives, from the well-planned and wildly successful to the frustrating and poorly organized. At Fathom, we’ve embraced a human-centric approach to facilitation that emphasizes trust, maximizes participation, and helps to create alignment, clarity, and momentum. There is no doubt that strong preparation is essential to success.
But one of the most important (and challenging) parts of facilitating group collaboration and decision-making is what we call “The Art of the Pivot.” What’s your plan when the event goes in a direction you don’t expect? What do you do if the group is unresponsive, or a new strategic need emerges in real-time? Do you have the awareness, the problem-solving mindset, and the clarity to find a way to adjust your well-planned experience to the changing needs of the group?
Pivoting a group experience can include tension and frustration for participants. In our most recent webinar, several veteran Fathom facilitators share an approach to meeting participants where they’re at—then go deeper into practical examples of executing a pivot in real time. The webinar replay and presentation is below. We hope the discussion and examples help you formulate your own pivot strategies for your next human-centric facilitation experience.
Video replay (59:05)
Slides (.pdf, 1.7 MB)
Looking for even more human-centered facilitation resources? Here are some of our consultants’ favorite readings and tools.
