I recently attended a child’s birthday party in a beautiful city park, and it involved a piñata.

As I watched Birthday Dad’s attempts to control this chaos, I realized how many leadership and facilitation skills were in play.

And I have to be honest: Two years ago, when I first volunteered to facilitate the Campus Engagement Workgroup, I felt like that piñata. I remember my nerves during our early meetings — all butterflies and sweaty palms. I didn’t want to make any embarrassing belly-flops, especially in front of colleagues I didn’t know very well.

Two years and a pandemic later, I’m feeling exhausted … but really good about what this year’s Strategic Planning: Communiction workgroup has accomplished.

I am by no means an expert on workgroup facilitation, but I do want to share what seemed to work well for our teams — and to help nudge anyone who might be on the fence about facilitating a group next year.

Here are the five lessons Stephanie Ogilvie Seagle learned along the journey.

 

Just added to our professional development calendar:

Author Alfie Kohn / Future Trends Forum: How can we best reform teaching and learning? Should we rethink grading and student autonomy? April 22, 2 p.m. (Stephanie’s personal note: I’m very excited about this Future Trends Forum discussion, as I credit my career in higher ed partly to Kohn’s provocative books, which I read 20 years ago.) Register here. Recordings of previous forums are available on YouTube.