Facilitator Guide - Consultation Basics

This Consultation Basics workshop series is a self-paced training module for groups. Based on the book Collaboration Through Consultation, these workshops illustrate the principles of consultation through a series of hands-on activities.

What is consultation?

Consultation is a form of group decision-making that is based on the search for truth. It allows a group to see an issue from all sides and make wise decisions.

How to facilitate these workshops

If this is your first time facilitating a group, don’t worry. You got this! And we’ve made it easy for you, with the participants doing most of the work.

Choose your workshop from the list.
Read through the Facilitator Guide for the workshop.
Read through the slides for the workshop.
Gather the materials listed.
Participants will take turns reading the slides.
(Scan the QR code to read along on their phone.)
Lead the group in the activity.
Facilitate the discussions.
Make sure everyone gets a chance to speak.
Share your feedback with us so we can make these workshops even better.

Workshop List

What's in this Guide

Each workshop below is organized into sections:

Workshop Link: This is the link to the workshop slides. Read through these slides before the session.
Materials: A list of materials you’ll need to gather (mostly household items).
Timing: Generally, these workshops take about 20 minutes or less.
Setup: This is how you want to set up the space for the workshop.
Sequence: These are the steps for the workshop itself. In general, the participants will take turns reading the slides out loud. Then you’ll lead them in the activity. Finally, the group will discuss what they’ve learned (we provide discussion questions on the slides).
Activity: These are instructions specific to the activity.
Discuss: We provide the discussion questions here and in the slides. Make sure everyone has a chance to speak during the discussions.
Share: This workshop series is a “living book” — we all get to help make it better. The last slide in each workshop contains a link to “share your ideas”. Encourage your group to complete the form and offer suggestions on how to improve the workshop. If you sign up for the newsletter, you’ll be able to vote for the suggestions you like the best.

We’ve designed these workshops for youth, but adults really enjoy these hands-on activities as well. So relax, have fun with it and remember — we’re all learning. There are no experts in consultation. It’s a skill that improves with practice. And there’s always more to learn.

1 Warming Up

Workshop Link

1 Warming Up
Read through these slides before the session.

Materials

Your voices.
Your sense of humor.

Timing

20 minutes or less
(If you have time, you can do Workshop 1 and Workshop 2 together.)

Setup

Place chairs in a circle.
You may need to move the chairs back during the activity.

Sequence

Opener: If this is the first activity of the day, we suggest starting with a simple warm-up to get everyone settled, maybe go around the group and ask everyone to share their favorite ____ (animal, color, food, book, movie, etc.)
Participants take turns reading the panels.
Activity: Role-play story of The Five Blind Men.
Discuss what happened in the story.
Share your feedback/learning.

The first step is to help the youth learn to read aloud effectively. We’ve set up these workshops so that the youth themselves read through the content together. This is to 1) take the burden off you, the facilitator and 2) empower the youth in their own learning. We figured this would be more effective than having someone (you) give them a lecture on the topic.

But this means that they all need to be able to read out loud effectively — not mumbling into the page, not racing through the words to get it over with as quickly as possible. But rather to step into the words, inhabit them, paint a picture for their listeners as a gift to them.

So we’ll start with something simple — a fable they may already know: The Five Blind Men.

Activity: Role Play

Choose volunteers to play characters in the story: the 5 blind men and the girl.
Take time and play with the story. Let the participants have fun with it. Maybe they want to act it out. Ideally everyone will have a chance to play one of the characters. Make it light-hearted and fun.

The whole point of this exercise is to help the participants feel comfortable reading aloud:

To speak clearly.
To speak loudly enough for everyone to hear.
To pause between thoughts.
To not rush through the words.
To be expressive.

It’s a gift to your listeners to read aloud well. It helps them understand the story.

Discuss

What happened in this story?
What didn’t happen?
What would have helped the five men?
Have you ever been in a situation where each person had only a partial understanding of what was going on?
What was the result?

Share your ideas for improving the workshop.