Interactive Conference Facilitation

You and your team are experts at what you do. When you want to create a powerful retreat or conference, you want to find interactive, effective ways to meet your objectives (both your organizational and group dynamics objectives) and engage your audience interactively with your content.

• InnerWork facilitators are conference facilitation experts who understand a broad range of interactive, experiential “best practices” methods that have been drawn from over fifty years of proven, research-based large and small group facilitation.
• We understand how to engage your audience and your content with highly effective facilitation methods, formats, and exercises that go far beyond “death by PowerPoint”.

Consult a facilitator form today on a complimentary basis to learn more about how your retreat, conference or important meeting can be made extraordinary through these “best practices” of group facilitation & engagement.

• To get you started, here is an initial gallery of possible methods and approaches that InnerWork senior facilitators have used to configure powerful creative retreat and conferences agendas.
• Depending on your needs, there may be excellent, innovative ways to engage your audience and your content—differently.

Break-Out Groups are customized, facilitated small team dialogue exercises on specific real-world issues and opportunities for engagement and resolution.

• The Break Out Group process builds high degrees of teamwork, communication and collaboration on high impact issues, and leads to preliminary recommendations and action plans that are shared back in full group for      open dialogue.
• “Take away” action plans and action teams are assigned during and / or after the conference for results-based implementation. This also creates an ROI and ROO (return-on-objectives) for your conference investment.

Open Space is a facilitated, innovative group engagement method that helps a group surface key issues, opportunities, and important topics in a LIVE format.

• The group “self organizes” around the high priority issues into small teams, based on where there is the most passion, energy and volunteers to develop an initial solution to the issue.
• The small teams report back to the full group for open dialogue, and action teams / plans are made to resolve the issues and to implement solutions after the retreat.

Appreciative Inquiry methods engage groups in a positive thinking, “strength finding” planning process to build a desired outcome or Future state based on what is working well in an organizational system or team.

• The Appreciative Inquiry approach differs from methods that focus on “breakdowns” or “gap analysis” approaches.
• Teams focus their action plans based on expanding and building out on “strengths” and positive behaviors that bring energy and life to a complex situation.

The Café Model is a facilitated, highly interactive group engagement process that generates and captures a group’s collective intelligence and key ideas & solutions for an issue that needs positive change.

• The Café model sets the conference room space with small café tables with brainstorming materials.
• Each table is a key location where small teams explore one or two central questions on the focus issue, then rotate at timed intervals to different tables, collectively carrying their insights from table to table and building a body of collective insights and creative solutions.
• There is a facilitated full group summarizing session that pull through the group’s collective intelligence and leads to a variety of next steps or action planning opportunities.

These large group methods are used to build a more positive organizational climate and morale. InnerWork clients retain our senior facilitators to custom design innovative Town Halls or “All Hands” Meetings, and transform them into powerful two-way communication & open engagement sessions between leaders and staff.

• These sessions can also leverage “all the right people in the room” for idea brainstorming and recommendations for positive change that can “kick start” action steps and action teaming during and after the meeting.

Creatively-designed conference agendas can engage large and small groups into visually imagining and articulating new possibilities for positive change and transformation.

• InnerWork senior facilitators, working with professional Graphic Recorders, capture those possibilities visually and in a colorful LIVE format on large white boards to display to the audience.
• These artistic renderings creatively anchor the group’s “possibility thinking” in inspiring images, and provides beautiful “take-aways” for post conference display and staff motivation.

Great conferences build relationships! Meeting Energizers & Networking activities are interactive, brief (5 – 10 minute) and FUN team building exercises to boost the group’s energy, mingle and mix people, and spark the group to make new connections and new friends fast!

Conferences and retreats are ideal venues for leaders to convene and engage small teams of people into Results-Based Action Teams to set a “stretch goal” and shape an action plan to tackle a high priority workplace improvement challenge, and drive positive change on “what matters most”.

• InnerWork senior facilitators provide facilitation and implementation guides for how to launch Results-Based Action Teams rapidly on key issues or opportunities, and guide leaders on how they can “sponsor and coach” team attributes like speed, accountability and execution for follow-up.

Work Out is a facilitated large and small group issue resolution process that was developed in General Electric in the 1990’s.

• Work Out focuses on a pre-identified issue, problem, or process that needs radical improvement. The senior leader(s) convenes “all the right people” in a conference format, and delegates them to “work out” an immediate, initial solution and action plan.
• After a period of time (half day – one day), the leader receives a report back on the initial ideas and action plans, and provides immediate feedback and approval for action.
• The leader works with the group LIVE to set the final scope and appropriate boundaries. A formal Work Out Team is launched, and the leader expects tangible action and improvement over a 90 – 100 day window, with monthly reviews.

Customer Summits or Customer / Supplier Summits are facilitated collaborative relationship building activities and joint planning processes.

• These summits are custom designed for the needs of all stakeholders, and often include large group / small group planning processes to focus on mutual opportunities, mutual improvement challenges, and building deeper commitments between a sponsoring organization and its key customers; and / or its key suppliers.
• Sponsoring and participating organizations in these summits realized a wide range of benefits and developed stronger relationships to meet common goals and challenges.

Future Search / Future Visioning is a facilitated collaborative planning method that engages multiple stakeholders to think strategically and openly about their past and current state; and then focuses the stakeholders on creating their desired future by creating a common shared vision of that Future State.

• Through a series of structured exercises that are highly participatory, the stakeholders align and commit to specific action plans and initiatives to achieve the desired Future State outcomes, and engage in post-conference follow-up and execution.

Conference-based Strategic Planning processes are facilitated, “fast track” strategic thinking & planning sessions that involve an initial strategic situation assessment and prioritization of needed responses to the situation.

• The facilitator then helps the leaders / teams define a working strategy and envision key strategic initiatives to respond to the important trends, opportunities, or threats they perceive; and facilitates large and small group collaborative action planning for subsequent operational execution.     

Retreats and conferences can be excellent venues to launch or build successful project teams or key initiative teams. InnerWork senior facilitators can provide expert project planning and project management coaching to organize Project Charters, Task Plans, Responsibility Assignments, Project Schedules, and much more.

• InnerWork has conducted this Project Planning facilitation work globally since 1990, and has been retained by many multinational companies and joint ventures partnerships to build successful project teams.