This year, I’m taking on a creative challenge: to produce an A to Z of facilitation mindset shifts— a series of quick, practical posts on key mindset shifts that make collaboration more effective.

In my last post, I described how I wasn’t exactly a natural facilitator when I started out. I also described embarking on the process of unlearning and rethinking how I saw myself and my role. Here’s that post in case you missed it: Over the next couple of posts, we’ll give a little bit of love to the undersung star of facilitation: the mindset.

In the early days of working at a non-profit, I was on a project in which I needed to deliver a short book as one of the grant deliverables. This was my first experience of working with a professional facilitator and provided a fascinating insight into the world of facilitation. I got a bonus gift: a firm but fair lesson in self-awareness.

I’m sometimes asked for recommendations for where to go for great facilitation exercises and innovation tools. Here I am only listing free resources.