facilitation today

today I facilitated a strategic planning session - the group was supposed to discuss themes and action items from the topics we were provided.  We had about 7-8 facilitators with each facilitator having a group of 6-7 people around a table.  We had 2 brainstorming sessions and kept the same group for both times. 
 During the first session I thought I kept a good flow but I would have liked to premise the discussion a bit more.  I didn't really have a chance though - I left to get some sticky notes and they had already started when I came back!  Either way, some good themes and action items emerged.  I think I covered it well and did some good on-going reviews/summarizing as I would basically say, "alright this is what I've got down as a few themes have emerged, does this represent what you guys are thinking/saying".  I could have asked some more probing questions within each of the key points, but I was a bit too loose on that and forgot.  I would like to faciliate another session soon so I can keep these learnings in check.

The second session was too lax.  We focused on a few brainstorming options and then I decided it was going nowhere so I zoned in on one issue.  That was good, but then I got too lax again.    I let them beef over process a bit too much and didn't bring it back up to strategy enough (I did it a few times by saying, "okay let's go back to this" or "let's try to not to discuss things we can't change" ( <-- of course with this there is always the ability to challenge the assumption that you can not in fact change it...but let's start being a little more real! vs. the extreme sub-zone within complexity in the cynefin framework) - on that note: i would have liked to run a bit of a cynefin blend on our excercise today - let's do strat planning by showing the framework, getting the problems/oppoorutnities and contexutlziaing and then based on the ontology of the system determining the decision-making heuristic.

, anyways, back to the task: In retrospect: i should have been a bit more structured during the 2nd brainstorming session.  having the same group led me to think that I could let them talk more openly, but in fact, I let people talk too long on process issues...witout much payoff! 

I need to make eye-contact with my audience members; didn't do that enough. Also, wear a god damned belt next time, air head!