As a facilitator of design thinking, your role is to guide your team through the process and help them achieve the desired outcomes. But how can you become a master facilitator in design thinking? Here are some tips to get you started:
Take your time and become a better facilitator
Mastering design thinking is not only about understanding and knowing the tool. To really master it you need to go through the process of acquiring knowledge and getting the experience how to use the knowledge. This takes time! I needed round about 20-30 Workshops to understand the methods and get a better facilitator.
From knowledge to experience:
To improve in a structured way I recommend a few things:
Review each workshop you did and reflect on what worked well, what not and what you would do different next time. This will help you to consolidate your knowledge and will help you improving faster. I am maintaining a book for this purpose specifically.
Provide a "feedback" part after each workshop: you want to know what worked well and what not for the participants. So you get the perspective of your team and your methods and your facilitation.
Spar with more experienced facilitators on your workshop concepts or try to co-facilitate so you can learn from more skilled people. This will increase your learning curve tremendous!
Develop your design thinking skills
As a facilitator, it's essential to have a solid understanding of the design thinking methodology. You should be familiar with the different stages of the process, such as empathizing, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, and testing. You should also have a good understanding of the tools and techniques used in each stage, try to get every method available into your repertoire and test them in small save environments, so you know whats it's good for and what not. This will help you to guide your team effectively and ensure that they stay on track and will help you to come up with a working method in each situation.
Practice active listening
Active listening is an essential skill for any facilitator. You need to be able to listen to your team members' ideas, concerns, and feedback. By actively listening, you can create a safe and inclusive environment where everyone feels heard and valued. You can also use active listening to clarify any misunderstandings and ensure that everyone is on the same page. It is a very thin line between over facilitating and letting the team run into dead ends. You need to understand where the team stands and what might help them next. I often experienced facilitators just handling one method after another without ever concerning the actual status the team is discussing about. You need to be able to ask questions on the status so the team can reflect and move on in the right direction they need to.
Embrace experimentation
Design thinking is all about experimentation and learning from failure. I often experienced workshops in which all participants try to be UX-Designers and create websites or apps they already know.
Using design thinking in a collaborative environment should trigger the "Medici Effect" which should enable people to use knowledge from other professions and come up with new and better concepts.
There is nothing wrong about aligning on the same ideas but if you want to aim for innovation I believe you need to be an exceptional facilitator who is capable of encouraging a team to embrace experimentation and bring people to use their actual profession and knowledge to contribute and not be afraid to fail. Methods like "the disney method" work quite well to bring the team in the right mood.
Continuously improve
Finally, to become a master facilitator in design thinking, you need to continuously improve your skills. You should be willing to learn from your mistakes and seek feedback from your team members. You can also attend workshops, conferences, and other training programs to enhance your knowledge and skills.
Commentaires