After facilitating a few challenging meetings where people talk a lot and sometimes have parallel conversations, I’ve decided to use facilitation cards to maintain a certain flow and ensure we stick to the time boxes. Since people agreed that the meetings aren’t efficient but they wish to maintain a fun atmosphere I added a couple of fun cards. Below are the cards I use – feel free to borrow them.

Voting Cards

These are pretty self explanatory.

Questions Cards

I use these cards to control the flow of conversations. Before participants can talk, they need to notify the group about their intend. This also helps the facilitator determine if further questions or additional information is required about the topic being discussed.

The participant would like to ask a question.

The participant would like to add information to the current conversation.

The participant wants to raise a different topic than the one currently being discussed.

Behavior Cards

A fun way for people to comply to the rules of the meeting. Inspired by penalty cards used in many sports.

“it most commonly indicates a caution given to a player regarding his or her conduct” – wikipedia

“it most commonly indicates a serious offence and often results in a player being permanently suspended from the game” – wikipedia

Do you use facilitation cards? Do you tricks you can share with others?