Community Building

Humor and Facilitation

This handout was contributed by Laird Shaub for a workshop titled "But Seriously Folks...A Close Look at the Two-edged Sword of Humor in Meetings; How to Encourage the Good Kind, and Put a Lid on the Bad" at NASCO's 2008 Cooperative Education and Training Institute.

Safe Space: A Tool for Allowing Deep and Consensed Dialogue

You can use this tool creatively, adapting the intensity of the 4 basic principles to different situations, depending on the level of risk being taken in each setting. Some components of these tools may be inappropriate for some settings, and invaluable in others. The more personal risk involved, the more carefully you want to frame the space at the outset, because a secure anchor is the only thing that will enable a process to fly to the heights of its potential.