Robert Brain is an accredited Participlan facilitator.
Participlan is a visual mapping tool where the facilitator poses a question to the group, and every person writes down their answers on cards, one answer per card. The facilitator gathers the cards and the participants guide the grouping of cards on sticky sheets.
The benefits of the Participlan process are:
• A wider range of ideas and contributions is received. Divergent and lateral thinking is encouraged
• Everyone contributes yet no-one dominates the discussion
• Cards are anonymous so the focus is on the issue rather than the person. This also frees people to raise issues that may otherwise be avoided.
• Everyone’s contributions are heard, not just those of the senior people in the room.
• A clear agenda is followed and the result is a consensus understanding of the issue and the way forward
• The process is very time efficient. Workshops duration can be anything between 2 hours and 2 days depending on the number of issues and participants.
• The use of an external facilitator means that the leader of the group is free to participate and learn, and does not have to switch from the role of leader to that of facilitator.
