Module 8 quiz | Facilitation Foundations

Question 1 of 8

You are scanning seating, devices, eyes and sound at a transition. Which reading is right?

Any phone appearing means you have lost the room and should change activity. Fast overlapping talk means the room has lost discipline and needs pulling back to the structure. Eyes down is what people do when they are deciding not to say something, and a room that has suddenly become very well-mannered is a room where something is not being said. Eyes at you is the best sign — an attentive room is a room that is with you.

Question 2 of 8

The room has dropped. Decisions are being made quickly and nobody is pushing back on anything. What is this most likely to be?

Avoidance — a room that has suddenly become very agreeable is not making progress. Fatigue — quick agreement is what a tired room does to get to the end. Confusion — people are agreeing because they do not understand well enough to object. Genuine consensus — the earlier work has done its job.

Question 3 of 8

You are fairly sure the room is avoiding something. What is the move?

Call a break and speak to two or three people individually to find out what it is. Change the format — a different shape will surface what the current one is suppressing. Push on to the decision. Naming it in the room risks turning a workshop into a therapy session. Describe what you are seeing and hand the decision back — “we’re moving faster on this than I expected and I’m not sure we’ve landed it; is there something we’re not saying?” — then wait the full seven seconds.

Question 4 of 8

What you are seeing does not match what is written on your run of show. What is the default, and what makes it safe?

The room wins, and the design work is largely irrelevant once you are live. Split the difference: follow the plan but shorten every remaining block. The room wins — your plan was written by someone who had never met this room — and it is safe because you built the plan and know which block is load-bearing. The plan wins — it was built from the objective, and abandoning it mid-session wastes the design work.

Question 5 of 8

The objection: folded arms might mean cold, a phone might mean they are checking something you asked for, neurodivergent people give different signals, and a confident read is often just confirmation of what you already believed. How do you hold it?

It is substantially right about certainty — so treat the read as a hypothesis, never a conclusion. It tells you to check, not what is true. Then ask. It overstates the risk. With practice the signals become reliable enough to act on directly. It is right, so rely on explicit check-ins and polls rather than observation. It applies to individuals but not to rooms; group-level signals average out individual variation.

Question 6 of 8

You park an important tangent, write it up in the person’s own words, and carry on. What still has to happen?

Nothing in the session — it goes into the write-up afterwards with an owner. You check in with the person who raised it at the break, so they know it was heard. You revisit it in the close, say what happens to each item and who owns it — even when the answer is “nothing, we’ve agreed that’s not for us”. You return to it if time allows; parking is what makes it optional.

Question 7 of 8

In the commit block someone says “I’ll look into it.” What do you do, and what would a good commit block look like?

Capture it as written and follow up individually after the session, where the conversation is easier. Push once — “what’s the first thing you’d do, and when?” — capture it visibly as it is said, have the person say it out loud, and treat a genuine “I can’t before the twentieth” as a good outcome. Reassign it to someone with more capacity, since a soft answer usually signals an overloaded owner. Accept it and capture it — pressing people in front of the room damages the safety you have spent all day building.

Question 8 of 8

The decision has not landed and there are ten minutes left. What do you do?

Say plainly that you have not got the artifact and will not force it, name specifically what you did get, and commit to a next step — who takes it, what they do, when you reconvene. Force the decision. An imperfect ranked list is better than none, and the group can refine it afterwards. Agree three actions so the day produces a result, and note that the ranking will follow. Close on the reflection round and handle the outstanding decision by email the next day.

0 of 8 answered

Reading the Room and Closing Well

A letter for facilitators who give a damn.