Group Facilitation - Exploring Volunteerism

On February 26, 2018, I facilitated a group entitled "Exploring Volunteerism".  During this group, I was given the opportunity to facilitate on my own and bring a protocol that I created to life.  During the introduction, I believe I was not very sure of myself and I am sure my voice was a bit shaky (this tends to happen when I speak in front of others); however, when we moved on to the first activity, I became more comfortable with my group and it evolved into more of a dialogue.  The first activity was my favorite because the handprint craft allowed a more relaxed and informal setting and elicited a more open conversation between group members.  My second activity, the Volunteer Match website, went much better than I anticipated.  I was pleasantly surprised when my group members said they would use this tool in the future and might even use it for their own clients.  I think the Blue group is very unique because we all give input and participate to the best of our ability in these groups, and that was definitely true with the one I facilitated.  I anticipated this group to not be as exciting as the others because we are all required to get volunteer work for the MOT program, so volunteerism is not a foreign thing to any of us.  Despite that, my group shared and processed the information in a wonderful way.  I believe this group session went by effortlessly and lasted the appropriate amount of time.  My biggest take-away from this group facilitation was that I became more comfortable being in a position of authority and speaking in front of other people (which, will no doubt be a part of any occupational therapy setting I eventually become involved in).  Ultimately, I believe this facilitation was very beneficial for my learning.

Leadership Summit

Leadership Summit with Lauren Murphy and Audrey Robertson

Today, I met with Lauren and Audrey to discuss our individual group facilitations for life skills.  Since I have already turned in my rough draft for my group next Monday, my plan as already completed. I discussed this plan with the group and they gave me feedback.  They liked my activity ideas and provided specific suggestions on how to tweak them to make it better.  Lauren and Audrey had not yet turned in their respective rough drafts, so we also spent some time brainstorming about activities they could do and possible theoretical approaches they could take.  The most useful aspect of this group was getting my peer's input on how to approach my facilitation using my theoretical approach.  I told them how I could tie in the Cognitive Behavioral Approach and they gave me more insight as to how I could further defend my theoretical approach when the time came.  Since Audrey and Lauren both chose Allen Cognitive approach for their theoretical basis, they were given the opportunity to discuss strategies and critique one another based on their chosen approach.  This experience helped further refine my group skills and aided me in my process of putting the final touches on my group protocol.  

Group Facilitation - Conflict Resolution

Group Facilitation Reflection

Yesterday, Lauren Murphy, Sarah Caldwell, and I facilitated a group on conflict resolution.  I thought this group facilitation was rather painless and quite enjoyable once we were actually doing it.  The planning aspect did not take too long - my partners worked well together and we came up with a written plan within an hour.
Our introduction was unlike many other groups I had been in previously...We started off by explaining the group and expectations; however, we started off by asking them some ways they have handled conflict in unhealthy ways.  We decided to break the ice in a hard-hitting manner.  I noticed that our group members were hesitant to answer initially, but once they started speaking everyone became a lot more comfortable with each other.  Our activity went just as planned - we estimated how long each activity would take beforehand so we would not be crunched for time.  Our activity elicited insightful responses from our group as well.  They shared personal experiences with conflict resolution, which I believed help us build rapport with one another.  After the exercises were completed, we reflected on what we learned.  I thought that the group members were not going to share much of what they learned because as graduate students, I expected them to be well-versed in conflict resolution strategies.  However, all of them contributed to the conversation about that they learned and how they can apply is to real-life situations.  I believe the atmosphere we created encouraged conversation and gave each individual sufficient time to answer the questions.  We did not cut anyone off during their moment to speak and only transitioned to the next question when everyone was done speaking.  Ultimately,  I think our group did pretty well for our first group facilitation experience.  However, I do believe this would be much more difficult if our group members has some sort of disability.