Facilitating the Fema TV Talk Show Planning Retreat

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Time to write something about my placement again! Like the print editorial team, the TV team has an annual two day workshop to reflect on the previous year and to plan for the next. While they had an outside facilitator the previous year, this time it was up to me to set-up and conduct it. I’ve taken part in countless workshops before, but I never conducted one myself before, so this was my chance to put the facilitation techniques we practiced at the VSO training back in Harbourne Hall into action. I invited about 15 people - the TV team, the Matatizo Production team, the Executive Director, department heads. We went to Coral Beach Hotel like for the senior management retreat the previous month. It started off well with us getting their nicer conference room. I had planned for various exercises in small groups and for a couple of discussions in the plenum. The group exercises worked really well and everyone participated enthusiastically, but the big discussions didn’t run as well as I had hoped for, mainly the same few senior people spoke and the rest stayed quiet. For the second day I had planned less group exercises and more general discussions, so that plan needed to be changed!
Despite the quite exhausting task of managing the workshop, I was on a real high that evening and pleased it had gone so well. But also thought, I have to change my plans for the second day completely: I needed to come up with some new small group exercises to cover the rest of the agenda. With my housemate Sara I went through the programme until late at night and came up with some good ideas, like getting the teams to draw a map of Tanzania to plan the destinations of talk shows from the field for the next season. This even led to a rethink to combine filming two shows on trip in the future - with distances far and travel slow in Tanzania, it really makes sense.
Certainly there was the odd departure from the agenda and one or another monologue that was a little on the long side, but altogether day two went pretty well too and I was very pleased that we got some tangible results and everyone felt motivated to implement the new ideas.
To make up for the buffet lunches and heavy tea breaks (like on most Tanzanian conferences and workshops the morning tea break was particularly filling with pizzas, donuts and some meaty stuff as well), I couldn’t resist sneaking into the lovely outdoor pool before going home on both days, helped to clear my mind as well.

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