Comparing facilitators vs dictators we surprisingly discover that the term ‘facilitator’ becomes more popular. As measured by frequency of use, the trend for facilitator rises since 1995. The message is clear. If you want to be more popular, be a facilitator and not a dictator!
For example, in the chart and results below, we compared the occurrences of the terms ‘war’ and ‘peace.’ As you can tell, the use of both terms are declining. The term ‘war’ remains largely prevalent and the term ’peace’ experienced a slight rise during the Viet-Nam conflict era, the 70’s.
“Brain Breaks” and other mental stimulation are valuable for increasing group performance as measured by the velocity and innovativeness of ideas. Therefore, use Google’s Ngram Viewer as a way to stimulate group energy, team building, and topic-related discussion—all at the same time. Consequently, have some fun on your own, and help get participants back from breaks and lunch in a timely fashion with this tool. For other “Brain Breaks” do not forget to access your MG RUSH alumni resources.
-
War or Peace
Simply turn your browser to http://books.google.com/ngrams and insert commas to separate phrases or terms and compare their occurrence in published English language books over the past 200 years.
Facilitators vs. Dictators
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
- Fun with Google Books Ngram Viewer (householdopera.typepad.com)
- ngram.sh: a script for extracting Google Ngram data (opendna.com)
- Live post: In search of the first use of ‘Data/Information Visualization’ (visualisingdata.com)
- How not to do things with words. (tedunderwood.wordpress.com)
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
Fun tool. The word “consultant” is also in decline.
Perhaps because the verb “consult” is a contronym. As such, it is never clear whether the consultant is giving me something, or I need to give the consultant something when I “consult” with them. See “consult.”