{"id":1078,"date":"2012-11-08T04:20:12","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T09:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2026-05-01T15:25:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T19:25:26","slug":"writing-easels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/writing-easels\/","title":{"rendered":"Use Writing Easels or Whiteboards When Facilitating Meetings and Workshops"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>The National Speakers&#8217; Association stated that the most important change speakers could make to be more effective would be to be more facilitative.<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">By that, they meant the use of interaction, solicitation, and capture of participants&#8217; ideas. Whether you are a speaker, teacher, coach, or traditional facilitator, it is good to develop competence around how to use easels, large <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2OC9dkG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Post-It\u00ae paper<\/a><\/strong>, and broad chiseled markers. Here are some tips for you or your documentor. The paper continues to offer superior benefits to digital capture because most complex issues cannot be fully rendered or understood with one screen of bulleted items. Additionally, if it is not documented, it did not happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<address><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cNever use computer applications for something that you do not understand and cannot first do yourself.\u201d<\/span><\/address>\n<address><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u2014Francis Webster Jr<\/span><\/address>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Begin with good materials and supplies. Few things will frustrate an expert facilitator more than cheap paper and poor-quality easels. Most will carry their own, preferred markers. Large, Post-It style presentation sheets provide immediate and visual feedback to participants. Working with paper makes it faster to edit and refer to work that was drafted or completed earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4>When you use easels and large-format paper, consider the following tips:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Anticipate where you will mount your sheets. Be sensitive about everyone\u2019s sight lines. Save your prime, center real estate for scrubbing and scoring ideas during each agenda step.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Banners or headlines provide an excellent opportunity for iconic support and color splash. Create them in advance. Then unveiled, they connote a strong sense of preparation and importance.<\/span>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_13721\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Easel-Sample.png\"><img wpfc-lazyload-disable=\"true\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13721\" class=\"wp-image-13721 size-large\" title=\"Easel-Sample\" src=\"https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Easel-Sample-1024x701.png\" alt=\"Easel Sample\" width=\"1024\" height=\"701\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Easel-Sample-1024x701.png 1024w, https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Easel-Sample-980x671.png 980w, https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Easel-Sample-480x329.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-13721\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Easel Sample<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Experts suggest using a minimum of three colors per sheet. Only use black or dark blue for primary content. Use red for edits and scoring, and use green for linking, or edits (shows chronological shift).\u00a0 Use lighter colors for grid lines, table lines, or illustrations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Pre-drawn illustrations (in pencil or light marker) enable you to draw over thin lines with broad markers in the session as needed.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Rip, do not flip, completed pages. Participants need to see their prior work and a bunch of flipped sticky pages get caught up in a clump that is difficult to disentangle.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Additionally when you use easels . . .<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Save valuable real estate along the left-hand column, defaulting to hyphens of indented items that may be further defined or scored during the analysis step with a prioritization tool.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Use flip chart graph paper with blueline squares to keep the size of your writing consistent. Try out the size of the letters before the session to see if the person farthest away can read them. Capital letters should be two to three inches tall and lowercase letters should be one to two inches in height.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Visual displays whether illustrative, iconic, or colorful prove to stimulate participants and increase the quality of contributions and feedback.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Wedge tip markers work best for writing and pointed tip markers provide good highlights. Use the broad side or flat edge of the wedge tip so that your writing is visible from six to eight meters.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">You may speed up the capture process during the ideation step of <em>Brainstorming<\/em> by using two scribes (i.e., documentors). Work this out in advance, and if relying on a participant for help, give him or her some time at the end to add his or her own ideas.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Other Support<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">For additional and specific product recommendations, see your <em>FAST Session Leader<\/em> reference manual or refer to the <em>Alumni Only<\/em> resource section of our website. Specifically, the document entitled <em>Facilitator&#8217;s Tool Kit<\/em> lists many of the items that can be used to support more effective facilitation through the use of easels.<\/span><\/p>\n<address><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cThe problem with digitizing brainstorming is that we don\u2019t need to save what we brainstorm . . . The critical thing is the conclusion . . . The slick brainstorming capture tools . . . Will probably not be as successful as hoped. There are significant differences among collecting and processing and organizing and different tools are usually required for them.\u201d [pg 271] \u2014 <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"David Allen (author)\" href=\"http:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage noopener noreferrer\">David Allen<\/a>, Getting Things Done<\/span><\/address>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>______<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Don\u2019t ruin your career by hosting <a href=\"https:\/\/mgrush.com\/blog\/bad-meetings\/\">bad meetings<\/a>. Sign up for a <a href=\"https:\/\/mgrush.com\/public-facilitation-training\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">workshop<\/a> or send this to someone who should. <em><a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20260106090117\/https:\/\/mgrush.com\/\">MGR<span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">USH<\/span><\/a><\/em> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Speakers&#8217; Association stated that the most important change speakers could make to be more effective would be to be more facilitative. By that, they meant the use of interaction, solicitation, and capture of participants&#8217; ideas. Whether you are a speaker, teacher, coach, or traditional facilitator, it is good to develop competence around how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55884429],"tags":[138617,453190790,453190789,453192135,453189029,453190787,453190786,453190788],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meeting-support","tag-active-listening","tag-easels-in-meetings","tag-easels-in-workshops","tag-executive-presence","tag-facilitation-skills","tag-how-to-use-easels-in-meetings","tag-meeting-challenges","tag-use-easels"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - 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