Facilitation Fishing Circle

What is it?

The Fishing Circle is a simple and easy-to-adopt tool for facilitators and groups to use during meetings, workshops, events and discussions to navigate a topic or outcome, whilst maintaining focus and relevance.

Why is it useful?

The Fishing Circle is intended to be extensible.

• It's small enough to fit in your head to help you navigate, ask questions and surface the collective intelligence of a group.

• It's simple enough to convey to another person on a Post-It Note.

• It's easy to scale up to be used visually on a poster/canvas with Post-It Notes to invite interaction and participation during workshops, events and discussions.

Who is it for?

People who work with people and groups of people. Facilitators, Coaches, Scrum Masters, Delivery Managers, Software Engineers, Business Analysts, Project Managers etc.

When to use it

The Fishing Circle can be used to frame, navigate and facilitate a whole discussion, deployed mid-way through a workshop or event once a Topic or Outcome has been aligned, or wherever a facilitator thinks it might add value. It's intended to work with and complement other tools, methods and approaches e.g. a Fishing Circle is used in a group problem-solving workshop to reach a point where Options and Ideas are made visible, which are then selected and defined in further detail through a Movement-to-Action method, articulating What, Why, How, When and Who.