Here is a Manual for Dynamic Facilitation.
Jim Rough’s book:
Societys-Breakthrough-Releasing-Essential-Wisdom
~
The online manual is pretty good!
A sample follows.
The whole manual is through, informative and while all is familiar it looks as if they have found an ordinary simple structure that could well work! Here is an excerpt from the manual,
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
WITH OTHER APPROACHES
Most approaches that are designed to help groups address practical difficulties and challenges do not utilize emergent process. Instead, they tend to rely on structured agendas, pre-determined sequences of steps, and negotiated decisions. Dynamic Facilitation takes a different approach, inviting participants to remain within a creative process where group “aha’s” can occur.
There are other approaches to group facilitation that also follow the “emergent process” of a group, such as Bohmian Dialogue and T-groups. Facilitators practicing these processes also refrain from leading the group through any set series of “steps,” and from “managing consensus” in any way. However, these approaches have not been designed for the purpose of addressing practical issues, and quite understandably do not lend themselves well to that purpose.
In Bohmian Dialogue, the main purpose of the group is to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of the thinking process. In T-groups, the purpose is to develop interpersonal understanding. In contrast, the purpose of Dynamic Facilitation is to help people discover creative and practical approaches to challenging issues. This can include anything from “How do we design a better workplace?” to “How do we address the homeless problem in our community?”
In the process of arriving in a non-directive manner at new and creative solutions, people tend to also arrive at better interpersonal understandings, and they may even have some realizations about “the nature of thought.” But while these can emerge as “added benefits”, they are not our principal focus.
While markedly different in some respects, there are other ways in which Dynamic Facilitation is very similar to the practice of Transformative Mediation (Bush and Folger, 2004). Both of these approaches have very active interventions at the micro level, designed to support each participant’s contribution. And, at the macro level, they both refrain on principle from any effort to “manage” or negotiate convergence, choosing to “follow the process,” instead of directing it.
Dynamic Facilitation also bears some strong resemblances to Dialogue Mapping, a computer-assisted version of cognitive mapping (Conklin, 2005.)