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Facilitator Skills: Injecting Lots Of Humour is More Than Just Fun - Facilitator Tips Episode 15

1,914 views · Published 23 July 2018 · 2:37 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: playmeo · 2018 · Howto & Style

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Facilitator Skills are something we take seriously here at playmeo, and I am always looking for ways to add value to our members. So here’s another one in our facilitator skills series for our members who are some of the best teachers and trainers in the world.

You can never have too much humour or laughter in your programs.  

||  https://www.playmeo.com/facilitatortips/episode15  ||  

Click play, watch & explore the critical value of injecting lots of humour into your programs. It will invite your group to enjoy themselves as much as invite them to interact, share, trust and learn. Indeed, it is rare for the presence of fun and humour (when delivered appropriately and sensitively) to not add some value to a program in which people are encouraged to interact and/or step outside their comfort zones. You will also learn a powerful philosophical concept called FUNN, or Functional Understanding Not Necessary, a term coined by my friend and mentor Karl Rohnke.

This is just one of many dozens of leadership tips you can use to improve the participation, relationships and overall performance of your students, staff and team.

This Facilitator Tips video tutorial is presented by Mark Collard, one of the world most experienced & respected experiential trainers in the world. As a Master of Group Games & Activities, Mark can teach you how to help your team engage, interact & connect with one another more powerfully. 

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||  VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION  ||

Hello and welcome to Episode 15 of the Facilitator Tips video series. My name is Mark Collard. I’m an experiential trainer and author. In today’s video I’m going to focus on the value of injecting lots of humour.

This was one of those very early lessons I got from my mentors when I was being an intern and learning and training in this space, just the transformative effect of humorous moments in a program. Because what I saw is that it not only engaged people in what they were doing but it also helped disarm them to be able to build and strengthen relationships, which of course critically amplified the results of what I was doing no matter what the content was.

So it has become one of my most potent tools, but I want to be really clear, I’m not just talking about comedy. I am not a comedian. I am not telling a variety of jokes. But I think we can all understand there are moments that are just funny, and it’s often around observations. 

It’s like the essence of what the TV show Seinfeld was all about. It was a show about nothing but it was about laughing at those really funny, ordinary day things that we just had to laugh at because often we were laughing at ourselves that were just so ordinary.

And here’s an example. Right now I would like you to think of your mobile or your cell-phone number, but in particular the last digit of your cell or mobile phone number. My guess is you went all the way through the number before you got to the last number, right? Every time I share that with a group there’s always a bit of chatter and a bit of laughter, because it’s fun. Most of us do that. We just don’t know the last digit off the top of our heads. So that’s an example of an observation. Just little things like that really are powerful.

And most importantly I’m going to leave you with this last minute tip, F.U.N.N. This is actually the fun I’m referring to. It is a term coined by Karl Rohnke and I share more about this in Episode 17, but it means Functional Understanding is Not Necessary. That is you don’t actually have to understand what’s going on to have a good time, to nourish the soul and feel good about where you are within the group. 

And that’s it for this particular episode. If you’ve got a comment to make or would like to be able to share this with your friends and colleges, please go ahead and do that and leave a comment, and for further information and links go to playmeo.com/facilitatortips/episode15. 

That’s it for now. I look forward to seeing you at the next episode. Bye-bye.

#facilitationskills #facilitatorskills #facilitatorskillstraining #facilitator #facilitation #experientiallearning #playmeo

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