"Meg and Sam have given us a gift; their book is smartly designed to invite new and seasoned facilitators to be intentional about having those tough group discussions. As an educator and facilitator, this book gives me a framework to understand my own facilitation style, and ways that I can continue to improve."
– Ava Holliday, Founding Partner of the Avarna Group
Have you ever been in a training and marveled at how quickly the time flew by? Genuinely enjoyed a meeting you were expecting to dread? Learned something powerful about a topic you thought wouldn't engage you? Experienced an intimate, vulnerable, transformative moment with a group of total strangers?
Then you've witnessed the magic of facilitation.
Like all magic tricks though they seem to defy reason when you're spectating for the first time once the secrets of facilitation are unveiled to you, you'll look back with a bland obviousness. Of course that's how it's done.
In this book, co-authors and social justice facilitators Sam Killermann and Meg Bolger teach you how to perform the favorite tricks they keep up their sleeve. It's the learning they've accumulated from thousands of hours of facilitating, debriefing, challenging, and failing; it's the lessons from their mentors, channeled through their experience; it's the magician's secrets, revealed to the public, because it's about time folks have the privilege of looking behind the curtain of facilitation and thinking of course that's how it's done.
Sam Killermann is a comedian and social justice facilitator who got his start in university orientation and first-year programs. His primary role in life now is as Director of Creativity for hues, a global justice collective, in which he writes, performs, speaks, and makes things. Sam is the co-creator of TheSafeZoneProject.com, where his favorite way to spend time is training facilitators, and he’s the author of A Guide to Gender, which opened as a best-seller in gender on Amazon. Sam earned his bachelor’s from Purdue and master’s from Bowling Green, and enjoys riding his bicycle around sunny Austin, TX, where he counts himself lucky to live.
Meg Bolger is an social entrepreneur and facilitator passionate about the process of engaging in social justice work. She founded Pride for All, an organization that creates projects and services focused on sparking social justice conversations. She's the co-creator of TheSafeZoneProject.com, where she enjoys helping folks create sustainable gender and sexuality education programs. Meg graduated from Hamilton College with a B.A. and Bowling Green State University with a M.A. She enjoys flying around the U.S. to helping schools and organizations develop facilitators, all while getting asked if she's old enough to sit in the exit row.
