Being a Steward of an Action Lab
Good Action Lab Stewardship • Explain what Citizen Action Labs are and most importantly why they can help
What does a steward do? As a leader of an action lab you will be a steward of the whole experience. A steward is an active facilitator that helps explain what the lab is about, what will happen, what is expected of participants and helps keep the process on track. A steward should be friendly, enthusiastic and model the stages of the think tank process.
• Ensure everyone feels welcome and feels they have valuable contributions to make • Model what we want to see in action labs, like creativity, humour, divergent thinking, and convergent thinking. • Show people the Action Lab Agreement Card and ask people if they are ok with following it • Set time constraints and pick a time keeper • Guide the process
Explain there will be 4 phases in the process... 1. Check-in: Getting to know each other 2. Discovery phase: Learning about the person the lab is centered around 3. Idea phase: Divergent thinking, coming up with lots of ideas 4. Action Phase: Convergent thinking, narrowing down to 3 actionable ideas for the circle of support to work on with the person, picking who will help implement the ideas
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