Fishbowl

Step by Step

Before the Meeting

• Four to five chairs are arranged in an inner circle, and the remaining chairs are arranged in a concentric circles outside the fishbowl. A few participants are selected to fill the fishbowl, while the rest of the group sits on the chairs outside. In open fishbowls, one or more chair are left empty; in closed ones all chairs are filled.

During the Meeting

• The facilitator introduces the topic and the participants start discussing on it. The audience outside the fishbowl attentively listens to the discussion in an open or closed fishbowl.
  • Open fishbowl: The initial participants seat in the inner circle and participate to the discussion for the whole last of it. Any member of the audience can, at any time, occupy the empty chair and join the fishbowl. After he/she did a comment or asked a question and received an answer he/she should leave the chair empty, so that someone esle can occupy it. If no chair is free and someone wants to join the discussion he can stay behind one of the participants until the chiar is left free.
  • Closed fishbowl: the initial participants speak for some time. When time runs out, they leave the fishbowl and a new group from the audience enters the fishbowl. This continues until many audience members have spent some time in the fishbowl. Once the final group has concluded, the facilitator closes the fishbowl.

In both cases there is an important rule to follow, no-one from the audience can express his/her opinion. In the case of the open fishbowl they have to feel an empty chair, in the clos ones they have to wait the change of participants. In case someone doesn't follow the rule, the facilitatir should immediately remind him/her about it.

After the Meeting

• The facilitator summarizes the discussion.

Facilitator's Role

The facilitator plays three main roles which are the follows:

Leadership role

• To focus on providing a direction to the group when the leader fails to fulfill their role
• To stimulate and encourage constructive debate between group members
• To support members of the group, helping them to bring information, and to build new ideas
• To participate when the group is interacting poorly or in the wrong direction, by promoting new discussion
• To promote team building in a cohesive, interactive, and productive way

Referee role

• To regulate and maintain order of the group discussion, discouraging participants from talking at the same time
• To protect members, and ensure that all contributions to the discussion are treated equally
• To deal with problems, and to control people within the group, allowing everyone to participate freely
• To manage the time, and adhere to the meeting timetable ensuring completion of the agenda

Neutral role

• The facilitator is neutral, and pragmatic, because he takes a detached look at the discussion
• He encourages feedback, promoting discussion of each point of the meeting^[2]

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