Fishbowl

Step by Step

Before the Meeting

• Four to five chairs are arranged in an inner circle, and the remaining chairs are arranged in 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 the fishbowl. In open fishbowls, one chair is 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: any member of the audience can, at any time, occupy the empty chair and join the fishbowl. When this happens, an existing member of the fishbowl must leave the fishbowl and free a chair. The discussion continues with participants frequently entering and leaving the fishbowl. When time runs out, the fishbowl is closed and the facilitator summarizes the discussion.
  • 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.

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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