Liberating Structures
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What This Is 🤔
Liberating Structures is a facilitation toolkit created by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. It offers a collection of simple, repeatable interaction patterns designed to make group conversations more inclusive, engaging, and productive.
Rather than focusing on content or expertise, the toolkit focuses on how people interact when they work together.
What It’s For 🎯
This toolkit helps groups:
Increase participation from everyone, not just a few voices
Improve the quality of conversations and decisions
Replace long presentations with structured interaction
Unlock collective intelligence in teams and organizations
Work more effectively with complexity and uncertainty
It is especially useful in meetings, workshops, and change initiatives where engagement and ownership matter.
What You’ll Find Inside 🧰
Liberating Structures includes a curated set of short facilitation structures that help groups:
Explore challenges and opportunities together
Generate ideas and insights quickly
Reflect, learn, and adapt in real time
Align without forcing consensus
Move from discussion to action
Each structure is lightweight, clearly defined, and easy to combine with others.
How to Use It 🧭
Most Liberating Structures can be introduced immediately, without special training or materials. Facilitators select structures based on the group’s size, purpose, and energy, often chaining several together in a single session.
They work well in both in-person and online settings, from small teams to large groups.
Key Takeaways 💡
Participation shapes outcomes
Small changes in interaction can create large shifts in engagement
Structure enables freedom, not control
Groups already hold more wisdom than they realize
Pro Tips 🧠
Start small — one structure can already change the dynamic
Be precise with time-boxing and instructions
Resist the urge to explain too much; let the structure do the work
Reflect briefly after each structure to capture learning