Avoid the Dreaded ‘I’ve Done This Before’ Syndrome
Facilitator Tips Episode 25

How To Eliminate the ‘I’ve Done This Before’ Syndrome

This week’s Facilitator Tips episode focuses on what to do when you are faced with the dreaded “I’ve done this beforrrrre …” syndrome.

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We all want every part of our programs to be fresh and engaging, but apart from simply exhausting ourselves, a more powerful approach is to keep a number of strategies up our sleeves to combat this all-too-frequent resistance.

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Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to Episode 25 of the Facilitator Tips video series.

My name is Mark Collard. I’m an experiential trainer and an author and a keynote speaker, and today I want to talk to you about what do you do with that syndrome called “I’ve done this before”.

We’ve all had it, group leaders have had it, teachers have had it, camp leaders have had it. It’s that experience where the kids perhaps even in advance of what’s about to happen they sense that this has happened before. And again in the world of wanting to share with you things that I have found successful, I’ve found a couple of strategies to deal with that.

First of all that everyone’s kind of in that boat where they’re all saying that same thing, then I hope you can dive a little deeper into your bag of tricks, that is that you might have a particular experience in mind but that if you can pull out a variation at this last moment, then you actually present something that’s a bit different to them. So the deeper your bag of tricks, the more likely you’re going to find the perfect activity for your group.

And repeats are okay. We spend many parts of our lives doing the same thing over and over and no one’s complaining. We enjoy them. And you might be surprised, your group could be surprised doing something for the second, third, or fourth time is okay, so don’t be too concerned about that syndrome.

Let’s say just a few people actually have done this before or you sense that a few people seem to be a bit familiar about what’s going to happen. Here’s a couple of strategies. First of all, find a way, maybe even pointing it out, to suggest hey, if you’ve already done something like this before, find a way that you can contribute some other value, that is you might help those that are perhaps a bit quieter to contribute and speak up, or maybe direct the group so that they plan better or communicate better. So find some ways in which they could add some value.

And one of those could be to leverage their strengths. The reality is from a teamwork perspective, it’s really important that we actually use our strengths to help us be successful at high-performance teams. That just makes a lot of sense. So let’s not handicap them. Let’s not shut them out. Let’s not blindfold them or stop them from talking. If this is a genuine strength they can add some value to that group then let them do that. That’s how life works.

If you would like some more ideas, some other links to this topic, by all means, please go to our show notes for this episode. That’s at www.playmeo.com Episode 25.

And if you haven’t already, check out our app. There is so much information in that space like the blog posts, the free activities, all of these video tutorials can be found there. It’s a great place to catch up on all of our free curated information.

Okay, that’s it for now. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Bye for now.