Greetings from Barcelona☀️where we are gearing up for a midsummer celebration of San Juan (St. John’s Eve) this week with food, fireworks, and bonfires 🔥.

If you are joining The Quest for the first time, welcome to our weekly exploration of creativity, facilitation, and learning.

You can catch up on last week’s edition on 💥The Secrets of Exceptional Facilitation and all past editions here.

This week’s edition is all about 🎊How to Close Well🔎

👉 How to avoid “Closing Pitfalls“

👉 Priya Parker’s Anatomy of a cloCing

👉 10 ideas for closing well

👉 Courses & more…

Let’s dive right in!

⚡How to avoid “Closing Pitfalls“

Like every good story, every group session has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

In stories and group sessions, these moments define the experience.

There are new adventures.

There is uncertainty.

There are breakthroughs.

And there are endings.

But so often in group sessions, we skip the ending. In stories, the ending is often the part that we look forward to the most. The same goes for group sessions and events. But somehow the ending doesn’t always materialize. Art of Gathering author Priya Parker writes that in group experiences “there is a tendency to close without closing.”

Why? Because we fall into common “closing pitfalls”:

• We don’t plan for a closing
• We run out of time
• We assume that it will happen on its own
• We don’t think it’s important
• We avoid it (knowingly or not)
• We don’t know how to close

We need endings. In stories, endings help us resolve all of the dangling threads. In group sessions, endings play an equally important role. They give group members the chance to become aware of and make meaning of new knowledge. And this awareness increases the likelihood of putting what they’ve learned into action.

Exceptional facilitators and teachers know the value of closing well. They plan for it. They design ways that will help every participant finish the session with a sense of closure and inspiration. Like the last bite of a spectacular dessert after a great meal. A final bow of actors on the stage. A perfect note at the end of a symphony.

So how do we close well? That’s our Quest for this week.

🔎The Anatomy of a Closing

In the last chapter of her book The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker breaks down the two phases of a strong closing:

• Looking inward. Taking a moment to understand, remember, acknowledge, and reflect on what just transpired. And to bond as a group one last time.

Examples👉Writing down key learnings, sharing insights, recognizing the strengths of the group and its members.

• Turning outward. Preparing to part from one another and re-take your place in the world. The second phase is defined by the question: What of this world do I want to bring back to my other worlds?

Examples👉Visualizing the future, commitments, actions, verbal or written pledges, reading out a quote or a poem, and saying goodbye.

If you want to learn more about how to gather well, I highly recommend the book the Art of Gathering, Parker’s TED Talk, and her newsletter.

💡10 ideas for closing well

Every group session deserves to close well. But how?

Here are 10 tried-and-tested ways you can close any session from a 30-minute demo to a multi-day event or course. I am so grateful to the exceptional facilitators at Partners for Youth Empowerment who taught me these activities and the importance of closing well.

Check out the blog and tweet thread👇

What are your favorite closings?

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📖A Closing Quote

Finding a fitting quote to share at the end a session can add a final touch of wisdom and aspiration to a closing. Here is one of my favorites👇

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot

🧈2 noteworthy courses

🧈Buttered Host: How to make virtual collaboration fun. A 20-minute facilitation course by Entrepreneurship and Creativity facilitator Scott Meyer. The course costs US$20 and it’s sponsored by a new platform called Buttered. But whatever platform you use, it’s a brilliant example of how to use creativity and facilitation to spice up virtual meetings. And at 20 minutes it’s the shortest online course I’ve ever taken.

🌳 Does Money Grow on Trees? June 26 @12-2pm BST. £8. An introductory session by Natalie “Nurture Lounge” Sutherland where you’ll explore your personal relationship to money and abundance. Natalie is a skilled facilitator so get ready for it to be experiential!

❣️Thank you

I was so blown away to receive your feedback on my new e-book: 7 Secrets of Exceptional Facilitators. Thank you for taking the time to share your comments, like this one:

“7 secrets of exceptional facilitators is not just another guide book but is a hands-on one-stop-shop e-book to help you thrive in online facilitation.”Aarushi Singhania, ODCC Mentor, Founding Maven Coach

Many of you also raved about the beautiful designs by Chris Malapitan.

If you haven’t seen the e-book yet you can download it here:

💌Thanks for reading The Quest

I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Just hit reply to share your thoughts and ideas. Visit my website for ways we can work together here.

If you are enjoying The Quest, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with anyone you think might like it.

Until next week!