Toolkits, Readings and Videos
Facilitation Toolkits and Handbooks
Leadership Trust, ‘Emotional Intelligence: Leading with Emotional Agility’, https://leadershiptrust.co/leading-with-emotional-agility/ (2024).
NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, The Facilitator’s Toolkit: Tool, Techniques and Tips for Effective Facilitation (Coventry: NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, 2009) https://www.england.nhs.uk/improvement-hub/wp-content/uploads/sites/44/2017/11/Facilitator-Toolkit.pdf. This has useful ideas however note the date it was published. Some of the tools would not considered be suitable today. Many of them do not consider the mobility of the group or learning and sensory differences.
Facilitation Skills Handbook (Lancaster University), https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/content-assets/documents/oed/od/FacilitationSkillsHandbookV2.pdf. This has useful segments but the long lists make it harder to read in places.
Seeds for Change: Facilitation Tools for Meetings and Workshops: https://seedsforchange.org.uk/tools – can be printed as a PDF – https://seedsforchange.org.uk/downloads/tools.pdf. This is more up to date than the NHS Facilitator Toolkit.
See also The Seeds for Change audio of Facilitating Meetings: https://seedsforchange.org.uk/audioguides and Videos on Facilitation: https://seedsforchange.org.uk/video. The audio version is only 9.46 minutes and therefore is quite basic but a good introduction to the role of a facilitator.
There are several books on facilitation. We have found the following useful:
Christine Hogan, Practical Facilitation: A Toolkit of Techniques (2002)
Psychological Safety
Timothy Clark, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2020). See also this interview with Timothy Clark about the ‘4 Stages’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMhHhXA8nB4
Amy Edmondson: Creating Psychological Safety at Work’, an interview with Amy Edmondson. She is one of the key people researching and writing about ‘Psychological Safety’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkFohYhIaSQ
Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley, 2025).
‘Creating the conditions for psychological safety’ with Dee Arp. This 45-minute online talk is provided by NEBOSH who are funding the Human Factor at Work Project. It was recorded earlier this year and you just need to register to watch the recording: https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/5307528/23E6A2BBF6318AE035D3B88C8F7B8970
Tammy McCausland, ‘Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace’, Research-Technology Management, Volume 66 (2023), pages 56-58. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10.1080/08956308.2023.2164439?needAccess=true. This is two pages long and has some useful links to other sources. It discusses a range of other books and articles which have discussed different aspects of psychological safety. There are links to some of these at the end of the article.
Pysch Safety https://psychsafety.com/
Emotion at Work
Stephen Fineman, Understanding Emotion at Work (Sage Publications, 2003). He has written a variety of useful sources about emotion and the workplace: https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/stephen-fineman/publications/
Dylan Evans, Emotion: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2019). This not about work but a handy introduction to emotions.
Peer Support
Mind, ‘Developing Peer Support in the Community: A Toolkit’, https://www.mind.org.uk/media/4822/peer-support-toolkit-final.pdf
Workshop activities
Ice Breaker Games Hub: https://icebreakergameshub.com/
See also:
Longer reads
Tips for reading longer articles: read the abstract (which is a summary of the article) before reading the whole article. The abstract will give you an overview of the main points and you can then decide if you want to read the whole article.
Hassina Bahadurzada, Amy Edmondson and Michaela Kerrissey, ‘Psychological Safety as an Enduring Resource Amid Constraints’, International Journal of Public Health, Volume 69 (2024), https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/international-journal-of-public-health/articles/10.3389/ijph.2024.1607332/full
This article is 9 pages long. The article has several tables and the language is quite technical.
Rajeshwari Patil, Deepali K Raheja, Lakshmi Nair, Amruta Deshpande and Amit Mittal, ‘The Power of Psychological Safety: Investigating its Impact on Team Learning, Team Efficacy, and Team Productivity’, Open Psychology Journal, Volume 16 (2023): https://openpsychologyjournal.com/contents/volumes/V16/e187435012307090/e187435012307090.pdf
This article is 12 pages long but there is a really handy summary of the main points on the first page of the article.