A collection of methods for facilitating coaching of sustainability initiatives by Wandercoaching

In the book “The Psychology of Collective Climate Action: Building Climate Courage” by Hamann et al. (2025), I came across Wandercoaching, a peer-coaching initiative for sustainability initiatives at universities. They share the materials they use here, and I really liked the “tools for your sustainable university” guide full of different methods — many of them very useful to prevent activist burnout by focusing on the vision, on community building and sharing of responsibilities, on transfer of knowledge and experience. The guide is structured into the modules that they use in a typical weekend of coaching, and I am using that structure below, too, to mention some highlights that stood out to me.

“Getting started”

These are some ice-breaker methods that already also go deeper into how to share responsibilities etc.

• “Four corners“ (or living statistic, or sociometry), with suggested questions like “where do you feel happiest” (and suggested answers being in the mountains, by the sea, in the forest, in the desert). I think I prefer this method a bit more open than with four suggested answers, so that students actually need to talk to each other to position themselves relative to each other. But some of the suggested questions are quite helpful, for example on the topic of sustainability “I have already heard about models of sustainability“, or about the group (assuming that it is an established group that has been working together for some time) “How many group members do you know privately?“, “My involvement feels like work / voluntary engagement“, “I bear a lot of / not a lot of responsibility in the group“, “I find time spent in the group draining / fun“
• “Sharing the hats“, where a collection of tasks that is likely to come up over the semester (or foreseeable future) are written on cards and the cards are then assigned and possibly swapped, so everybody contributes in a way that feels fair (some tasks might be ongoing, others one-off) and with tasks they are interested in. I really like some of the hat suggestions: “Utiliser of Leftovers (referring to leftover food and materials), Beauty Magician (responsible for the appearance of the seminar space), […] Fire Alarm (addresses conflicts that arise), Archivist (documents the succession of the applied methods), […] Queen of Ants (spontaneous icebreaker game in which the person calls “Queen of Ants” at any point during the coaching and everyone has to lie flat on their backs and shake their whole body).” Of course, here also more established tasks can be distributed, like timekeeper or moderator…
• “Hiking trail” is a graphical organiser / roadmap of the seminar. Always recommended to have! In this case, it is the picture of a trail on which sticky notes of different colours mark dates and times, main topics, and maybe different methods, theory or practice, compulsory or voluntary. At first, I thought that idea was a bit silly and what’s wrong with my normal table overview, but the more I think about it, the more I like it — especially in an in-person course where it can stay up on the wall / whiteboard over several days, be revisited, be modified, and also just serve as decoration to the room. Will definitely try! Below are a typical table that I use (pro: I can easily tell people the exact times I want to start and finish (very important for me), and it looks clean and easy to read) and a quick and dirty mock-up of the path (needs to be squiggly to fit in the same format. Pro: Looks a lot more lively! Con: Not as information-dense as a table, so not so easy to have the exact times given everywhere. Also not as easy to convey that Wednesday is just a fika day, and that there is a break between Friday and Tuesday). And I definitely understand why the authors recommend to sketch out the path first before committing to it on a large canvas — it requires some planning! I think it really works better on a larger area. Also, missed opportunity in my path to show where we circle back to topics — that could very easily be implemented! Anyway, like this idea a lot! (Plus, it could easily include the “parking lot” for questions and comments that we want to revisit later!)

Above something that I typically use, below a “hiking path” for a similar course. Which one do you prefer?

“Reflection”

This module is about participants getting to know each other (and possibly themselves a little better, too) and to discuss goals for personal and collective development. Methods here are, for example,

• “Meadow of hopes” is another graphical method that I like a lot, especially on a large, in-person canvas: On the canvas, there is a meadow with grass and (empty, for now) flower stalks, a sun and a thunder cloud. Participants write their worries on blue cards and stick them in the thunder cloud, how they want to contribute on yellow cards and stick them in the sun, and then their hopes on other colourful cards and stick them as flowers on the stalks. This is great towards the beginning of a seminar, and then to be revisited for a debriefing towards the end.
• “Tree of expectations” is similar: Hopes are written on fruit-shaped cards and stuck on a pre-drawn tree. The tree is revisited, when hopes are fulfilled they can be harvested and moved into a drawn basket to mark that a topic has been satisfactorily covered, and to only leave the open topics up. Maybe not all topics will be able to ripen fully through the seminar, and that is ok, just needs to be addressed and explained.
• (Next, there are several methods to discover strengths in oneself and in the group that I cannot really imagine using in my work (the flowers and trees are a stretch already) and that I am therefore not summarising here, but they are totally worth checking out, too, and they might work for someone else in a different context! And after the next one that I will summarise, there are then some more that I am also skipping…)
• Journaling and then walk&talk in pairs. They suggest really nice sets of questions, for example “Imagine that in 20 years you as a group have achieved everything you wanted. Everything is great. Looking back at your journey: How would you as a person have wanted to contribute? What advice would your future-self give yourself now? What do you need to let go of to follow this advice?” or “How would you describe a trajectory that supports you to achieve your vision and which you can start to pursue now? What could be one starting point of change? Who could help with this?“. And the next step, the walking reflection on the journalling and the thoughts that came up here are a really nice touch!

“Fundamentals of Sustainability”

This module explores sustainable development as a concept through different methods, for example silent discussions where participants add comments to posters and respond to each others ideas, or watching videos together and discussing them (for example the one on doughnut economics that we also use). For me, the suggestions here are not as exciting as the ones in the previous chapters, probably because the context I am thinking of is so different and I have quite clear ideas of what works there already.

“Sustainability at Universities”

In this module, participants for example share stories of success and failure, draw organigrams of their universities and explore relevant stakeholders, look at documents, sustainability reports, and best practices (netzwerk n has a collection of good practice videos).

“Sharing Knowledge and Experience”

How do you transfer knowledge in groups so that you don’t suddenly end up in the situation where the one person who knew everything has left? This is so important, and so often not done! Here are some suggested methods, ideally to be run regularly, not only when it is clear that a knowledge drain is going to happen very soon:

• “Old Hands, New Recruits” pairs old and new members together specifically for knowledge exchange. Some suggested questions include “What difficulties have often emerged in the group’s work?“, “What lead to the current allocation of tasks?“, “What would you want for the future of the initiative?” This is debriefed in the larger group to share insights from the conversations. This would be so good to do even with our group at work!
• “Speakers’ Corner” collects 3-minute presentations of interesting experiences or projects (from a podium and outside, if possible), and after a handful of presentations, people mingle and talk. There can be several rounds of this.
• “Circuit Training” sounds terribly like something we had to do in highschool, but is actually quite clever: There are different stations on different topics, and participants rotate after a fixed amount of time to get different inputs. One problem that I see with this method is whether there should also be an opportunity for the hosts of such stations to visit the other ones, in which case it easily becomes quite a logistical challenge. But if they don’t have that opportunity, it easily introduces a dynamic where there are experts that don’t need to learn, and others that don’t get to tell… One way to mitigate that is to use a “Gallery Walk” instead, and to provide sticky notes for comments or questions.
• “Rocky Horror Seminar Show” is a method to express worries and fears and then come up with ways of addressing them as a group. This sounds super important and also done way too seldom! In this method, groups of 5-6 participants sit in a circle and think about an upcoming event (the example given here is a meeting with the university president) and write their worries related to that situation on cards — on the front side as a neutral description, on the back as 1-3 sentences of the horror scenario. Cards are collected, shuffled, and looked at together. Then, participants brainstorm suggestions for how to deal with the horror scenarios. One tip is given here that I think is very important: “Holding onto the tips and suggestions can bring the [participants] a huge amount of security. If the suggestions are written down on the cards, then the [participants] can find them again in the photo documentation of the seminar.“

“Finding a Vision & Concept Development”

Here, the methods presented include a guided meditation (not really my thing), the “pyramid technique” (which is really a 1-2-4-all / think-pair-share), the “goal flower” for negotiating group goals (participants write their own goals on petals, and negotiated goals are written in the center of the flower. The “voting” to see how much negotiation is necessary is done in an interesting way: 10 fingers == fully agree; 5 fingers == ok; 1-4 fingers == something needs to change; 2 fists == if this happens I need to leave the group). They also suggest a power-interest matrix into which all stakeholders are placed, and it can be useful to revisit the matrix at a later time (important tip here is to make sure to save it somewhere where it won’t accidentally be seen by one of the stakeholders…).

“Project Work”

In this module, there are a lot of standard project planning methods like Kanban boards or “yes! And…”, but one I think is fun: In the “ABC method”, participants have to come up with one project idea for every letter of the alphabet!

“Follow-up”

The follow-up module is about what happens next, after the workshop — how to organise future work, group agreements, roadmaps (this time about future events that might be relevant, …), revisiting the parking lot (for ideas that needed to be saved for future use, or revisited later), …

So in summary: This is a super useful collection of methods, with lots of practical tips and tricks, totally recommend browsing!

One detail that I wanted to explore initially (before I got stuck in the awesomeness of the rest of the document) are slides on the stages of group development. I have written about the general stages before, and about how to support group processes as a tutor, but I quickly want to summarise their tips for the facilitator.

• Forming: During this stage, participants (and the facilitator) enter a new situation that they need to get used to. Norms are unclear, people want to be liked and part of the group, at the same time, they want to be able to be themselves (read more about that conflict here). Participants are typically very focussed on the facilitator to get explicit or implicit clues about what is expected of them. So the facilitator should pay attention to model the mood and behaviour they want (for example calm, structured and productive) and give participants time to land and get to know each other.
• Storming: In the storming phase, participants get to know each other better and establish rules and hierarchies. This needs to be facilitated, for example through explicit group norms for how to communicate with each other and that everybody should be heard, or mixing groups so participants get to know more of the others and don’t form too strong attachments within a specific small group.
• Norming: Now everybody is finding their place in the group. This is the time to make sure that there still is room for outside perspectives (and minority perspectives from the inside),
• Performing: This is when the group actually performs the work and where the facilitator should take a step back and let things run. But it is important to still have an eye on group dynamics, to support potential new members on their way into the group (which might trigger moving back into the storming and norming phases, before the performing stage is reached again; same could happen if group members leave!), and to also monitor that everybody keeps taking enough breaks! Here is is easy for people to just keep going until they are so exhausted that a normal-length break won’t be enough to recover and become productive again.
• Adjourning: At the end of a course or seminar, things change again. People start thinking more about the time “after”, while often being in denial about the end of this shared adventure (meaning not ready to accept that they won’t be in the same space together tomorrow, so need to document, plan if/how to stay in contact afterwards, to make time to reconnect or accept that it won’t happen, …). This might be a time to celebrate what was achieved together, and maybe also to mourn that it is now over.

That’s it — this is really a super helpful collection of methods and ideas!

Featured image from a dive back when I was on vacation what feels like a looong time ago. How I miss the blue waters…