Training your team to run Alpha with AFS-D
Because of the interspersed discussion breaks in the AFS-D, your Alpha hosts and helpers should find it easier to facilitate the discussion time within their small groups. The need for them to remember all suggested discussion questions in the Team Guide and facilitate a single free-flowing conversation has been eliminated.
Instead, discussion questions show up on the screen at appropriate times in the video, therefore keeping the content fresh in the guests’ minds (and their questions), as well as keeping the discussion focussed and relevant to the episodes.
The main aim of the discussion time is still for hosts and helpers to listen and encourage everyone to speak, not to win arguments. Your Alpha team training can continue to focus on how your hosts and helpers can do so, e.g. by playing the ball game and discussing how hosts and helpers can bring lots of energy and enthusiasm to the group to avoid silent downtime especially on Zoom.
Sample Schedule
Possible discussion times for Alpha online and in-person when using the AFS D
We are still looking to keep the discussion time short and sweet, especially in the first few weeks, to keep your guests hankering for more.
For Alpha online, we want to keep the overall time to around 1 hour (1.15 hours max) to avoid Zoom fatigue. This would mean an average of around 10 minutes per question.
Example schedule for an Alpha session:
– 5 minutes: Intro and welcome in main room
– 10 minutes: Play video until the first discussion question comes up on screen
– 5 minutes: Split into small group breakout rooms; host to first ask a couple of icebreaker questions
– 10 minutes: Discuss question #1
– 10 minutes: Play video until the second discussion question comes up on screen
– 10 minutes: Discuss question #2
– 10 minutes: Play video until the third discussion question comes up on screen
– 10 minutes: Discuss question #3
– 5 minutes: Everyone back in main room for goodbyes and notices
For an Alpha in person, for each of the discussion times, the Alpha leader should feel free to gauge how the discussion is going in each of the small groups before pressing play on the video again. This might take longer than 10 minutes, perhaps around 15 minutes. Do bear in mind that we still want to make sure we are honouring our guests and ending our Alpha sessions on time; guests can continue discussing after the official end if they’d like to, and it creates a sense of anticipation for the next session too.
More training videos, marketing resources, and products are available to download for free on our digital platform MyAlpha.
