Facilitating with Ease!

Core Skills for Facilitators, Team Leaders and Members, Managers, Consultants, and Trainers

Ingrid Bens

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119434276
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

The definitive guide to running productive meetings

Facilitating With Ease! has become the go-to handbook for those who lead meetings, training, and other business gatherings. Packed with information, effective practices, and invaluable advice, this book is the comprehensive handbook for anyone who believes meetings should be productive, relevant, and as short as possible. Dozens of exercises, surveys, and checklists will help transform anyone into a skilled facilitator, and clear, actionable guidance makes implementation a breeze. This new fourth edition includes a new chapter on questioning, plus new material surrounding diversity, globalization, technology, feedback, distance teams, difficult executives, diverse locations, personal growth, meeting management, and much more. With in-depth, expert guidance from planning to closing, this book provides facilitators with an invaluable resource for learning or training.

Before you run another meeting, discover the practices, processes, and techniques that turn you from a referee to an effective facilitator. This book provides a wealth of tools and insights that you can put into action today.

• Run productive meetings that get real results
• Keep discussions on track and facilitate the exchange of ideas
• Resolve conflict and deal with difficult individuals

• Train leaders and others to facilitate effectively

Poorly-run meetings are an interruption in the day, and accomplish little other than putting everyone behind in their "real" work. On the other hand, a meeting run by an effective facilitator makes everyone's job easier; decisions get made, strategies are improved, answers are given, and new ideas bubble to the surface. A productive meeting makes everyone happy, and results in real benefits that spread throughout the organization. Facilitating With Ease! is the skill-building guide to running great meetings with confidence and results.

Chapter One
Understanding Facilitation

If you look up the word facilitator in the dictionary, you'll see it described as someone who helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to achieve these objectives without taking a particular position in the discussion.

This role basically did not exist until the middle of the last century, when theorists in the emerging field of behavioral science identified the need for a leadership style that contributed structure to complex group interactions instead of direction and answers.

The work of these behavioral pioneers led to the emergence of a new and important role in which the person who manages the meeting no longer participates in the discussion or tries to influence the outcome. Instead, he or she stays out of all conversations in order to focus on how the meeting is being run. Instead of offering opinions, this person provides participants with structure and tools. Instead of promoting a point of view, he or she manages participation to ensure that everyone is heard. Instead of making decisions and giving orders, he or she supports the participants in identifying their own goals and developing their own action plans.

What Is Facilitation?

Facilitation is a leadership role in which the decision-making power resides in the members. This frees the facilitator to focus on creating a climate of collaboration and provide the group with the structure it needs to be effective.

Instead of offering solutions, facilitators offer group members tools they can use to develop their own answers. Facilitators attend meetings to guide members through their discussions, step-by-step, encouraging them to reach their own conclusions.

Rather than being a player, facilitators act more like referees. They watch the action, more than participate in it. They help members define their goals. They ensure that group members have effective rules to guide interaction.

They provide an orderly sequence of activities. They keep their fingers on the pulse and know when to move on or wrap things up. They keep discussion focused and help group members achieve closure. They do all of this while remaining neutral about the topics under discussion so as not to interfere with the decision-making authority of the group.

What Does a Facilitator Do?

Facilitators make their contribution by:

• conducting background research to understand the needs of the group and what they hope to achieve
• helping the group define its overall goal, as well as its specific objectives
• preparing a detailed agenda that includes process notes describing how the interaction will unfold
• helping the group create rules of conduct that create an effective climate
• making sure that assumptions are surfaced and tested
• questioning and probing to encourage deeper exploration
• offering the right tools and techniques at the right moment
• encouraging participation by everyone
• guiding group discussion to keep it on track
• making accurate notes that reflect the ideas of members
• helping members constructively manage differences of opinion
• redirecting ineffective behaviors
• providing feedback to the group, so that they can assess their progress and make adjustments
• helping the group to achieve closure and identify next steps
• helping the group access resources from inside and outside the group
• providing a means for evaluation of the meeting and seeking improvements

Facilitators bring structure to interactions to make them productive. They plan carefully and then adapt as things unfold. For more on how facilitators organize and manage their work, refer to Chapter Three on the stages of the facilitation process.

What Do Facilitators Believe?

Facilitators operate by a core set of principles. At the heart of these is the belief that two heads are better than one and that, to do a good job, people need to be fully engaged and empowered.

All facilitators firmly believe that:

• people are intelligent, capable, and want to do the right thing
• groups can make better decisions than any one person can make alone
• everyone's opinion is of equal value, regardless of rank or position
• people are more committed to the ideas and plans that they have helped to create
• participants can be trusted to assume accountability for their decisions
• groups can manage their own conflicts, behaviors, and relationships if they are given the right tools and training
• the process, if well designed and honestly applied, can be trusted to
• achieve results

In contrast to the traditional model of leadership, in which th...