What's facilitation and a facilitator?

What's facilitation? By definition, it's the act of making easy or easier.

It's a skill, knowledge and mindset for:

• Guiding groups towards their objectives.


• Assiting people in building understanding and agreement.


• Bringing out the best in all group members.
  

A facilitator is a person who makes it easier for people to understand each other, build agreement and take concerted action.

Essential facilitation Competencies:

1. Guide the Process

• Build effective desired outcome statements for meetings or parts of meetings.


• Design an agenda that can guide a group towards its desired outcomes.


• Draw out participation, energy and creativity.


• Behave neutrally and contribute to content only when appropriate.


•  Facilitate discussions in a way that encourages an open exchange of ideas, generates useful information and keeps a group focused and on track.

2. Broker Communication

• Listen in a way that validates the speaker and confirms your reception of the speaker's words.


• Uncover the reasoning or feelings that lie beneath a speaker's assertions or concerns.


• Assess the meaning of body language and other non-verbal communication.


• Assist others in understanding a speaker's meaning, reasoning, feeling or intentions.


• Record speaker's ideas legibly on the group memory.

3. Build Agreement

• Build an atmosphere of openness, informality and collaboration.


• Identify and highlight areas of agreement.


• Navigate the group through a variety of strategic moments.


• Help the group build the appropriate sequence of agreements (e.g., agreement on the problem before agreement on the solution).


• Apply several tools for reaching consensus.

4. Resolve Conflict

• Protect individuals and their ideas from attack


• Handle difficult or argumentative behavior with directness and respect.


• Enroll disputing parties in a process for reconciling differences.


• Distinguish between issues, interests and positions.


• Tailor confidence-building measures and negotiate small agreements.

5. Transfer Capability

• Enroll the group in taking responsibility for the success of the meeting.


• Explain The Interaction Method in a way that builds confidence in collaborative approaches to decision making.


• use process commercials as a way of building awareness, understanding and skill.


• Model behaviors that inspire emulation.


• Provide positive and constructive feedback in a way that stimulates self-awareness, experimentation and risk taking.


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Posted at 02:11PM Jan 14, 2009 by byuan in Leadership  |  Comments[0]