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Facilitation involves helping
the participants discover for themselves.
A facilitator must be able to
read not only individuals, but interaction between individuals,
and the subtleties of group dynamics. If the goal is to help a
group become a team, the facilitator's job is to observe, give
feedback, and ask questions that will lead to insight.
If the learning that is to take
place involves experiential exercises, the facilitator helps the
participants process their experience, to clarify what they have
gained from the experience and to help them gain additional insight
from how others in the group may have experienced the same exercise.
What is a Facilitator?
There have been
and will be many definitions of a facilitator. Webster defines "facilitation"
as "increased ease of performance of any action." Others
define it as "A process and group dynamics expert experienced
in designing and leading group workshops and work sessions."
A facilitator is someone who
uses some level of intuitive or explicit knowledge of group process
to formulate and deliver some form of formal or informal process
interventions at a shallow or deep level to help a group achieve
what they want or need to do or get where they want or need to go.
There are a lot of different
practices included within that definition - from doing developmental
intervention in regular meetings to running workshops to conducting
experience-based training. It implies that facilitators can have
different levels of knowledge and skill, can work on all kinds of
problems and challenges, can be servant of the group in fulfilling
its desire or can push the group to keep digging until they find
what needs to be done or where they need to go. Most importantly,
it recognizes as a real facilitator the meeting attendee who jumps
up and starts writing on the chalk board the key points that are
being discussed, or puts up a hand and suggests that the group focus
on a single problem or find out a little about each other or agree
on how they're going to make decisions, based on nothing more than
an intuitive sense that something is amiss.
But when you're going to call
yourself a facilitator, you need to have some solid foundation from
which to work, or else you'll feel like just another group leader
or just another note taker.
There are a few simple ways of
doing this: here are a few things done in almost every workshop,
work session, or meeting that seems to make a big difference in
meeting productivity. While volumes have been written and graduate
degrees offered on each of these topics, the basics of facilitation
are easily learned and provide a large measure of meeting improvement.
Facilitation is like playing
the piano. You can practice the piano for years, learning new skills,
pieces, and exercises and gaining experience and confidence. But
when people want to sing "Happy Birthday" at a party,
knowing what starting note is comfortable for a majority of people
and being able to hit that one note on the piano makes a world of
difference to how well the group sings together. By the same token,
the basics of facilitation make a world of difference in how well
groups work together.
The following sections will give
you enough basis to facilitate a meeting or work session "pretty
well." From this, you'll find out:
- if this is something you want to do and are good at and
- where you need to further develop your techniques, knowledge,
and skills.
For simplicity, assume that you are going to
facilitate a straightforward meeting or problem solving session.
While many other aspects of facilitation must be brought to bear
these basics will always be an important foundation.
Preparation
While much of
what follows will be about what to do when you don't have
a chance to prepare (and you won't have a chance to prepare for
the exercise in this session!), you should prepare before the session.
Interview key players looking for themes, areas of agreement and
contention, working styles, and hidden agendas. This will help you
gain a sense of what to expect, as well as giving you an opportunity
to let the participants know what to expect.
Prepare objectives and a high-level
agenda and go over them with the sponsor or other key players. Then
expand the agenda to a detailed facilitator's agenda, specifying
time frames, techniques, exercises, and materials. Work with a colleague,
or a knowledgeable client person to bounce ideas off or at least
get a sanity check on your design.
Pay attention to room logistics;
there are many good guidelines and checklists for room setup and
logistic preparation.
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