It's impossible to be part of an organization today and not attend meetings. Staff meetings, project meetings, task-force meetings, planning and coordinating meetings . . . the list is endless. The worst thing about many of these meetings is that they're poorly run and waste valuable time.
Today, there's a growing recognition that effective meetings happen when proper attention is paid to the process elements and when proceedings are skillfully facilitated.
For a long time, facilitation has been a rather vague and poorly understood practice, mastered only by human-resource types. This is beginning to change. We're now spending so much time in meetings and being asked to achieve so many important goals in teams that there's a growing need for skilled facilitation throughout our organizations and our communities.
Instead of being relegated to HR, facilitation is fast becoming a core competency for anyone who leads a team, manages a project, heads up a committee, or manages a department. All of these people need to be able to create and manage effective group dynamics that foster true collaboration.
Facilitation is also a central skill for today's managers, who are riding wave after wave of change. New demands are being placed on them. At the same time, the old command and control model of supervision, which worked for decades, is no longer as effective.
To get the most from people today, leaders have to know how to create buy-in, generate participation, and empower people.
To keep pace, today's leaders need to be coaches, mentors, and teachers. At the core of each of these new roles is the skill of facilitation.
This practical workbook has been created to make core facilitation tools and techniques readily available to the growing number of people who want to improve their process skills. It represents materials and ideas that have been collected, tested, and refined over decades of active facilitation in all types of settings. This fourth edition retains the core tools and instruments that made the first three editions so popular. In addition, new materials have been added to every chapter.
As in the previous three editions, Facilitating with Ease! remains a practical workbook. While it builds on the theories of organization development pioneers such as Chris Argyris, Donald Schön, and Edgar Schein, this resource doesn't aim to be theoretical. Instead, its focus is on providing the reader with the most commonly used process tools in a simple and accessible format. This is not so much a book to be read, as one to be used!
This workbook contains valuable information for anyone facilitating group interactions. This is a huge constituency, which includes:
Since facilitation was designed as a role for neutral outsiders, the strategies and techniques in this book are described from the perspective of the external facilitator. Since more and more facilitation is being done by those who have a stake in the outcome of discussions, the third edition includes strategies that help leaders and group members manage the challenges of staying neutral.
The book is organized into eleven chapters. Checklists and tools have not been collected in an appendix, but instead are located throughout each chapter, near the related materials.
Chapter One outlines what facilitation is and its main applications. It differentiates process from content and outlines the core practices. It also addresses facilitation issues such as neutrality, how assertive a facilitator can be, and how to balance the role of the group leader with that of the facilitator.
Chapter One also describes what facilitators do at the beginning, middle, and end of discussions. It provides information about the language of facilitation, the principles of giving and receiving feedback, plus a thumbnail sketch of the best and worst practices of facilitators.
At the end of the chapter, there are two observation sheets and a four-level skills self-assessment, useful to anyone hoping for feedback on current skills.
Chapter Two is a new addition to this book. It features important information about the central role of questioning in the practice of facilitation and how to use questions effectively. Question types and formats are outlined, along with guidance about the importance of follow-on questions. This new chapter also provides a bank of questions that are useful for learning more about the client.
Chapter Three explores the stages of designing and managing a facilitation assignment. It describes the importance of each step in the facilitation process: assessment, design, feedback, refinement, and final preparation. Helpful checklists are also provided to guide the start, middle, and end of any facilitation session.
Chapter Four focuses on how facilitation can be managed by leaders. This is a major new addition and reflects the growing awareness among leaders of the importance of process management.
This chapter explores the challenges leaders face when they facilitate and provides strategies that help leaders effectively manage a group process. This chapter also discusses the issues encountered when the facilitator feels he or she lacks authority or is working with people of senior rank.
Chapter Five focuses on knowing your participants and provides information about the four most commonly used needs-assessment techniques. Sample assessment questions and surveys are provided. This chapter also discusses the differences between facilitating groups and facilitating teams and passes along strategies for getting any group to behave more like an effective team. The creation of team norms is discussed, along with an overview of the team growth stages and the corresponding facilitation strategies that work best at each stage.
Chapter Six begins with a frank discussion of the many reasons people are often less than enthusiastic to be involved in a meeting or workshop and provides tested strategies for overcoming these blocks, including ideas on gaining buy-in. High-participation techniques are also shared, along with a training plan to encourage effective meeting behaviors in members.
Chapter Seven delves into the complexities of decision making. Facilitators are introduced to the types of discussions and the importance of clarifying empowerment. Various methods for reaching decisions are described and differentiated. The pros, cons, and uses of each approach are explored, along with an expanded discussion of consensus building. Chapter Seven also offers an overview of the behaviors that help decision effectiveness and provides the steps in the systematic consensus-building process. The chapter ends with a discussion of poor decisions: their symptoms, causes, and cures. A survey is provided with which a group can assess its current decision-making effectiveness.
Chapter Eight deals with facilitative strategies for handling both conflict and resistance. It begins with an overview of the difference between healthy debates and dysfunctional arguments. It goes on to share techniques that encourage healthy debates and the steps in managing any conflict. Special attention is paid to strategies for venting emotions. The five conflict-management options are also explored and placed into the context of which are most appropriate for facilitators.
Chapter Eight also provides a three-part format for wording interventions that tactfully allows a facilitator to redirect inappropriate behavior. Also described are the two approaches a facilitator can choose when confronted with resistance and why one is superior. At the end of the chapter, nine common facilitator dilemmas and their solutions are presented.
Chapter Nine focuses on meeting management. There's a useful checklist and meeting effectiveness diagnostic that lets groups assess whether or not their meetings are working. There's also a chart that outlines the symptoms and cures for common meeting ills. The fundamentals of meeting management are outlined, with special emphasis on the role of the facilitator as compared to the traditional chairperson role. Both midpoint checks and exit surveys are explained, and samples are provided. Since virtual meetings are on the rise, strategies are offered for using facilitation techniques during distance meetings.
Chapter Ten contains the process tools that are fundamental to all facilitation activities. These include: visioning, sequential questioning, force-field analysis, brainstorming, gap analysis, root-cause analysis, decision grids, affinity diagrams, needs-and-offers dialogue, systematic problem solving, survey feedback, multi-voting, and troubleshooting. Each tool is described, and step-by-step directions are given for using it.
Chapter Eleven pulls it all together by providing seventeen sets of process design notes, complete with detailed step-by-step instructions. In this fourth edition, the meeting design notes have been updated to include the virtual version of each conversation. These notes will be a real asset to facilitators who conduct meetings with far-flung groups.
The seventeen structured conversations in this chapter represent the discussions facilitators are most often called upon to lead. These examples provide a graphic illustration of the level of detail a facilitator needs to develop before stepping in front of any group.
After years of experience as a consultant, project manager, team leader, and trainer, I'm convinced that it's impossible to build teams, consistently achieve consensus, or run effective decision-making meetings without highly developed facilitation skills. The good news is that these skills can be mastered by anyone! I hope you find the fourth edition of Facilitating with Ease! to be a valuable resource in your quest to gain this important skill.
September 2017
Ingrid Bens, M.Ed., CPF