Recently, I facilitated a group of leaders in Upstate New York -- where I laid out and modeled five principles of facilitation. Quite frankly I expected this rather set leadership group to be more skeptical … or expect a lecture about our topic - the human brain in today's worplace.
Instead - people showed amazing openness to the facilitation method, where we developed practical plans together to use more brainpower in their workplaces.
Over years of facilitating and learning from leadership groups of all sizes and purposes – I discovered what I call …
Five faces of effective facilitators …
1. Curious and open to new angles of any topic raised. Facilitators follow an agenda with space reserved under each topic for participants’ suggestions and experiences.
2. Blind to people’s differences or quirks. Facilitators possess capability to integrate relevant parts of diverse offerings – and then suggest plans to use many of these.
3. Skilled at setting and sustaining a tone that overcomes human or technical barriers and creates growth opportunities for most people present.
4. Encouraging so that humor and goodwill emerges to help people offer their talents as solutions to problems raised.
5. Organized to pace well, track progress, value alternative viewpoints, guide all topics to the meeting’s target, and conclude on time with a measurable takeaway – such as an action plan with a timeline.
For instance we surveyed the group to determine brainpower in their workplace and planned a follow-up meeting to share the results.
Would you agree that we can all facilitate our own talents and our firms’ vision.
» Great Facilitators from Management Craft
I like this post from Ellen over at Brain Based Business called, Five Faces of Effective Facilitators. To her fine list of five I would like to disagree with one and add one. Here's Ellen's #2 Face:2. Blind to people’s [Read More]
Tracked on: July 8, 2007 11:45 PM | Permalink to Trackback