About Facilitation

Facilitation is the art of helping teams to achieve high performance in their thinking and decision making. It can apply to a broad variety of management tasks. We use it most in project planning and decision making and strategy / policy development.

The facilitator's role is to be a catalyst: he or she adds value by activating and stimulating the process without taking the decision power. Performing this role effectively is one of the key challenges.

Facilitation involves the use of open-ended methods and the development of influencing skills. As in a craft, a person's ability to use these methods and skills effectively will improve with practice over time. We have facilitated over 200 meetings with large and small, international and local groups. We are very pleased to facilitate your meetings or build the capacity in your own organization through practical insights, considerations and skill development needed to conduct successful processes and meetings.

The facilitators role comprises three core components, which will be outlined briefly below.

TASK

First of all the facilitator must developa clear understanding of the task which the team leader (e.g. chief executive) is undertakikng. This needs appreciation of both the needs of the team leader and the way he or she likes to work at strategic issues.

FRAMEWORK

Secondly, the facilitator must be able to draw on a range of frameworks, or ways of thinking, which help strategic thinking in the team. These ways of thinking or tools that are presented are most of the time experienced as very logical and easy to work with. Like the facilitation we have done for groups of doctors (most of them have their PHD's and are Professor) they discover the way of approach as very practical but they didn't think of it themselves. Why not? Because they are very competent doctors but no facilitators.

PROCESS

Thirdly, the facilitator needs to be able to handle the interaction which goes on between the team members and guide this towards getting the best contribution from everyone, promoting better thinking through structuring how people work together and ensuring that there are, as appropriate, decisive outcomes.