Process Facilitation

Facilitation is any activity that makes tasks for others easy, or tasks that are assisted. It is used in business and organizational settings to ensure the designing and running of successful meetings and workshops.

In typical meetings, official leaders establish both the questions and the answers while maintaining control. Creativity is discouraged. In our facilitation and coordination processes, we gain order from respectful structure rather than control. We initiate questions, suggestions, allow divergence and convergence, and watch for insights that emerge from collective synergy. We select and collect (harvest) our learnings and outcomes as a group and take shared responsibility for next directions to produce more sustainable actions.

Some Applications
  • Build capacity
  • Work with complexity
  • Make difficult decisions
  • Embrace diverse viewpoints
  • Create healthy team relationships
  • Generate bold and creative solutions
  • Address conflict and stuck conversations
  • Listen each person’s voice and perspective
facilitation
The Facilitator

An effective facilitator must be objective and take a neutral stance. He has to understand the group’s desired outcome, and the background and context of the meeting or event.

He has to

A) Design and plan the group process, and select the appropriate toolkit that really help the group progress towards that outcome. The group process is used to manage discussions, get the best from all members, and bring the event through to a successful conclusion.

B)  Guide and control the group process to ensure that:

  • The participation is effective.
  • Participants achieve a mutual understanding.
  • Their contributions are considered and included in the ideas, solutions or decisions that emerge
  • Participants take shared responsibility for the outcome.
  • Ensure that outcomes and actions are properly recorded and actioned
Factors to consider what process should be chosen
  • The number of participants.
  • The nature of the topics under discussion.
  • The type of involvement people need to have.
  • The background and positions of the participants.
  • How well they know the subject – and each other.
  • The time availability.