Facilitation Skills Workshop

Description

Aim Of the Workshop

Imagine this – meetings as sources of energy and ideas, meetings that people want to attend, where people are impressed by their results!

Good facilitators lead highly engaging and productive meetings, where people make good decisions and commit to action that moves their organization forward. Good facilitation practices are easy to learn and reasonably easy to carry out.

Participant Benefits

Participants and their organizations see results from this workshop right away:

  • Increased confidence in facilitating challenging or emotional issues
  • The ability to manage complexity by using a variety of structured decision making and problem solving tools
  • Skills for leading groups engaged in designing, planning and implementing change
  • Skills, tools and conceptual models for use in coaching and providing feedback to other facilitators
  • The ability to motivate team and group members to accept facilitation roles
  • Increase in the Team IQ when groups meet, leading to better decisions, smoother implementation and efficient use of people’s time in meetings.

Workshop Details

The Facilitation Skills Workshop is a two-day intensive workshop, accommodating up to 20 participants.

Typical Agenda

Day One

Meeting Start Up

  • Demonstrate how to get a session started
  • Identify start up issues
  • Demonstrate use of Task Outline and Groundrules
  • Discuss the facilitator’s role prior to the first meeting
  • Outline the Foundation of Team IQ

Facilitator Tool Kit

  • Definition of facilitator
  • Model of facilitation process
  • Basic tools for facilitation

Practice One: Problems During Facilitation

  • Identify what can go wrong during a meeting
  • Practice brainstorming and priority setting
  • Receive feedback and coaching on facilitation

Practice Two: Planning Preventive Action

  • Plan actions to prevent high priority problems that can occur during a meeting
  • Practice leading a session on problem prevention
  • Receive feedback and coaching on facilitation

Practice Three: Planning Contingent Action

  • Plan actions to reduce the impact of high priority problems that can occur during a meeting
  • Practice leading a session on contingency planning
  • Receive feedback and coaching on facilitation

Day One Wrap-Up

  • Review Potential Problem Analysis as a planning and facilitation tool
  • Summary of the day
  • Informal feedback on Day 1

Day Two

Facilitation of a Planning Meeting

  • Practice facilitation of planning meeting
  • Facilitation of a complex task with a high degree of ambiguity
  • Dealing with performance pressure
  • Developing a planning model for facilitation
  • Receive feedback and coaching on facilitation

Large Group Facilitation #1

  • Use of the Force Field Analysis Tool
  • Practice facilitation of larger group, working with co-facilitators
  • Feedback and coaching on the use of facilitation skills
  • Ideas for facilitating meetings to plan improvement in complex systems

Large Group Facilitation #2

  • Use of the Situation Assessment Tool
  • Practice facilitation of larger group, working with co-facilitators
  • Feedback and coaching on the use of facilitation skills
  • Ideas for helping a group that is stuck, spinning its wheels

Large Group Facilitation #3

  • Use of the Process Mapping Tool
  • Practice facilitation of larger group, working with co-facilitators
  • Feedback and coaching on the use of facilitation skills
  • Ideas for helping a group create a project plan, or to map a current process

Facilitation Clinic

  • Resolve issues that have been stored in the “parking lot”
  • Ideas for specific facilitations that are planned in the near future

Feedback and Summary

  • Summary of ideas from the workshop
  • Feedback on the workshop
  • Identification of next steps