Facilitation – the Forgotten Art

September 25, 2019

by John O. Burdett

Facilitation is like skiing. Preparation, practice and picking the right line are essential. Know your audience, know the outcome desired and introduce a facilitation approach (style) that best fits the situation.

Facilitation is like skiing

The role of the “facilitator” is to help a group/team draw insight from an activity, group discussion and/or workshop. Insight that, were the group left to their own devices, would be (far) more difficult to achieve.

Facilitation is like skiing. Preparation, practice and picking the right line are essential.

Facilitation amounts to rather more than someone standing at the front of the room waving a felt-tip pen around. Electronic white boards, audience response technology and video conferencing might make things quicker, they might even make the session appear slicker, but they don’t really add much to issues such as trust, openness, collaboration and/or commitment to the outcome.

Facilitation is like skiing. Preparation, practice and picking the right line are essential. Know your audience, know the outcome desired and introduce a facilitation approach (style) that best fits the situation.

Few companies teach facilitation as part of their leadership development agenda. And yet, if we want collaboration, if we want to grow teams, if we want to challenge talent in a meaningful way … being able to get the best out of meeting of minds becomes pretty important.

Good luck on your next opportunity to facilitate. It is one of the most difficult but at the same time rewarding leadership skills. Remember, from a career perspective, bringing the best out of a group session is something of a forgotten art. Learn how to facilitate and it will serve you well.

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This article is an extract of content © Orxestra® Inc. The download is available from the TRANSEARCH International website.

John O. Burdett is founder of Orxestra® Inc. He has extensive international experience as a senior executive. As a consultant he has worked in more than 40 countries for organisations that are household names. John has worked on organisation culture for some of the world's largest organisations. His ongoing partnership with TRANSEARCH International means that his thought leading intellectual property, in any one year, supports talent management in many hundreds of organisations around the world. Get in touch with John O. Burdett »

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