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Building a Facilitator's Toolkit

Overview:

As teams grow in importance as a key business strategy, the need for people who can successfully facilitate the team process increases dramatically. As the need grows so does the confusion as the meaning and role of facilitation skills in a team setting. Literally, the word facilitation means "to make easier." Therefore, a facilitator is a person who helps make the team process easier. The effective facilitator helps the team set goals, develop norms, solve problems and reach decisions. In this intensive one-day workshop for team leaders, the participants learn the key facilitator behaviors and practice facilitating a typical meeting. To ensure a successful learning event, attendance is limited to 10 participants.

Topics:

The Role of the Facilitator: Learn the six roles of a facilitator and their relevance to team effectiveness.

The Characteristics of an Effective Facilitator: Examine the 15 key behaviors of a successful facilitator including their purpose, key comments, useful questions and associated tools and techniques.

Facilitator Tools and Techniques: Review, participate in demonstrations and practice tools to generate ideas, get involvement, make decisions, record results, deal with disagreement and close a meeting.

Practice Facilitation Skills: Custom scenarios form the basis for opportunities for each participant to practice facilitating a meeting and receive feedback.

Self-Assessment and Development Planning: Each participants assesses his or her skills against the benchmark of the 15 behaviors and then uses the feedback from their practice session to develop a personal action plan for self-development.

Format:

The format emphasizes active involvement, self-assessment, skill practice, feedback and action planning. Brief presentations and exercises that teach the basic facilitator roles, behaviors, and tools and techniques set the stage for a series of simulations. As a result of pre-program planning, the simulations are customized to the team situations faced by the participants. During the program, each participant has one opportunity to facilitate a team meeting and several opportunities to be a team member. Each participant receives a workbook that contains facilitator exercises and tools.