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WHAT IS FACILITATION?

Facilitation is helping a group to accomplish its goals by a non-intrusive intervention.
Facilitation requires specific skills which when learnt and practised are powerful in assisting groups move forwards.

It is a group experience that involves the facilitator using:

Process skills and Content skills.

PROCESS SKILLS are used by those who have strong knowledge and skills regarding group dynamics and processes
CONTENT SKILLS are used by those who have a strong knowledge and skills about the particular topic or content that the group is addressing in order to reach its goals.

The argument about how much “process versus content” skills are required by facilitators is an on-going argument but generally a facilitator uses more process than content skills as opposed to a chair of a meeting who will generally use more content than process skills. Develop your facilitation skills on our Facilitation Skills course.

WHEN IS IT APPROPRIATE TO USE FACILITATION?

Facilitation can be used in the work place for group decision making, to process a particularly difficult experience encountered by the group, to deal with feelings about a forthcoming change in the organisation; in fact facilitation can be used in many different situations. It is the skill and ability of the facilitator which makes it an effective event. It is certainly a skill essential for any trainer to develop.

Remember: facilitation is very different from chairing meetings or lecturing

Facilitation skills

To facilitate means to make easier and this is what the facilitator’s job is.
Use these key skills to improve your facilitation:

• Actively listen
• Reflect on what you are hearing
• Summarise at the end of each point of discussion and at the end of the session
• Be flexible and responsive
• Sense the mood of the group and work with it
• Challenge underlying tensions or hidden feelings and bring them to the surface
• Model respectful behaviour
• Maintain control and direction
• Pace the discussion
• Be proactive
• Change the level when appropriate eg from thinking to feeling
• Involve all members of the group both outgoing and shy
• Validate what group members say
• Steer the group in a positive way
• Deal constructively with difficult or disruptive group members
• Use questioning and probing techniques effectively
• Foster constructive interactive skills among members of the group

The seven Do’s and Don’ts of facilitation

DO

• Be confident
• Use silence and be comfortable with it
• Ask open questions to ensure partcipation not closed ones
• Invite participation of the quieter members of the group
• Use your intuition trust your gut feeling to guide you in the direction to take
• Maintain control
• Keep to a structure

DON’T

• Pretend you understand when you don’t
• Dominate
• Give advice
• Use your organisational position to give you power
• Use the group as therapy for your problems
• Be judgmental
• Talk too much

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5. Decision making

Tags

Content Skills, Facilitation, Process Skills, train the trainer, Train the Trainer Course, Train the Trainer Training

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This entry was posted by Heather Buckley on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Train the Trainer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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