3. Objectives
• Understand and explain facilitation
• Practice facilitating a group and giving feedback
on how to improve as a facilitator
4. Facilitation
• Facilitation is an important skill of leadership. It
is a social skill needed most often needed when
a group has to come to a consensus on a given
topic or have some form of two-way
communication.
5. What is a ‘Facilitator?’
• A guide, not a participant
• Uses open-ended questions to:
– Bring out creativity and insight
– Develop agreements
– Get to root of disagreements
• Objectively reveals differences in the group’s
understanding and provides a basis for resolution
6. What is a ‘Facilitator?’
• Assumes that every participant has an important
perspective to contribute
• Encourages naturally quiet people to participate and
naturally dominant people to listen
• Promotes clarity by enabling participants to contribute
their ideas
• Refrains from giving answers
8. Blue Hat
With Blue Hat thinking you:
Think about thinking
“Chair” the discussion/meetings
Direct activity into Green Hat thinking
when running into difficulties because
ideas are running dry
Ask for Black Hat thinking, etc when
contingency plans are needed, they will
Note: Blue Hat thinking stands for process
control
10. Key Facilitation Skills
1. Managing the Context:
Communicate clearly why the group is meeting and where
the group is meeting. Establish good expectations for the
meeting.
2. Designing:
Think about and decide what format the meeting will take
and how to make the meeting interesting, e.g. some small
groups, some one-on-one discussion, etc.
11. Key Facilitation Skills
3. Conducting:
Facilitate the actual meeting with attention to all the
different facilitator skills identified here below.
4. Participating:
Clarify for yourself and others when you are contributing to
the discussion and when you are facilitating.
12. Key Facilitation Skills
5. Apprehending:
Notice what is going on in the group – non-verbal signals,
who is participating and who is not, what is going on just
beneath the surface that no one is talking about.
6.
Diagnosing:
Decide if the meeting is moving in the right direction or
not, whether or not it is accomplishing the stated goals.
13. Key Facilitation Skills
7. Intervening:
Initiate action to get the group back on the right track;
address individual group members who may be disrupting
progress.
8. Closing:
Bring meetings to an effective conclusion, determine
what the important steps are, and who is responsible to
accomplish key tasks. Next meeting is clearly determined.
15. Facilitation Practice (Write 3-5 Needs Statements)
A need statement describes the user’s need(s) and what the expected
results are. This formula can be used to articulate the need:
Formula: [User] seeks to [describe the need] in order to
[describe the desired result].
Examples:
1. [The crèche owner] seeks to [make the crèche financially sustainable] in order to
[pay the salaries of her staff].
2. [The 12-year old girl] seeks to [lead a healthy life and get an education] in order to
[start a family when she is ready].
3. [Thandi] seeks to [break out of the cycle of poverty] in order to [enable future
generations of her family to lead a decent and prosperous life].
This information is confidential and was prepared by Bain & Company solely for the use of our client; it is not to be relied on by any 3rd party without Bain's prior written consent
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