FF 0.0 Facilitation Overview

Organizations are rapidly changing and everyone's getting involved! Change efforts today are guided and shaped by lessons learned over the past 30 years of trial and error in planned organization change. Three lessons have taken hold:

1. Participation is important.
2. Teams generally perform better than individuals.
3. Process (how something is done) affects outcome (what is accomplished).

Generally, people work in groups to:

• Coordinate interdependent work
• Integrate multi-functional or multi-disciplined expertise
• Share information
• Solve problems
• Make decision
• Plan for something

The group may be temporary of permanent, large or small, intra- or inter-unit, old or new; their members may communicate face to face or via electronic networking such as the Internet. They may be called committees or task forces, councils or steering groups, project teams, cross-functional work teams, management teams, quality teams, design groups, planning groups, department staff. Yet, no matter what a group is called or why it's been formed, any group that has a task to accomplish can benefit from facilitation.

The facilitation role is often separated from the participant and leadership roles for an important reason: Facilitation involves managing group processes and dynamics - influencing how members work together - and the nature of that responsibility calls for a high degree of neutrality about content issues and a focus on group needs.

A facilitator who crosses roles and engages in content issues will lose neutral ground; his od her "power" to manage and influence the group will thus be diminished.

Does this mean it is impossible for group to become self-facilitative? No. With maturity and skill development, a group can balance facilitation and participation, carrying out the roles in shared or integrative ways and clarifying responsibilities should the lines get blurred. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to reach this level of functioning.

The Important of Facilitation
First, the use of groups and teams is increasingly prominent in business strategies and change efforts. Now we have to enables groups to succeed.

Second, people working in groups have common, even natural, problems to overcome; such as drifting focus, misunderstood communications, uneven participation, conflict, struggles for power and control, difficulties reaching consensus, and frustrations with obtaining commitment to follow-up action.

Finally, facilitation focuses on the design and management of processes that enable groups to succeed in their missions. Facilitation helps ensure the following:

• The right resources are in hand and are being used.
• Useful information is generated, shared, and used.
• Quality decisions are made.
• Quality decisions are implemented.
• Desired outcomes are realized.

What it is
we define facilitation as enabling groups to succeed. More specifically: 

Facilitation is: the design and management of structures and processes that help a group do its work and minimize the common problems people have working together.

That focuses on:

• What needs to be accomplished
• Who needs to be involved
• Design, flow, and sequence of tasks
• Communication patterns, effectiveness, and completeness
• Appropriate levels of participation and the use of resources
• Group energy, momentum, and capability
• The physical and psychological environment

What Facilitators Do

Facilitators are neutral guides who an active role in process management. Good facilitators have a number of essential capabilities. They can:

• Effectively carry out the core processes of facilitation.
• Draw on certain knowledge bases useful to facilitation.
• Develop and exercise fundamental skills to better meet their responsibilities as facilitators.
• Employ personal characteristics that are helpful to the facilitator role.

Most facilitation revolves around nine primary core processes:

1. Analyzing information about purpose, desired outcomes, work context, and participants to determine the best approach.
2. Designing meetings to enable the group to succeed at its purposes using appropriate structures, processes, and sequences.
3. Establishing group climate, norms, and roles with the group to help members do their work.
4. Creating and implementing structures and processes to accomplish tasks and meet objectives.
5. Intervening to manage group dynamics, to enforce norms, and to influence what members are doing or how they are doing it.
6. Coaching/training group leaders and members in effective behaviors.
7. Evaluating meeting and facilitation effectiveness to make adaptations and enhance the group's learning.
8. Navigating decision processes through the established organizational hierarchy or decision structure.
9. Ensuring follow-up action related to production and distribution of the meeting record, results, communication with stakeholders, and implementation of decision.

There are three basic areas of knowledge that are useful for facilitation: 

1. Principles of adult learning
2. Group dynamics and decision making
3. process consultation

To be effective, facilitators need certain fundamental skills, including:

1. Contracting
2. Designing structured activities and processes
3. Listening, paraphrasing, observing, clarifying, elaborating
4. Interpreting verbal and nonverbal behavior
5. Confronting others
6. Managing differences
7. Collaborating with others
8. Project management
9. Meeting management
10. Logistic management

Finally, personal characteristic play a role in being facilitative. The characteristics that seem most effective are:

1. Steadiness (Serenity - calm and centered)
2. Confidence
3. Assertiveness
4. Openness
5. Flexibility
6. Authenticity
7. Humility
8. Optimism
9. Results-oriented disposition

(Justic and Jamieson, 1999, The Facilitator's Fieldbook, AMACOM, NY. P3~P8.)