Facilitation Principles and Techniques

1
Facilitation Principles and Techniques

2
The Inside Facilitator

• Authorized by the Project Champion
• Invites project team members
• Announces the facilitator
• WHY?
• Keep the team on track
• Assure all ideas are explored

2
3
The Inside Facilitator

• Walking the fine line
• Do not push the group to a specific solution
• Always try to introduce your ideas last
• If you have information you need to bring out,
  try to phrase it as a question

3
4
Facilitation Components

• Prepare
• Conduct follow-up

4
5
Preparation

• Process walk-through
• Strawmodels
• Ground Rules

5
6
Preparation

• Process walk-through
• Understand the process better
• Understand the questions to ask

6
7
Preparation

• Process walk-through
• Strawmodels
• Can be a simple map of the process
• Allows the team to discuss the topics in a
  logical sequence
• More productive faster

7
8
Preparation

• Process walk-through
• Strawmodels
• Ground Rules
• Govern the teams conduct
• Empower the facilitator
• Can be added throughout the project

8
9
Ground Rules

• Generic behavior
• Listen carefully to other speakers
• Respect the point of view of others
• Suspend judgment and consider alternative
  approaches
• Speak up and share your views
• Avoid side conversations

9
10
Ground Rules

• Project specific
• Identify policy decisions that are within and
  outside of the scope of the group
• Determine who will make a decision if the group
  cannot reach consensus

10
11
Facilitation Components

• Prepare
• Conduct follow-up

11
12
Conduct Follow-up

• Determine how information will be retained
• Draw maps
• Record notes on chart paper
• Have someone else take notes
• The facilitator should update the maps to prepare
  themselves for the next meeting
• Validate the maps with the team at the next
  meeting

13
Facilitation Techniques

• Facilitation Styles
• Group Management

14
Facilitation Styles

• Understand your default style
• The way you prefer to handle specific situations
• My default style
• Fun
• Patient
• Chaos

14
15
Facilitation Styles

• Understand your default style
• Modify your style to deal with specific
  situations
• Tough talk

15
16
Facilitation Styles

• Understand your default style
• Modify your style to deal with specific
  situations
• Scripts
• Standard phrases used to introduce a comment

16
17
Group Management

• Staying on schedule
• Moving the line of inquiry forward
• Building consensus

18
Staying on Schedule

• Use the agenda as a guide
• Shift from content to process
• Script Lets do a process check
• Stay on this topic or move on
• Assign to a sub-group between meetings
• Run over scheduled time

18
19
Staying on Schedule

• Use the agenda as a guide
• Parking Lot ideas for later
• Script With your permission I will capture your
  idea on the parking lot.

19
20
Group Management

• Staying on schedule
• Moving the line of inquiry forward
• Asking questions
• Summarizing ideas

21
Moving the Line of Inquiry Forward

• Elevate details to themes
• It sounds like we need to determine how much
  risk of internal mistakes we can tolerate.

21
22
Moving the Line of Inquiry Forward

• Elevate details to themes
• Summarizing the working proposition
• The path that seems to be resonating best with
  the group
• Direction for the line of inquiry
• Does not mean everyone has agreed
• Script Why dont I run through the working
  proposition?

22
23
Moving the Line of Inquiry Forward

• Elevate details to themes
• Summarizing the working proposition
• Explain it in the vernacular
• Use common words not organizational jargon

23
24
Moving the Line of Inquiry Forward

• Elevate details to themes
• Summarizing the working proposition
• Explain it in the vernacular
• Recognize violent agreement and move on
• Everyone favors an idea
• Script It seems like we are in violent
  agreement.

24
25
Moving the Line of Inquiry Forward

• Elevate details to themes
• Summarizing the working proposition
• Explain it in the vernacular
• Recognize violent agreement and move on
• Move some issues to another venue

25
26
Building Consensus

• Consensus is the solution everyone is willing to
  support
• Recognize small victories
• Script We already agree on X, so now we only
  need to focus on Y.

26
27
Building Consensus

• Consensus is the solution everyone is willing to
  support
• Recognize small victories
• Recognize common elements of seemingly differing
  views
• Recognize views only differ by a few elements

27
28
Building Consensus

• Consensus is the solution everyone is willing to
  support
• Recognize small victories
• Recognize common elements of seemingly differing
  views
• Working proposition morphs into consensus

28
29
Building ConsensusVoting

• Avoid voting for the final Yes/No decision
• Dont create winners and losers for the final
  decision

29
30
Building ConsensusVoting

• Avoid voting for the final Yes/No decision
• Where voting works
• Clarify the working proposition

30
31
Building ConsensusVoting

• Avoid voting for the final Yes/No decision
• Where voting works
• Clarify the working proposition
• Ranking importance (2-d matrix)

31
32
Voting Two-dimensional matrix
32
33
Facilitation Summary

• Facilitators allow for more productive meetings
  and projects
• Preparation and follow-up are critical for a
  successful facilitation

33
34
Facilitation Summary

• Manage the group to
• Stay on schedule
• Move the line of inquiry forward
• Build consensus

34