You're leading a Facilitation team. How can you gauge the effectiveness of your problem-solving efforts?

1 Reflective Practice

Reflective practice is a cornerstone in determining the success of your facilitation efforts. Encourage your team to look back at each problem-solving session and evaluate what worked and what didn't. This reflection can be structured through after-action reviews or debriefing sessions where team members discuss the strategies employed, the dynamics of the group, and the effectiveness of the solutions generated. By regularly integrating reflective practice into your problem-solving process, you can identify patterns, refine techniques, and enhance the overall competency of your team.

4 Skill Development

Facilitation is as much about developing problem-solving skills within your team as it is about finding immediate solutions. Monitor the growth of individual team members' skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. Consider implementing a skills matrix or a development plan for each member to track progress over time. By focusing on skill development, you ensure that your team becomes more adept at facilitating and solving problems independently.

5 Process Efficiency

Evaluate the efficiency of the problem-solving process itself. Are meetings well-structured and time-efficient? Do team members come prepared and stay focused on the task? Efficient processes reduce the time to reach solutions and increase the team's capacity to tackle more problems. Use process mapping to identify any bottlenecks or redundancies in your approach and streamline activities where possible. An efficient process is indicative of a team that has honed its facilitation skills and can navigate complex problems effectively.

6 Long-Term Impact

Lastly, consider the long-term impact of your problem-solving efforts. This involves looking at how the solutions have influenced the broader goals and strategies of your organization or the stakeholders you serve. Have your facilitation efforts led to systemic changes or improvements? Assessing long-term impact requires you to track progress over extended periods, ensuring that the benefits of your problem-solving initiatives are sustained and contribute to ongoing success.