Facilitation Skills Are Essential

A successful meeting has purpose, organization, direction, and supportive guidance from an unbiased leader–or a facilitator. Facilitation skills are an essential component of effective meetings because they supply teams with the expertise they need to hone in on the problem or topic at hand and achieve creative solutions and consensus.

A skilled facilitator can supercharge a team’s performance by functioning as a process guide for navigating complicated business challenges.?Facilitators are experts at leading groups through key meetings and gatherings.?You might have encountered a facilitator if you have participated in a?design thinking-style workshop or a?Design Sprint. Incorporate facilitation skills in your meeting culture to achieve more productive and effective meetings.

A good facilitator possesses the following skills:

• Advanced preparation
• Clear communication
• Active listening
• Asking questions
• Timekeeping
• Establishing a psychologically safe environment for sharing
• Creating focus amongst the group
• Unbiased objectivity
• Managing the group decision process

A skilled?facilitator?is like the sails of a ship. They guide the team onboard where they need to go, with no objective other than to lead the team to their destination. A team can navigate a meeting without sails, but it is much easier and more effective if they have facilitation skills to guide them.

Facilitation, like any skill, is something that?improves with experience. It calls for advanced preparation as well as the ability to provide direction and make adjustments on the fly. In its most effective form, facilitation is practiced from a place of unbiased, objective curiosity. While the skills outlined here are useful for dedicated facilitators, they can be applied by anyone to help create more fruitful and focused discussions whether you’re building consensus around how a team operates or solving a complicated problem.

Douglas Ferguson | President, Voltage Control

Interested in becoming a certified facilitator? Our next cohort is coming up! Applications are due May 6th, we hope you will join us!

+ Certification +

Facilitation Certification

This comprehensive program will guide you through key facilitation foundation skills aligned with the International Association of Facilitators (IAF)?competencies?and provide you with ample opportunities to practice. You’ll receive feedback in a supportive cohort of facilitator colleagues. And by the end of your experience in this facilitator certification program, you will be able to:

• Identify a spectrum of game-changing facilitation methods and approaches
• Select the best facilitation methods for your facilitation context
• Implement the right facilitation methods to meet optimal facilitation outcomes
• Reflect on areas of personal facilitator strength and growth
• Cultivate a valuable professional facilitator identity

When you pass coursework, you’ll receive certificates of completion for each individual course. At the point of satisfying all certification requirements (courses are pass/fail), you’ll receive a full certification to display on LinkedIn and for your professional portfolios to get further recognition from your employer and the field.

Apply Today

+ Workshops +

Design Sprint Essentials

The Design Sprint is a staple structure in the world of facilitation for solving big challenges. It’s a five-day process, initially developed at?Google Ventures, used for validating ideas and tackling a business problem. The powerful process guides teams through a design-based thinking process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users.?Design Sprints can help to align a team around a shared vision, answer critical business questions, or discover the essence of a creative challenge or problem.

In this free introduction, you will get the basics of what you need to know to run your own effective Design Sprint.

Register Today

+ Articles +

5 Tips To Combat Disengaged Employees

How do we become disengaged? What triggers disengagement in employees? When employees are engaged they embody the vision, values, and purpose of the company. The ultimate goal is to have a team of passionate contributors who are driven toward innovation and are positive and innovative problem solvers. As Leaders, we need to understand what causes our team to be disengaged if we want to shift them towards innovation.?

Read More