Open Coordination Skills

Here's another excellent post by Dr. Cherry Vu, translated from her Facebook group. It's her 99th post on the topic of Open Management (Qu?n Ly M?).

Translation by ChatGPT4.o, with editing by Rob England. In Vietnamese, ?i?u ph?i means coordination, but in English facilitation is a better word in some contexts, so I've used either, as applicable. It is interesting that this intersection helped me see this in a slightly different way where I'd otherwise have considered them as separate.

Note that "Open" is our collective term at Teal Unicorn for all the concepts we use to Make Work Better. Learn more here tealunicorn.com/open.

What Schools Don't Teach Us: Coordination and Facilitation Skills

One of the most important skills for living and working effectively is coordination/facilitation. Especially when becoming a manager or leader, we need these abilities to lead teams and organizations to success. However, this is a skill that schools often don't teach us.

1. Why do you need coordination and facilitation skills?

These skills are not just about arranging work logically but also about the ability to collaborate among individuals, departments, and projects to achieve common goals. You need these skills to:

- Manage time and resources efficiently: Coordination helps you prioritize important tasks, allocate resources appropriately, and ensure that work progresses according to plan.

- Resolve conflicts: Conflicts are inevitable in the workplace. A good facilitator acts as a mediator, helping to resolve conflicts peacefully, ensuring that all parties understand each other better and continue to cooperate.

- Connect and promote collaboration: Coordination and facilitation skills help you connect people within the organization, creating conditions for individuals and teams to work together effectively while promoting cross-departmental collaboration.

2. The benefits of coordination and facilitation skills for individuals and organizations

- For individuals:

?- Increase work efficiency: Coordinating work helps you organize your time and tasks reasonably, avoiding waste and boosting productivity.

?- Develop leadership skills: Facilitation is one of the core leadership skills. If you can facilitate well, you will be able to lead your team effectively.

?- Improve decision-making ability: Facilitation skills require you to consider multiple factors and make quick decisions, thereby enhancing your decision-making abilities.

- For organizations:

?- Optimize resources: Good coordination leads to more efficient use of resources, minimizing waste, and increasing productivity.

?- Promote innovation and creativity: An organization with good facilitation skills will easily create a favorable environment for innovation, encouraging employees to come up with creative ideas.

?- Increase customer satisfaction: When an organization coordinates and facilitates work effectively, the quality of products and services improves, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

3. How to apply an Open mindset to facilitating meetings and events?

An Open mindset is an approach based on transparency, empowerment, and collaboration. Applying an Open mindset to facilitation skills can bring many benefits:

- Transparency of information: When applying an Open mindset, you will share information transparently, helping everyone in the organization understand their roles and common goals. This helps reduce conflicts and enhance cooperation.

- Empower employees: An Open mindset encourages empowering employees, allowing them to facilitate their own work, make decisions, and contribute to the organization's development. This not only increases work efficiency but also makes employees feel more responsible and connected to the organization.

- Encourage multidimensional collaboration: Instead of working within rigid structures, an Open mindset facilitates flexible collaboration between departments and individuals. Coordination and facilitation in an Open mindset environment promotes creativity and helps the organization respond quickly to external changes.

In conclusion, coordination and facilitation skills are essential for achieving high efficiency in work and life. Developing these skills not only helps individuals work more effectively, but also contributes to the success of the organization. When combining coordination and facilitation skills with an Open mindset, you create a transparent, collaborative, and creative work environment that helps your organization achieve outstanding results.

P.S. Cherry helped multiple teams complete new products in just one day, nothing extraordinary, it's all thanks to facilitation skills!