Facilitation explained „playfully“
Facilitation is something magical to make meetings, workshops, projects or processes successful. Usually blog posts here are in German so this is an exception. It is a translation of the previous post which is a summary of a small series I recently posted on Twitter and LinkedIn:
Definition: Facilitation is a form of moderation supporting a group to meet their goals in meetings, decisions, in problem solving or in processes.
Most of our organizational environment is influenced by hierarchical structures – but:
Discussions across hierachical structures are seldomly open and free.
Guess why?
A first step to solve this dilemma could be facilitation:
The introduction of an independent and neutral facilitator.
Without facilitator the chair is sitting on a throne influecing discussion and results.
Wanted or not.
With faciliation the chair becomes an equal member of the team and has the chance to discuss at eye level.
The role of the chair becomes much more simple and the chair is able to concentrate on aspects of problem solving and content.
Facilitation is seperating between WHAT (content) and HOW (process).
While the facilitator keeps his eyes on the process, the participants can focus on the content.
An indepndent facilitator focuses on the procedure and its goalsetting but keeps neutral content-wise.
Facilitation allows all participants to focus on content.
In an ideal world a facilitator is supported by a recorder.
The recorders role is to document the results.
Best arguments for facilitation are the neglection of this approach. We all know such bad practice from day-to-day business:
Hope you got curious and have a better understanding of facilitaiton right now.
I am preparing facilitation trainings with my colleagues from Visual Braindump and LinkedIn-Learning. Currently we are focussing on German trainings.
Tags: Englisch, English, Entscheidung, Erfolg, Facilitation, Meeting, Problemlösung, Projekt, Workshop