Ebook Facilitating Groups

Every manager, every coach, every HR professional, every trainer, every team leader - anyone who needs to get the best out of a group needs to know how to facilitate. Facilitation bypasses coercion, teaching or chairing. It's about how to read a group, how to challenge appropriately and how to name the apparently unnameable. It's about being able to design events which perfectly match what the group needs and then to run such events with aplomb. Facilitating Groups, now fully revised in this new edition, is written by a facilitator with 30 years of experience and cuts to the heart of the practical skills that any facilitator needs.

Most trainers rely on trial and error as the only means of improving facilitation skills. This definitive text furnishes a comprehensive framework for determining the best interventions to use in a given group situation. The trainer is presented with strategies for assisting the individual to establish an attainable goal, develop a strategy for change, and implement and evaluate that strategy during and following the life of the group. Both personal and professional development groups are addressed in the model. Most current literature describes how to design management training and human relations group. This text goes a step further by providing a framework for intervening on a moment-by-moment basis to ensure group goal achievement. Facilitating Training Groups provides clear descriptions of three primary models--T-groups, personal growth groups, and skills training groups. Their goals, theoretical underpinnings, and required leadership style are explored. The book focuses on what trainers say and do during the life of a group to facilitate the accomplishment of the goals of a particular model. Trainers learn a process for deciding what interventions to use in different circumstances and models. Practice exercises assist the reader in assimilating the material. This book is particularly relevant for those studying human resources, human resource training, psychology, sociology, and social work.

Most workshops and meetings will achieve more in less time if they are facilitated professionally. This book gives an introduction to the essential skills needed when running a facilitated workshop.

The Secrets of Facilitation delivers a clear vision of facilitation excellence and reveals the specific techniques effective facilitators use to produce consistent, repeatable results with groups. Author Michael Wilkinson has trained thousands of managers, mediators, analysts, and consultants around the world to apply the power of SMART (Structured Meeting And Relating Techniques) facilitation to achieve amazing results with teams and task forces. He shows how anyone can use these proven group techniques in conflict resolution, consulting, managing, presenting, teaching, planning, selling, and other professional as well as personal situations.

The definitive guide to running productive meetings Facilitating With Ease! has become the go-to handbook for those who lead meetings, training, and other business gatherings. Packed with information, effective practices, and invaluable advice, this book is the comprehensive handbook for anyone who believes meetings should be productive, relevant, and as short as possible. Dozens of exercises, surveys, and checklists will help transform anyone into a skilled facilitator, and clear, actionable guidance makes implementation a breeze. This new fourth edition includes a new chapter on questioning, plus new material surrounding diversity, globalization, technology, feedback, distance teams, difficult executives, diverse locations, personal growth, meeting management, and much more. With in-depth, expert guidance from planning to closing, this book provides facilitators with an invaluable resource for learning or training. Before you run another meeting, discover the practices, processes, and techniques that turn you from a referee to an effective facilitator. This book provides a wealth of tools and insights that you can put into action today. Run productive meetings that get real results Keep discussions on track and facilitate the exchange of ideas Resolve conflict and deal with difficult individuals Train leaders and others to facilitate effectively Poorly-run meetings are an interruption in the day, and accomplish little other than putting everyone behind in their “real” work. On the other hand, a meeting run by an effective facilitator makes everyone’s job easier; decisions get made, strategies are improved, answers are given, and new ideas bubble to the surface. A productive meeting makes everyone happy, and results in real benefits that spread throughout the organization. Facilitating With Ease! is the skill-building guide to running great meetings with confidence and results.

"This book reveals the secrets of the art of facilitation and shows how to use it to initiate group empowerment. Developing facilitation skills means first fully understanding the facilitator role: that of a guide helping a group or individual towards a conclusion, without steering the decision. To become an effective group facilitator you need to understand the principles of self-facilitation and the facilitation of individuals, as well as that of a group. The authors, all experienced facilitators, begin by fully explaining the skills required and the benefits to be derived. The Toolkit which follows includes practical activities, designs and processes, and includes a model facilitation training programme. This combination of personal experience and practical advice will have wide appeal for facilitators, trainers and group members."--Provided by publisher.

Sponsored by the International Association of Facilitators, TheIAF Handbook of Group Facilitation offers the need-to-knowbasics in the field brought together by fifty leading practitionersand scholars. This indispensable resource includes successfulstrategies and methods, foundations, and resources for anyone whoworks with groups. The IAF Handbook of GroupFacilitation provides an overview of the field for new andaspiring practitioners and a reliable reference for experiencedgroup facilitators, including chapters on Creating positive ongoing client relationships Building trust and improving communications Facilitating group brainstorming sessions Drawing out the best in people Developing a collaborative environment Designing and facilitating dialogue Managing conflicting agendas Working with multicultural groups Using improvisation Understanding virtual meetings Facilitating team start-up Assessing group decision processes Building expertise in facilitation Reviewing core facilitation competencies Modeling positive professional attitudes

What takes place in the head and heart of an effective facilitative leader? How do they find the inner resources to draw upon? What is the source of their powerful effect on people and situations? The 9 Disciplines of a Facilitator examines these questions and explores the self-mastery it takes to become a great facilitator. Written by Jon and Maureen Jenkins, two of the long-term members of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), this much-needed resource explains that facilitation is more than a process or a set of techniques for managing groups—facilitation is its own profession with its own set of disciplines that help define the facilitator's role. Throughout the book the authors detail the nine personal disciplines of effective facilitators: Detachment, Engagement, Focus, Awareness, Action, Presence, Interior Council, Intentionality, and a Sense of Wonder.