Facilitating Training Groups

Praise for Facilitating Group Learning "In this engaging and accessible book, George Lakey draws on a lifetime's experience to provide a highly practical resource to anyone seeking to understand and respond to the complexities of group work. The book will be invaluable to anyone trying to effect social change through groups while striving to stay simultaneously sane and employed." Stephen D. Brookfield, Distinguished University Professor, University of St. Thomas "I've been working with forms of direct education for many decades, and I found new ideas and inspirations in every chapter. For anyone involved in teaching, training, sharing skills, or leading groups, this book is an invaluable resource!" Starhawk, author, The Earth Path, Dreaming the Dark, and Webs of Power "George Lakey has inspired our union to engage in education in a way that challenges us to redefine social justice and equality in new and exciting ways. This book helps us to continue our journey to touch the souls of union members." Denis Lemelin, national president, Canadian Union of Postal Workers "Facilitating Group Learning will ease the way of all who venture into the white waters of facilitation. George clarifies the most basic, complex, and nagging challenges of facilitation, while honoring the realities of individual and social power dynamics and providing real-life examples from the path of continued growth and mastery. A rare gift!" Niyonu D. Spann, founding president, TRV Consulting and Beyond Diversity 101 "This book is a must-read for people who teach adults of any age, no matter what the subject, and care about doing it in ways that yield deep and abiding learning. Wonderfully well-written and rich with psychological and spiritual insights as well as practical strategies, it represents the fruits of a lifetime of transformational teaching and learning by one of the foremost adult educators of our time." Parker J. Palmer, author, The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, and The Heart of Higher Education

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.

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.

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.

Designed for administrators who are assigned to facilitate stakeholder groups, such as parents, site-based management teams, faculty & staff, & accountability teams, this book offers advice in keeping meetings positive, productive & efficient.

“I have had the good fortune to watch both David and Tina facilitate learning groups and have learned from the power of their modeling. . . . I am delighted that they have gathered their wisdom here in this volume to share with others eager to embark on the journey and experience the joys of facilitating learning with colleagues.” —From the Foreword by Ron Ritchhart, senior research associate, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education One of the most important shifts in schools in the last two decades has been the growing emphasis on collaboration among teachers and other educators. Whether you are a teacher facilitating a group for the first time or an experienced facilitator seeking to further develop your skills, this book is for you. Organized to be used as both an exploration of the role of facilitating and as a handbook of strategies, this resource covers a range of contexts that include faculty meetings, department meetings, professional learning communities, grade-level teams, and inquiry groups. This book is a perfect companion to the authors’ bestseller, The Facilitator’s Book of Questions, which focuses on the skills needed to facilitate protocols or structured conversations. Facilitating for Learning extends the scope of that work by also examining the facilitator’s responsibilities for supporting a group’s learning during all parts of a meeting, between meetings, and within the larger school context and culture. It is an essential resource for teachers, administrators, coaches, and teacher educators. Book Features: Contrasts facilitating for learning with other professional development roles, including staff development, coaching, and supervision.Outlines the basic responsibilities and tasks of facilitating teacher learning groups, including “moves” the facilitator might employ.Considers challenges related to school culture and leadership, group interactions, and time constraints.Provides resources to help facilitators develop their skills, including tools and references to other works on facilitation.

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.