Facilitation At A Glance

This mini-book provides facilitation tools and techniques at a glance.

"Facilitation is fast becoming a core competency for anyone who leads a team, manages a project, heads up a committee, or manages a department. To get the most from people today, leaders have to know how to create buy-in, generate participation, and empower people. To keep pace, today's leaders need to be coaches, mentors, and teachers. At the core of each of these new roles is the skill of facilitation."--Author's introduction.

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.

Improve group results as a successful leader-facilitator Now you can reap the benefits of a more facilitative, participative style of leadership! How to Lead Work Teams will help you increase cooperation and job satisfaction, raise productivity and quality levels, and gain a more favorable view of your leadership abilities through facilitation. It describes exactly what facilitation is and what it is not and how to do it effectively. It shows you how to: Involve others, build consensus, and get commitment Help others solve problems and make decisions Use the knowledge and experience of all employees Develop and lead a team Use group process to run effective team meetings This book is especially helpful for someone who is new to managing or leading a team. It will also help experienced team leaders refine the role of leader-facilitator. And it will help team members understand how facilitation works and how they can enhance the process. To read the first chapter from this book, click here.

"Imagine meetings where everyone is heard and all people matter. Picture organizations that embrace all voices and are committed to justice, equity and opportunity for all. Imagine businesses, nonprofits and the public sector creatively engaging people in thousands of ways to get their best ideas, empower the silenced, and build communities where all are treated with dignity and respect. That's what Thrive seeks to create. Each chapter contains practical insights and accessible stories that transform meetings from dull to dynamic. You will learn how to create effective agendas, keep meetings task-oriented but collegial, and facilitate effectively in polarized or conflicted settings. Thrive includes chapters on privilege and power, multi-lingual meetings, and full inclusion of persons with disabilities. Whether you are a skilled practitioner or new to leadership, Thrive will teach you techniques for facilitating more effective, inclusive and energizing meetings"--

Effective software teams are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity. In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams. Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.

"The best book on collaboration ever written!" —Diane Flannery, founding CEO, Juma Ventures And now this classic book is even better—much better. Completely revised and updated, the second edition is loaded with new tools and techniques. Two powerful new chapters on agenda design A full section devoted to reaching closure More than twice as many tools for handling difficult dynamics 70 brand-new pages and over 100 pages significantly improved

From Ingrid Bens, the author of the best-selling book Facilitating with Ease!, comes the next-step resource for project leaders, managers, community leaders, teachers, and other facilitators who want to hone their skills in order to deal with complex situations. Advanced Facilitation Strategies is a field guide that offers practical strategies and techniques for working with challenging everyday situations. These proven strategies and techniques are based on experience gleaned from hundreds of facilitated activities in organizations of all sizes and in all sectors. Both novice and seasoned facilitators who have had firsthand experience designing and leading meetings will benefit from this reality-based playbook. Advanced Facilitation Strategies is filled with the information facilitators need to Become better at diagnosing facilitation assignments and creating effective process designs Broaden their repertoire of tools to make impromptu design changes whenever they are needed Learn to be more resilient and confident when dealing with dysfunctional situations and difficult people.