Team Facilitation

The target of this article is to portray to you how crucial the integration of facilitation skills can be in the motivating and furthering of your business.

Facilitation skills are defined as the skills which help organise events or meetings in an organisation, or the skills to help start a process. Literally, they are the skills which facilitate the functioning of your community. They are important for lots of different reasons. One of the biggest bonuses of having well developed facilitation skills within your company is that it helps to keep employees motivated and involved. For example, one of the main facilitation skills is bringing people together to discuss certain topics, and these meetings have to be set up so that everyone feels comfortable participating and they develop a structure where everyone’s ideas can be heard. Afterwards, they should be able to feel good about their contribution to the meeting and also feel like decisions made were influenced by them, and it was not just the leader making the calls.

There are other factors in the rise of facilitation skills to one of the most vital components in the corporate world. One of its aims is to reduce the burden on people as it can plan out how they can reach their targets, and therefore make their work more efficient. It will also hopefully lead to a higher level of thinking and planning within your work, leading to a general raising of standards across the organisation. It can also help you develop individual employees and discover strengths in them if they excel in suggesting specific ideas.

Here are some final pointers for more effective facilitation skills:

• In adjournments, do not memorize a script as this can make people feel nervous or spoken down to. Instead, try to speak naturally and freely as this helps the recipients relax and respond more honestly.
• The pace of a meeting or whether you take a break should be determined through analysing the groups body language.
• Ensure summaries and pauses so people know what they have learnt and also feel comfortable contributing.

If you or others in your organisation believe benefits would be drawn from the implementation of improved facilitation skills, then view the following people or companies for some further information:

• Susan Heathfield, a human resources expert, shares links about Basic Facilitation Skills on about.com.
• Clive Lewis is a professional management and personal skills developer. He writes a blog including content on facilitation skills for Illumine Training.
• Train in a Day can provide personalised or group training courses to help familiarise people with the necessary skills, and work in a sustainable way so your organisation can retain the information.

by Tom Witcomb