Two key components in our ability to achieve desired results are capabilities and focus. As leaders, we need to balance these in order to yield those results as effectively as possible. Leaders, managers, supervisors and project leads must have the ability to bring the best out in their people in order to achieve the maximum results possible for any given initiative or project. A paramount skill for any of these positions is understanding when and how to facilitate your team.

ELS has developed workshops that help individuals in leadership positions develop the key facilitation skills necessary to yield those desired results. The key to successful facilitation is helping teams and individuals get to a solution without creating it for them. Getting individuals to buy into a process, and more importantly take ownership of it, requires focused training in specific areas.

Examples of what is covered in our Facilitation Skills workshop include:

• Role of a facilitator
  
• Instructor fundamentals
  
• Establishing and maintaining forward focus
  
• Driving where teams and individuals are focused through the use of effective questions
  
• Creating an environment where people feel comfortable and valuable by being involved
  
• Learning to interpret peoples’ thoughts and comments and translating them into manageable concepts for a group
  
• Learning to communicate boundaries for individuals and groups that allow facilitators to maximize time and recourses during a given session
  
• Potential pitfalls for facilitators

 

Some of the key concepts and tools that facilitators will be exposed to include:

• Forward Focus - The importance of focus in influencing without authority, and the importance of focusing on the needs of others first to get what you want done.
• Effective Questions - What questions can you ask yourself to diagnose issues? What questions can you ask others to influence others? Deeper discussion on how to craft and use effective questions.
• Framework - The five step tool that can align people in matrix organizations. When and when not to use it and also how to best facilitate it. Using different version to over come various challenges.

 

"Effective facilitation is the ability to influence where teams focus, without driving the solution. Facilitation then becomes the balancing fulcrum between leading and managing groups
and individuals.
-Ed Gillcrist

Building Teams that Drive Results
Decentralize Decision-Making Through Teams
Presentation Skills