Schuman S. - The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation (2005)(en)

John Rohrbaugh earned his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Colorado and currently serves as full professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy and director of the Office of International Education, University at Albany (SUNY). His research has focused on the problem-solving processes of management groups, executive teams, and expert task forces in an effort to identify methods that would improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational decision making. His work, ranging from brief laboratory studies to a ten-year demonstration project in a field setting, has been published as articles in more than twenty journals and as chapters in nearly as many books. As a consultant and facilitator, he has worked with over thirty agencies of federal and state government in the United States, as well as participating on project teams working with governments in Chile, Egypt, Somalia, Lebanon, and Hungary.

Roger Schwarz is an organizational psychologist and president of Roger Schwarz & Associates, a consulting firm that helps people think and act differently so that they can create powerful results and productive relationships in ways they did not think possible. Since 1980, he has served as facilitator, consultant, trainer, and coach to Fortune 500 corporations, governments, and nonprofit organizations, helping them develop effective work groups and facilitative leaders, and create organizational change. He is the author of The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers and Coaches, New and Revised Edition (Jossey-Bass, 2002), considered a standard reference on facilitation. He is coauthor of The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook (Jossey-Bass, 2005). Formerly an associate professor of public management and government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in 1996 he founded Roger Schwarz and Associates. He earned his B.S. degree from Tufts University, an M.Ed. from Harvard University, and an A.M. and Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan.

Beverly Seiford has over twenty-five years of experience as an organization development consultant, project director, and educator. She has facilitated strategic planning, process improvement, leadership development, conflict resolution, and team-building initiatives for Fortune 100 corporations, federal and state governments, medical centers, educational institutions, and nonprofit agencies. The focus of her work is helping clients create a culture that supports superior organizational performance, ongoing individual employee development, and the effective use of

available resources in the context of a constantly changing environment. She is a partner in Dannemiller Tyson Associates. She has a master’s degree and an advanced graduate studies certificate in foundations of management from the University of Massachusetts. In addition, she is a certified administrator and trainer for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

David Sibbet is a facilitator, organizational consultant, and communications designer. He is founder and president of the Grove Consultants International, a fullservice organization development consulting firm and publishing company located in San Francisco. He and his team design and lead strategy, visioning, creativity, future-forces, leadership development, and large-scale system change processes for clients throughout the world. In addition, he and the Grove’s Design Solutions Group provide documentation and communication design services that help move insight to action. He is the author and designer of many of the Grove’s process consulting tools and guides. Sibbet received a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a B.A. in English from Occidental College. He is a long-time affiliate with the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park and a member of the Global Business Network in Emeryville.

Trish Silber is president of Aliniad Consulting Partners, a consulting firm focused on leadership, team, and organization development. She works with clients in executive coaching, strategic alignment, and corporate learning in leadership, productive reasoning, and communication. Prior to forming Aliniad, she was a senior partner with Catalyst Consulting Team, a national consulting firm known for its work in strategic alignment, leadership development, and experiential learning and served on its board of directors from 1996 through 2002. Prior to joining Catalyst, she held several internal human resource positions at Apple Computer. She earned a master’s degree in business from the University of Santa Clara and a bachelor’s degree in behavioral psychology from Connecticut College, and has done graduate work in organizational behavior at George Washington University. She has completed numerous certificate programs in the fields of human resources, organization development, and coaching. She is an assistant professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she teaches in the Leadership Coaching graduate program.

Marianne Stifel: People have always interested and fascinated me. For this reason, I studied medicine and, after receiving my doctorate, specialized in family practice.

programs, replaced elsewhere by more recent and easily read authors. Nonetheless, Barnard still challenges us with pertinent ideas that have retained, if not increased, their relevance. In the concluding paragraph of this renowned book, Barnard highlights four salient points:

•Society is increasingly complex and organizations are more elaborate. Even more true than in 1938, the idea that society is increasingly complex now is accepted axiomatically. Organizations are greater in number, size, and geographical scope. We are more dependent than ever before on elaborate technologies and the equally elaborate organizations that create and rely on them. We are interconnected and interdependent yet distinct and diverse.

•The increasing specialization necessitated by such a society brings with it a diversity of methods and purposes that may be inconsistent and foster misunderstandings. To manage our complex, technological world, people must be specialized—in roles, expertise, and skills. This makes effective communication, sharing of knowledge, and interpersonal understanding more difficult. This difficulty occurs not only at the level of substantive issues but also at the underlying levels of method (how people think about issues) and purpose (why they think about them). Misunderstandings occur between individuals, of course and, even more crucial, between large groups of people.

•What is needed are balanced minds that integrate feeling with reasoning, sense the net balance, and perceive the parts as well as the whole. The difficulties brought on by the effects of complexity and specialization can be addressed. How? By incorporating the views of multiple stakeholders with diverse interests and perspectives; perceiving the specific parts of the system, as well as the system as a whole; and clarifying the expected results and desired ends. We need to integrate analysis and intuition, facts and values, objective and subjective, thinking and feeling.

•Meeting these challenges—which will help groups to be more effective cognitively and socially—is a superlative task. To meet these challenges, we must address the intellectual, analytical, and cognitive demands of the situation. This is necessary but not sufficient. At the same time, we must help groups engage interpersonally, politically, emotionally, and spiritually. As group facilitators, we must, in Barnard’s words, strive “socially to make mind more effective.” Toward this accomplishment, we devote ourselves and dedicate The IAF Handbook of

Group Facilitation. Working together, we aim to strengthen our understanding— in organizations, communities and societies—of group facilitation, a superlative task.

Here is Barnard’s full quotation:

One can hardly contemplate the passing scene of civilized society without a sense that the need of balanced minds is real and that a superlative task is how socially to make mind more effective. That the increasing complexity of society and the elaboration of technique and organization now necessary will more and more require capacity for rigorous reasoning seems evident; but it is a super-structure necessitating a better use of the non-logical mind to support it. “Brains” without “minds” seem a futile unbalance. The inconsistencies of method and purpose and the misunderstandings between large groups which increasing specialization engenders need the corrective of the feeling mind that senses the end result, the net balance, the interest of all, and of the spirit that perceiving the concrete parts encompasses also the intangibles of the whole [p. 322].

Client Relationships

1.Develop working partnerships.

•Clarifies mutual commitment

•Develops consensus on tasks, deliverables, roles, and responsibilities

•Demonstrates collaborative values and processes such as in cofacilitation

2.Design and customize applications to meet client needs.

•Analyzes organizational environment

•Diagnoses client need

•Creates appropriate designs to achieve intended outcomes

•Predefines a quality product and outcomes with client

3.Manage multisession events effectively.

•Contracts with client for scope and deliverables

•Develops event plan

•Delivers event successfully

•Assesses or evaluates client satisfaction at all stages of the event or project

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Nadine Bell

Susan Nurre

We received a call from Judith, an information technology (IT) executive in search of facilitation training for her team of project managers. We explored in general terms what she was seeking and

arranged a meeting to talk in more detail about her needs.

Arriving at the meeting prepared with materials and questions, we began our discussion with the specifics of the requested facilitation class. We then asked Judith how her team would use the facilitation tools that we would be teaching and what problems she hoped these skills would address. During our meeting, Judith and we exchanged ideas, experiences, and methodologies as we established rapport and began to build a foundation of credibility and trust. It became clear through the interview that besides general facilitation, Judith wanted her team to learn how to apply those skills to specific IT sessions.

When we asked about our competition, we learned that we knew both of the other candidates since we were all part of the local facilitator network. We told Judith that although we wanted her to choose us, she would not go wrong with any of her choices.

Later that afternoon, Judith called requesting some information on mind mapping. We quickly pulled together and e-mailed some resources, then followed up with a telephone call.

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We delivered our proposal to her within a few days, recommending two classes and follow-on coaching for maximum success. Shortly after, she accepted our proposal, and we delivered the classes. Two weeks later, we met with Judith to debrief the classes, review the evaluations, and discuss next steps.

At a celebratory dinner, Judith shared that she had received many positive comments about the training. She had told a number of people, both inside and outside the company, that she thought our training would be of great benefit to them. Judith also recommended opportunities to showcase our services, such as speaking at the local Project Management Institute meetings. During the course of the conversation, we also explored her current challenges. We brainstormed a variety of solutions, identified where we could provide assistance, and recommended other resources for services that were beyond our expertise.

At a subsequent luncheon meeting, we agreed that our interactions were so rich that we wanted to take our collaboration to a new level. We discussed submitting a proposal to deliver a joint session on facilitation and project management at the 2004 IAF conference.

Since that time, Judith has referred colleagues to us and asked us to submit another proposal for both a repeat of the course we delivered and two additional courses.

As we continue to keep in touch with follow-up telephone calls, e-mail, and occasional lunches, we offer Judith assistance in defining issues and brainstorming solutions. We also serve as a sounding board for her ideas and make referrals to resources to meet her specific needs. When other managers ask her for assistance with their challenges, she does not hesitate to recommend us because our continued, productive contacts have kept our name and services fresh in her mind.

CREATING THE BIG PICTURE

Developing a relationship with clients based on trust and collaboration goes beyond working with them to prepare for a single workshop or series of sessions. The skills we use to design and facilitate sessions—clarifying mutual commitment, customizing the session to meet the client’s needs, emphasizing collaborative values and processes, deciding which participants to include, and reaching understanding on scope, deliverables, roles, and responsibilities—do not merely result in successful sessions.