Facilitation:

Facilitation is used in a variety of areas, including education, empirical learning, conflict resolution, and negotiation. It can be said that the process is to help groups or individuals to learn, find solutions, or achieve results with the agreement of the parties.

Facilitating provides the opportunity for individuals or groups as a business team or business partner  to learn on their own or find answers to problems without control or manipulation. Facilitators need good communication skills such as listening, asking questions and giving good feedback.

Facilitation is effective when a team is experiencing issues that are virtually an obstacle to achieving specific goals. These types of barriers, which require a facilitator to solve for teams, are generally of the soft barrier type: differences within the team over goal definition, differences in workmanship, team incompatibility, and hidden chronic problems. Hard obstacles are generally of the technical and hardware type, which are easily removed due to their visibility.

A facilitator may help the team by defining guidelines through the Problem Solving process.

In order for the team to be able to achieve its maximum performance in the fastest time, we suggest techniques and tips.
Before attempting any facilitation, it is important to make sure that the basics of teamwork and cooperation are well established and that everyone agrees.

It is clear that these principles guide the way in which a team understands the tasks and missions it must undertake and understands their structure. If you have not yet taken this step, it is recommended that you design an organizational structure before inviting facilitators. Sometimes teams spend valuable resources figuring out what to do. If the team is struggling with this, then having a facilitator can still be helpful.

Successful team facilitation requires active participation among facilitators, senior managers, team managers and team members. This collaboration is most effective when the rules, expectations, time frame, goals and criteria of success are clear. The overall goal is to create a culture of commitment and accountability for the tasks assigned to the team.

The goal of team facilitation is to build trust, open communication, clarify key roles and responsibilities, and create goals. An effective personal development plan and a mentoring agreement must be established between the facilitator and the people within the team.

 

For effective facilitation, we suggest following these rules:

 

1 .  The needs of the team should be clear and focus on the current needs, not the future.

2  .Confirm that the team is ready to facilitate:

A. Will they accept facilitators?

B. Did they apply for facilitation or were they told they had to receive it?

C. What do they expect from facilitation?

3 .  Set realistic expectations with the team and senior executives:

A. What are the expected results of facilitation?

B. Make it clear whether the goal is to facilitate teamwork or individual or organizational coaching.

C. Build trust. Determine who receives the results report.

D. Determine the time and place of the facility in advance.

4.  Observe the team:

A. Identify the destructive behaviors that occur in the facilitation process by some people.

B. Document specific cases of misconduct.

C. Record the strengths and weaknesses of the team members and the team itself as a unit.

D. Understand what team members think may hinder their progress in achieving the goal.

5. Where the team uses team development measurement patterns, such as the Tuckman model, base these models on subsequent measurements.

A. Understand where the team is now. Record behaviors that show the team is at that stage.

B. Know the history of team building and record the biggest challenge in teamwork.

C. A well-codified team development framework and charter can bring a team to productivity.

 

The facilitator must ensure that the team charter is well developed before any changes are made.

 

6. Develop a recovery plan:

A. Describe the impact of team behaviors, both positive and negative.

B.  Investigate the reasons that lead to bad results in the team.

C. Set expectations for a realistic change in team behavior.

D. Build an improvement program around team and team strengths.

E. Describe specific corrective actions to overcome the observed weaknesses.

F. Describe any training that may be needed and how to achieve that training.

7.  confidentiality:

A. Make sure that what is observed, recommended or helped remains confidential.

B. If a finding is to be reported to a higher person in the organization, the team must first be notified.

8.  Follow up:

A.  Set a time to follow up with the team to see if progress has been made.

B.  Ask them to regularly inform facilitators and managers about what works and what doesn’t.

Here are some tips to help you get better:

 

 

• Talk to the team about specific goals, forming a team to make sure they have a full understanding of those goals.
• Refer to the team charter regularly to keep the focus on the margins.
• Involve some less focused team members in the coaching process.
• Discover hidden programs that may be run separately by one or more team members.
• Encourage team members to be accountable for their actions.

-Help the team define the barriers that affect progress. If necessary, help the team members overcome these obstacles through coaching.

• Take the team from the stage of hoping to be a team to the stage of having a real team.

-Bind productivity to teamwork to problem solving skills.

• Help the team emulate the success of other top teams.
• Overcome feelings of frustration and failure in the team.
• Involve the team in external motivations and motivations so that they can focus on their tasks again.
• Involve team members in the coaching process, who face much more serious challenges in terms of personal development or in the face of each other.
• Identify and clarify the roles and responsibilities of team members.
• Create good in-team sessions and set specific rules to make the most of your time in the meeting.
• Do not accept disruption of the facilitation process by team members.
• Encourage and engage those who are backward or silent.
• Help the team focus on what is possible and build the future step by step.

 

The team can always consult with anyone who has any problems they may have and it can be a good idea to share it with someone else. If there are people in the company with facilitation or coaching skills, be sure to discuss and discuss the problems with them so that you can have a better perspective on solving team problems. Once the cause of the problem is fully understood, developing a practical plan to get the team back on track will be the next step.

Prevention is always better than cure. Fortunately, with guidelines and guidelines, teams can be kept on track that need less facilitators, and if they follow these guidelines, they will experience a much easier facilitation process.

 

Here is a checklist of guidelines that can reduce the need for facilitation interventions in teams:

 

 

1. It is very important to set goals and achievements that all team members accept, as well as to increase the sense of belonging to the team. Before facilitating a team or even providing information, it is important to ask them what they expect to achieve by the end of the session. Let the group members express their expectations of the meeting to have the same perspective for the meeting. At the end of the session, send the team the documentation of the group’s expectations and what they have achieved.

2.  Allowing each team to set its own performance criteria – not dictated criteria but the ones they accept and follow – will lead to greater success.

3.  Encouraging team members to disagree is a positive way to solve problems. Team members need to feel comfortable with each other in order to have a constructive disagreement. Before facilitating a team, set specific behavioral rules and make sure everyone understands them.

for example:

• We allow all ideas and opinions to be presented.

• We listen actively.

• We respect what others say.

• We allow everyone to participate in the discussion.

• Let one person speak at a time.

• We discuss issues, not individuals.

4.  Examining past actions when planning for the future will help the team see where they have been successful and why this has happened. They can learn from their mistakes.

5.  Aggressive decision-making helps all team members feel that their ideas are being considered and that they are part of the process. Creating an opportunity to vote for teams will ultimately lead to consensus.

6.  Maintaining cohesion and maintaining a sense of unity gives the team the feeling that they have a common goal that can be used to move the whole team to a higher level of performance.

7.  Efforts to synergize occur when team members base their thoughts and ideas on the ideas of other team members and allow creativity to be fluid in the team.

8.  Creating a comfortable work environment creates a positive and active atmosphere in which team members can interact with each other and perform better.

9.  Using a physical space that is conducive to teamwork, such as a comfortable temperature and a comfortable chair, etc., can be a very easy environment. Use such physical spaces for facilitation sessions as well. Assume that the work space or meeting space is like common sense that can think beyond our thoughts and come up with ideas. Placing items such as voice recorders, active note-taking, voting markers, and expressing emotions can help create such an atmosphere. Physical space should be such that eye contact is not impaired.

10.  Listening to each other and providing useful feedback are essential skills for all members of a team. They need to be able to understand what others are saying. This skill should be strengthened during team building exercises. People who talk too much can interfere with team facilitation or team building sessions and can easily lead the team to teamwork thinking.

While suppressing the flow of ideas is not a goal in facilitation, there are two ways that a facilitator may use to control a person who does not allow others to come up with ideas:

A.  Moving the disruptor to the non-dominant facilitator (the non-dominant side is the one that facilitates less eye contact with team members), limiting direct eye contact with the facilitator, and increasing the participation of others in the discussion.
One way to move an audience after they sit down without paying attention is to place colored markers in the center of the table and ask people to remove one marker each. Then, depending on the color of the marker that the target audience has removed, we can ask them to change their location. This technique is effective for breaking stereotypes and moving people effectively in their dominant and non-dominant positions.

B.  Walking around the room and pointing directly at people can be more effective in encouraging them to talk or advising them to be more silent.

11.  Using constructive criticism to facilitate team interaction is often effective, although direct criticism of individuals should not be made. Constructive discussions help teams make better decisions.

12.  Allowing members to express their ideas fully and explicitly is essential. But when members come up with ideas, it’s important to make sure they’re not pursuing their own personal plans. However, it is important to hear all the ideas, even if they do not fit the goals of the team. It is difficult to facilitate a team in which people pursue their ideals or try to put them on the agenda. To manage this, you can use the parking technique.

At the beginning of the session, explain that there is a parking lot to document thoughts or suggestions that may not be relevant to the team at the moment. This will help participants understand that participation is important, although their ideas may be seen later. In this way, both people’s ideas are heard and the process of the meeting is not disrupted, and they create an opportunity for senior managers to become more familiar with the criteria and opinions and side ideas of the team.

13.  Getting to know people from other team members makes it easier for them to share their expertise, ideas and thoughts with the rest of the team.

14.  Helping team members by senior managers to research team goals, even if it is personal, creates a commitment among team members to help each other. Team members need to feel comfortable and ask for help.

One approach to keeping meetings on track is to prepare an agenda. It is important to discuss the objectives of the meeting and to clarify the issue. Prepare the agenda in three columns: In the first column, enter the positions in question.

In the second column, list the activities related to the topic that were or should be done in the previous session, and in the third column, list the activities related to the topic that should be done until the next session. Members are responsible for the performance of their duties. If team members are unable to fulfill their commitments due to changing priorities, the meetings provide an opportunity for them to ask others for help.

15.  Evaluating creative approaches to problem solving is a feature of effective teams. Creativity is a way to motivate team members to perform better and increase productivity.

16.  Injecting flexibility into team thinking and performance makes team members grow, easier to feel wrong, and confident in their ability to help the team achieve its goals. If the team is rigid, creativity will not be formed.

 

Facilitating is as much an art as it is a scientific skill. It is a skill that is acquired through interaction with teams. Understanding human behavior in the workplace is one of the keys to success in facilitation. A healthy team is a system, just as a company is a system.

In a vacuum, the emergence of a good team rarely happens. Senior managers and facilitators need to be in direct contact with the team to support progress toward their goal. Newly formed teams or newcomers need more careful monitoring. The facilitator and team leader must respect the abilities of the team members so that they can take responsibility for their own success.