THREE THEMES
The workshop is organized around three themes:
• Facilitating groups
• Developing groups
• Becoming a more skillful group member
These three arenas are essential focus areas for all successful groups. Throughout the workshop concepts, tips, and tools for extending and refining skills in each of these territories will be offered.
Facilitating Groups
Facilitation is an act of planned improvisation. Skilled and confident facilitators pay attention to several dimensions simultaneously: task focus, process skills, development, and relationships within the group. With appropriate maps and tools, knowledgeable facilitators are able to: anticipate what might happen during a session; monitor both in- the-moment activities and actions and monitor where such actions fit within the bigger picture for the group and for the organization; and recover when the group, group members, or they themselves lose focus and direction.
Developing Groups
Our basic premise is that groups develop from novice to more expert levels of performance. Expertise does not always result from time together or from basic levels of task completion. Expert groups consciously develop their capacities and toolkits for engaging in more complex work and more emotionally challenging tasks. One hallmark of emerging expertise is a group’s willingness to take time to reflect on its processes, products and development as a group. Group development is a shard responsibility between group leaders, group facilitators and group members.
Becoming a more skillful group member
At a fundamental level there is no such thing as group behavior; there are only the choices that individuals make about what to say or do and what they choose not to say or do. Expert group members employ a well-crafted set of verbal and nonverbal tools to productively influence the thinking, decisions, and choices of others in the group. They also monitor the effect of their choices on themselves and the impacts of their actions as other group members respond or choose not to respond to these actions. Skillful group members help the group and the facilitator maintain focus, momentum, and outcome achievement.
The workshop is organized around three themes:
• Facilitating groups
• Developing groups
• Becoming a more skillful group member
These three arenas are essential focus areas for all successful groups. Throughout the workshop concepts, tips, and tools for extending and refining skills in each of these territories will be offered.
Facilitating Groups
Facilitation is an act of planned improvisation. Skilled and confident facilitators pay attention to several dimensions simultaneously: task focus, process skills, development, and relationships within the group. With appropriate maps and tools, knowledgeable facilitators are able to: anticipate what might happen during a session; monitor both in- the-moment activities and actions and monitor where such actions fit within the bigger picture for the group and for the organization; and recover when the group, group members, or they themselves lose focus and direction.
Developing Groups
Our basic premise is that groups develop from novice to more expert levels of performance. Expertise does not always result from time together or from basic levels of task completion. Expert groups consciously develop their capacities and toolkits for engaging in more complex work and more emotionally challenging tasks. One hallmark of emerging expertise is a group’s willingness to take time to reflect on its processes, products and development as a group. Group development is a shard responsibility between group leaders, group facilitators and group members.
Becoming a more skillful group member
At a fundamental level there is no such thing as group behavior; there are only the choices that individuals make about what to say or do and what they choose not to say or do. Expert group members employ a well-crafted set of verbal and nonverbal tools to productively influence the thinking, decisions, and choices of others in the group. They also monitor the effect of their choices on themselves and the impacts of their actions as other group members respond or choose not to respond to these actions. Skillful group members help the group and the facilitator maintain focus, momentum, and outcome achievement.