Resources and Links Related to Facilitated Meetings
In the coach zone, the facilitator’s physical and emotional presence in front of the group is key to the outcome of the session. The facilitator coaches the meeting’s leader through the creation of an agenda, and then coaches the group of participants through the process of working collaboratively and cooperatively in harmony throughout the event. To do this, the facilitator/coach must understand a lot about human behavior in groups and must learn a set of intervening actions that he or she can employ to help individuals adjust their behavior so that better solutions can emerge and more work can get done. The facilitator must also learn a problem solving process in order to understand where the group is at any point during the meeting and what can be done to keep them moving in a productive manner.
The Coach Zone is focused squarely on human individual and group psychology. Because of this, the word coach provides a gentle definition of how the facilitator interacts with the participants. The facilitator is not a process or behavior dictator, but more gently steers the group and its individual participants into behaviors and practices that will help them get work done together.
What follows are links to resources and additional information about Facilitated meetings.
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Group Dynamics
Group dynamics is the study of groups, and also a general term for group processes. In psychology and sociology, a group is two or more individuals who are connected to each other by social relationships.[1] Because they interact and influence each other, groups develop a number of dynamic processes that separate them from a random collection of individuals. These processes include norms, roles, relations, development, need to belong, social influence, and effects on behavior. The field of group dynamics is primarily concerned with small group behavior. Groups may be classified as aggregate, primary, secondary and category groups.
Group Development: The goal of most research on group development is to learn why and how small groups change over time. To do this, researchers examine patterns of change and continuity in groups over time. Aspects of a group that might be studied include the quality of the output produced by a group, the type and frequency of its activities, its cohesiveness, the existence of conflict, etc.
The Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results. This model has become the basis for subsequent models of group development and team dynamics and a management theory frequently used to describe the behavior of existing teams. It has also taken a firm hold in the field of experiential education since in many outdoor education centers team building and leadership development are key goals.
Consensus decision-making is a decision-making process that not only seeks the agreement of most participants, but also to resolve or mitigate the objections of the minority to achieve the most agreeable decision. Consensus is usually defined as meaning both general agreement, and the process of getting to such agreement. Consensus decision-making is thus concerned primarily with that process.
Coaching is the directing and training of people. Direction may include motivational speaking. Training may include seminars, workshops, and supervised practice. There are many types of coaching including Sports, Personal Development, and Business Coaching.
Problem Solving
Problem Solving: Problem solving forms part of thinking. Considered the most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of more routine or fundamental skills (Goldstein & Levin, 1987). It occurs if an organism or an artificial intelligence system does not know how to proceed from a given state to a desired goal state. It is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping.
Problem solving and decision-making are important skills for business and life. Problem-solving often involves decision-making, and decision-making is especially important for management and leadership. There are processes and techniques to improve decision-making and the quality of decisions.
Collaborative methods are processes, behaviors and conversations that relate to collaboration between individuals.[1] These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are useful in these situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal improving performance in current and future projects.
The Art of Powerful Questions: Catalyzing Insight, Innovation, and Action by Eric E. Vogt, Juanita Brown, and David Isaacs. When was the last time you sat through a meeting and said to yourself,“This is a complete waste of time!”? Was it yesterday,or even just a few hours ago? Why did that gathering feel so tedious? Perhaps it’s because the leaders posed the wrong questions at the start of the session. Or,worse yet,maybe they didn’t ask any engaging questions, and as a result, the meeting consisted of boring reports-outs or other forms of one-way communication that failed to engage people’s interest or curiosity.
Consensus decision-making is a decision-making process that not only seeks the agreement of most participants, but also to resolve or mitigate the objections of the minority to achieve the most agreeable decision. Consensus is usually defined as meaning both general agreement, and the process of getting to such agreement. Consensus decision-making is thus concerned primarily with that process.
3 Creative Brainstorming Activities, Games and Exercises For Effective Group Problem Solving. Just because you call thirty minutes in a room-full of people and a flip chart a brainstorming activity, doesn't make it successful. For problem solving brainstorming to be effective, a little bit of coaxing will make all the difference. Here are three brainstorming activities, games and exercises to transform your problem solving sessions.
Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution to a problem. The method was first popularized in the late 1930s by Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive and one of the founders of BBDO, in a book called Applied Imagination. Osborn proposed that groups could double their creative output by using the method of brainstorming.[1]
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method, which is usually applied with the goal to generate ideas. It is often used for creative and problem solving purposes in conjunction with Convergent thinking. There are different methods in divergent thinking.
Creative problem solving is the mental process of creating a solution to a problem. It is a special form of problem solving in which the solution is independently created rather than learned with assistance. Creative problem solving requires more than just knowledge and thinking.
Unified Structured Inventive Thinking (USIT) is a structured, problem-solving methodology for finding innovative solution concepts to engineering-design type problems. Historically, USIT is related to systematic inventive thinking (SIT), which originated in Israel and is related to TRIZ, the Russian methodology. It differs from TRIZ in several ways, but most importantly it is a simpler methodology, which makes it quicker to learn and easier to apply. It requires no databases or computer software.
TRIZ (IPA: /triːz/) is a romanized acronym for Russian “Теория решения изобретательских задач” (Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch) meaning "Theory of solving inventive problems" or "Theory of inventive problem solving". It was developed by Soviet engineer and researcher Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues starting in 1946. It has been evolving ever since.
Blue Ocean Strategy is a corporate strategy and bestselling business book written by Professor W. Chan Kim and former researcher and now Professor Renée Mauborgne, of INSEAD. The book offers examples of how successful businesses captured uncontested market space, and thereby made competition irrelevant. This was formerly described as "Value Innovation," in 5 articles for the Harvard Business Review by Kim & Maubourgne before they released the book in 2005. Blue Ocean Strategy is the result of a decade-long study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than 30 industries over 100 years (1880-2000). However the book only presents a snaphot overview of 3 industries: automobiles, computers and movie theaters.
Facilitation
A facilitator is someone who skillfully helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without taking a particular position in the discussion. The facilitator will try to assist the group in achieving a consensus on any disagreements that preexist or emerge in the meeting so that it has a strong basis for future action. The role has been likened to that of a midwife who assists in the process of creation but is not the producer of the end result.
Group Facilitation is a moderated discussion on the practice and theory of group facilitation. Participants share ideas, questions, and advice on group problem solving and decision making, group development, running meetings, and related topics. Group Facilitation was started in 1995 and was adopted in 1997 as the official electronic discussion group of the International Association of Facilitators. We average four-to-five posts per day and between 800 and 900 subscribers in about 35 countries.
International Association of Facilitators Methods Database: This site is dedicated to providing managers, team leaders, and facilitators with online and face-to-face tools for creating, leading and following up group meetings.
The International Association of Facilitators (IAF) is dedicated to growing facilitators and encouraging the use of group process methodologies world-wide.
Facilitator University: Whether you're an official group leader, facilitator, trainer, consultant, coach, or even a group participant, become a member of this network and receive the training, tools, and resources you need to get the results you're after in your groups.
The Global Facilitators Network: GlobalFN provides a centralised resource to enable organisations and individuals to explore the world of Business Facilitation. If you're involved in using Facilitation in Leadership, Training, Workshops or Personal Development then GlobalFN is a valuable information source providing resources and a place to share ideas. GlobalFN also offers a proven professional accreditation process for Facilitation Professionals.
Meetings
Meetings: In a meeting, two or more people come together for the purpose of discussing a (usually) predetermined topic such as business or community event planning, often in a formal setting.
Articles, Insights and Ideas about making meetings work.
How to Run an Effective Meeting by Cyrus Farivar: Have you ever sat though a pointless meeting and calculated just how much money was being wasted as a dozen well-paid professionals zoned out around a deathly boring conference table? Horror stories of bad meetings are legion, but the qualities that characterize a good meeting are harder to define. Whether they're team check-ins or department updates, the regular meetings we hold every week or every month are often the hardest to get fired up about. But making them better isn't simply a matter of ordering coffee and bagels (or even pretzels and beer). Productive, valuable, and engaging meetings require a clear goal, an open dialog, and a strong leader. Here's how to make your meetings matter.
Making Meetings Work: An Analysis of Corporate Meetings
Making Meetings Work: Meetings are windows on the soul of business: they reveal the quality of its management. Well-organized, well-conducted meetings bespeak an effective organization. Meetings afflicted with sloppy planning, flimsy agendas, and fuzzy expectations indicate a not-so-effective one. Here
Quaker Meetings: Every Friends Meeting for Worship is an experiment. Our worship is based on silence - not a passive silence but a waiting on God and an endeavour to reach a measure of unity with the Divine.
Bohm Dialogue: Bohm Dialogue or Bohmian Dialogue is a form of free association conducted in groups, with no predefined purpose in mind besides mutual understanding and exploration of human thought. It aims to allow participants to examine their preconceptions, prejudices and patterns of thought. Bohm Dialogue was developed by David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett starting in 1983. Bohm published his views on dialogue in a series of papers between 1985 and 1991.
The International Forum of Visual Practitioners Website. We are a powerful community of creative leaders from around the world, who share a common passion for bringing information and ideas to life visually. For over a quarter of a century, business people, artists, communities, governments, educators, and individuals have been leveraging the power of our Visual Practitioner community of graphic recorders and graphic facilitators.
The Center for Graphic Facilitation: This site is for all who are interested in a new way of working. Actually, it is a very old way of working, going back 20,000 to 40,000 years; namely attempting to understand the world through telling stories and drawing pictures.
Hands-on Graphics: Make meetings powerful, effective and memorable. Graphic display of group process and discussion stimulates participation, creativity and focus.
