Facilitating is skill that leaders often ignore. It is especially important when you facilitate teamwork and problem solving. You will facilitate more once you experience how much it encourages people to share and provide their thoughts. Leaders that do not facilitate teamwork tend control people more. If you want to be great at listening and asking questions, facilitate. Those two skills are critical for promoting a freedom and self-governance model.

Facilitating Gets Things Done

Do you want to practice listening and asking questions? Then start facilitating. When you facilitate teamwork, you get more done. Why? It is the team that is creates solutions, not you. When you facilitate, you trust a process. That means you do not need to know much about the content of any meeting. You don’t need to know much about a topic to be an effective facilitating leader. When you facilitate, you encourage the group or team to share their knowledge and work toward solutions.

Facilitating Meetings

If you want a great way to practice facilitating, use it to lead your meetings. The Agenda Form encourages a facilitation style. More importantly, it will make your meetings more effective. Using the Agenda Form helps the attendees participate in the meeting more. You will also learn some ways to help solve some of the common problems that show up in many meetings.

Facilitating A Delegation

When you delegate it helps you develop people. You hurt the organization when you do not delegate. Without delegation, you focus more on yourself instead of developing people. If you want people to learn new skills, you need to delegate. It helps people grow and it helps you grow. You can spend more time on strategic items. And, delegating means that you are doing your job, because you are developing more leaders. Finally, delegating is not about you getting rid of things you don’t like to do. It is a thoughtful process of planning, acting, and following-up with people. When you use the Delegation Planning Form, you have a clear process to follow.

Facilitating Solutions

You will learn about some basic tools to use with groups. The tools will help groups gather information and prioritize it. And, they will help you make better decisions. You will learn how to use simple tools like Brainstorming and, a better tool called Anonymous Brainstorming. Other tools like the Impact/Effort Grid, Force Field Analysis and Cause & Effect Analysis help you focus on the most important items. Finally, the Problem Solving Recipe Card gives you a clear process to follow while facilitating a problem solving discussion.