Removing Barriers to Collaboration
Allopathic: The Western Medical model in use today, is based upon the concept that the physician is responsible for the healing, and that “disease” must be eradicated from the body using heroic intervention. I chose to use this term to describe an issue that often befalls us in our efforts to facilitate organizational interventions. We’re [...]
Facilitating processes for others means facilitating your process too. Facilitators spend a lot of time preparing material and frameworks for setting up and running effective group processes. They may assemble resources relevant to the focus of their group. They attempt to anticipate some of the problems, concerns, and challenges that may present themselves so that they’ll [...]
When you put your knowledge in a circle, it’s not yours anymore, it’s shared by everyone. –Douglas Cardinal, Architect– The term “Talking Circle” comes to us from the Native American tradition and is again finding broad appeal in contemporary culture. Talking circles are being used by facilitators of personal and spiritual growth, grade school teachers, [...]
The One Word Story is an experiential activity that can be debriefed to illustrate the importance of ground rules or basic teamwork skills. This activity can easily be done virtually as well as face to face. Also note that the activity contains guildlines for each stage of the Kolb Learning Cycle. Activity: One Word Story—Ground rules/teamwork [...]
We’ve heard a lot in the business world about the importance of good leadership, attributes of a good leader, the importance of being a (fill in the blank) type of leader, etc. But we’ve not heard much about the attributes and importance of good followership. Since by definition there will always be more followers than [...]
How often have you been asked, What is Facilitation? This is an important question to be able to answer in a simple fashion. This is especially true when you’re being asked by a prospective client. And since just about everyone could use help with their groups and work teams, nearly everyone is a prospect! I’ve collected [...]
As facilitators, we help people get perspective and to see and move through apparent inner and outer limitations. During this process, people will sometimes experience emotional reactions as they face challenges in their personal and professional lives. Our conditioning might tempt us to lose ourselves in their dilemma in an attempt to sympathize with them. [...]
I’ve seen a lot of great conflict resolution models and theories over the years. Many of them take a bit of cognitive capacity to grasp and especially to remember in the heat of conflict. When conflict shows up in a group, the higher mental faculties (of those in conflict and my own) aren’t often operating [...]
It’s easy when we’re trying to present something new, particularly in a training environment, to be overwhelmed by all there is to know and say on the subject. In fact, I’m often asked by trainers, “How do I cover all the information I have to share in the limited time I have?” I usually answer [...]
Have you ever felt ‘stuck’ in a conversation with three or more people that just wasn’t going anywhere? People are droning on and on about this and that, leaving you bored and wishing you could just slip away? This is an all too familiar social situation – we’ve all been there and, chances are, we’re [...]
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