Facilitation

From Wikipedia A facilitator is someone who 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 … Continue reading “Facilitation”

From Wikipedia

A facilitator is someone who 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 facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements” – Kaner

Sometimes, if you’re working in an area that you are personally passionate about, it can be very easy to be caught up in the flow and be contributing. For the most part – especially when dealing with a small facilitated group and a larger group of onlookers, I find myself constantly defending the decisions of other, justifying the fact that change takes time and that if the process itself is not the full time work of those involved then the process may take an order of magnitude longer.

In many areas it’s not my place to make the decisions. I can work on two levels – helping the core group to get to their destination and also making life easier for the wider audience. An example of this is currently in operation – the core group has a set of tasks to do and little spare time to do it however, in the absence of directed action, it’s possible to work on things and organise events which benefit the wider community that do not take a high level of participation from the core group.

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