Facilitation

As human beings, we all need help. We all need assistance with things that got bundled into three main categories.  

• Problem Identification 
• Problem-Solving 
• Decision Making 

It is not that humans cannot solve problems or make decisions independently. We all need some assistance in helping us do that.  

Facilitation is a process in which a person who is acceptable to all team members, substantively neutral, and has no decision-making authority intervenes to help a team improve how it identifies and solves problems and makes decisions. In layman's terms, facilitation is assisting a person or a group of people in thinking so that they can find something they were unable to before.  

There are two kinds of facilitation. 

• Basic Facilitation, and 
• Developmental Facilitation 

Basic Facilitation 

In Basic Facilitation, the team seeks the help of the facilitator to solve a substantial problem. The necessary outcome will be achieved as part of the basic facilitation, but there won't be any essential improvement in the group process. The process refers to how the team,  

• talk to each other 
• work together 
• handle conflicts 
• identify problems 
• solve problems  
• make decisions 

In basic facilitation, the team solely relies on the facilitator to help them solve and make decisions.  

Developmental Facilitation 

On the other hand, in developmental facilitation, the team permanently improves its process while solving a substantial problem.  

The team functions autonomously and is complete even without the facilitator. The team depends on the facilitator only for assistance. The facilitator's job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. The facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding, and cultivates shared responsibility to achieve this. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables team members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements. The facilitator's main task is to help the team increase its effectiveness by improving its process.  

Core Values 

Three core values guide the facilitation that clears any underlying assumptions, which helps clarify biases. They are Valid Information, Free and informed choice, and internal commitment to the choice.  

Valid information speaks more of the relevancy of the information shared by the people for the issue being discussed. It also means that people understand the information shared with them as well. If management withholds valid information, the team members eventually make terrible decisions and unrealistic solutions.  

Free and Informed choice - People should make choices on their own; they shouldn't be manipulated, deceived, or coerced. People come up with ways of achieving their objectives and solving their problems independently. The information that they use to come up with choices should be valid. In organizations, people do influence the choices that people make irrelevant choices.  

Intrinsic motivation is very much important when someone wants to commit themselves to the choices they make. Internal commitment to the choice is very much important. Most organizations push goals to the people and make them compliant. Internal commitment to the choice makes people personally responsible for the decisions.  

The core values guide the effective behavior of the team and the facilitator both.  

This is just a speck of knowledge on your journey to becoming an expert in the industry. If you have any doubts or require career guidance, feel free to connect with our Industry experts and trainers for 1-on-1 coaching. We upskill and boost your career by providing a wide range of courses such as CSPO, CSM, ICP-ACC, etc. visit our website to learn more about all the courses we offer.