How does facilitation fall to the bottom line?   Facilitation is helping people get their work done and improve their working relationships.   Both elements - the work and the relationships - are equally important.   All organizations need people to come together and get things done.   Each hour of each day, we accomplish tasks.   Over days and weeks, we get projects done.   Over longer periods of time, we complete major initiatives; ultimately we fulfill the purpose of our organization.   Our success is determined primarily by our ability to work well with others, whether they are customers, colleagues or vendors.   Clearly, getting things done is our means to producing revenue for our organizations.   Facilitation helps the work get done, so facilitation helps us produce revenue.

Where do relationships come into play?   The work we do creates the context for our relationships.   Our effectiveness in working together determines the quality of our output and the speed with which we do it.   Facilitation improves quality and speed.   Understanding how that happens requires an appreciation of the underlying philosophy of facilitation.   To be a facilitator is to be a helper.   If you aspire to facilitate, you aspire to help people be clear about what they are trying to accomplish and then helping them actually do it.   Clarity about our shared tasks makes it easier to talk about how we are working together.   Facilitation helps us explore and improve our relationships, which in turn helps our productivity.   It reduces our expenses.

The philosophy sounds nice, but what about the practical side of facilitation?   Once you decide to be a helping professional - a facilitator - you need an approach to be able to put your philosophy to practice.   Our approach includes a model and a process.   The model puts task, or the context of the work, at the center.   We constantly remind clients about what they are trying to accomplish.   There's more to the model, but the most important thing to remember is that task is the focus.   The process includes the three steps that are outlined in our latest book, Crisis at Santa's Workshop .   That process has three steps:

The facilitation approach also includes a set of tools that help people cycle through the facilitation process again and again as they work together every day.   The steps sound simple, even trivial.   In our experience, however, the steps are often dealt with half-heartedly, especially the first and third steps.   Facilitation helps people be clear about responsibilities, both those that are shared and those that belong to one individual.   So many projects have finished off the mark because responsibilities were not explicitly defined.   And working relationships are the organizational glue that determine quality and speed.   Think about it.   If we are clear about our responsibilities, focused on what we need to get done, and constantly working together more effectively, then we are going to produce the revenue we need and improve our productivity.

What are some of those facilitation tools that help the bottom line?   Our facilitation tools are powerful productivity boosters.   These tools include the wide variety of methods that help groups generate and organize information, define problems, make decisions, plan projects, understand personalities and styles, and listen to one another.   Examples of tools include brainstorming, affinity diagrams, consensus, active listening, training seminars using the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator or the DISC instrument, and technology solutions such as Microsoft Project or Deltek's Enterprise Planner.   These tools are most effective when used by a facilitator who believes in the helping philosophy; who focuses on task as his or her primary approach.

You want to help your bottom line?   Facilitation is your best investment!

Return to the Home page

Contact John Farrell and Richard Weaver at Facilitators@FacilitationSource.com