Facilitation

Our Facilitation practice is unique for the following six reasons:

1. Context. We facilitate workshops, meetings, strategic planning sessions, retreats, problem-solving sessions, brainstorming, conflict, negotiations, etc. The context doesn’t change how we facilitate. We use activities as the way to process the group toward their goals. Our activities engage everyone in the room and ensure all have a voice that is heard.
2. Debriefing. All good facilitation involves great debriefing. As Thiagi is known for saying, people don’t learn from experience, they learn from reflecting on that experience. Our debriefing format has been around for decades. Tried, true, proven, and effective.
3. Flexible. A good facilitator has a plan, recognizes that plan has little likelihood of actually working as designed, and adapts nimbly as needed. We design and modify activities on the fly.
4. Handle Difficult Participants. We find that difficult participants are people, too. We embrace them (not literally) and have hundred of techniques for integrating them without allowing them to distract or annoy others. The value of a good activity is that the process more often than not mitigates the need for participants to be difficult.
5. Scalable. Five people. 50 people. 500 people. We don’t care. We have activities and debrief processes to ensure that regardless of size, the goal of the session is met.
6. Trust. Our group participants trust us because the quickly discern that by using activities they are safe and have an easier time participating freely. Our group participants soon trust each other more. Our activities are designed to foster group behaviors that support our end goals. In the end, as facilitators, we live by the motto, “First, do no harm.” People get that is a value for us and respect it.