How do you plan a team facilitation?

A clear purpose for the facilitation ignites energy and passion for both the facilitator and the team. This energy fosters engagement and encourages active participation from each member, ultimately contributing to the genuine outcomes of the session.

The purpose of team facilitation is to encourage team member participation, collaboration, and a shared sense of responsibility for the work output. Facilitation helps the team create consensus around solutions, resolve conflicts, and make decisions. It is also required to coordinate meetings and contribute in an unbiased way to the advancement of objectives.Supporting people through change and helping address obstacles that can prevent success is also required. This can include evaluating performance and providing individuals and teams with feedback to help them learn, adapt, and improve. The function of facilitation and support may be closely related to providing oversight and coordination, depending on the nature of the job requirements.

Identifying stakeholders is an important step in team facilitation. Stakeholders are individuals or groups who have an interest in the project or who may be affected by its outcome. Below are the stakeholders consider to be for team facilitation i.e 🖐️Team members 🖐️Sponsor 🖐️Customer 🖐️End user 🖐️Supplier 🖐️Regulators 🖐️Other stakeholders: These may include community groups, special interest groups, or other individuals or groups who have an interest in the project Identifying and engaging with stakeholders is critical to the success of the project. By understanding their interests, involvement, and potential impact on project success, the project team can develop appropriate strategies for engaging with each stakeholder group.

Know your team. Who talks a lot? Who doesn't? Whose perspective needs to be heard? Then structure activities to ensure everyone feels like they are a part of the team.

✅Develop an agenda that outlines the topics to be discussed and the activities to be undertaken during the facilitation ✅Select a facilitator who has the necessary skills and experience to lead the facilitation ✅Prepare any materials that will be needed during the facilitation, such as handouts, presentations, or visual aids ✅Conduct the facilitation, following the agenda and engaging all participants in the discussion ✅Document the results of the facilitation, including any decisions made, action items identified, and feedback received ✅Follow up on any action items identified during the facilitation and communicate the results to all Efective facilitation requires careful planning, skilled facilitation, and ongoing communication.

It’s key that facilitated sessions leverage real time interactions & respect all attendees’ limited time via discussion & exploration on a topic. If you need to broadcast info (1:all), send an email instead. Avoid organising activities that are one ‘block’ in duration; this is unlikely to be a format that’s flexible enough to keep everyone engaged. Vary the format of your activities to keep energy circulating & stimulate fresh insights. Has the group done a workshop together before? Yes, pick up the pace & emphasise interactions. No: go slower overall to maximise the impact of everyone’s participation step by step. Always prep everyone ahead of time & outline your key objectives, as those who want extra info will appreciate the heads up.

A detailed agenda FAO: You (and any co facilitators) is your secret sauce to a successful workshop. The DA must timebox *everything* so that you easily know if sections overrun and what adjustments to make. The agenda you share with participants isn’t your detailed view (they’re not your timekeepers). They need to know: what’s in it for me, so what, and now what. To stay on-brief I recommend to add each section’s objective to your DA. Example: icebreaker objective: ensure everyone speaks in the first 10 mins. Activity #1 objective: discuss and write down all the mutually agreed house-rules so everyone is bought into them. I also add my tasks to my DA so that all the thinking is baked into my prep and I can improv on the day as needed.

Preparation materials for team facilitation are for the benefit of the facilitator to ensure that elicitation is conducted effectively and time spent with stakeholders is efficient and provides maximum value. The preparation process depends on the purpose of elicitation and the chosen elicitation technique. Here are some activities that may be performed to prepare for team facilitation: Prepare any materials that will be needed during the facilitation, such as handouts, presentations, or visual aids. Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify strengths and weaknesses of the organization, focusing on either the project, organization, or the business area in general. All in one Preparation is key to effective team facilitation.