Learning more about facilitation

Posted on January 8th, 2010 by Sacha Chua

In 2010, I want to improve my facilitation skills. Facilitation is a large part of the consulting that I do at work, and I can see how good facilitation creates value. I’m frustrated by the limits of what I know and can do, and I’m looking forward to learning more. I’m particularly interested in three areas:

facilitating better online discussions (especially asynchronous ones)
doing visual facilitation and visual recording
helping people brainstorm wild success stories and worst-case scenarios

My work focuses on brainstorming rather than conflict resolution or other applications of facilitation techniques, although I’m also interested in facilitation of group processes in order to improve collaboration.

If I improve my skills, I can use that foundation to help figure out more effective patterns for virtual facilitation and collaboration.

In order to learn more about facilitation, I plan to:

proactively take on more responsibility for facilitating discussions at work, including doing the background research and helping prepare the deliverables
read and reflect on lots of resources about in-person and remote facilitation
collect templates and processes
practice visual notetaking and facilitation during meetings, conference calls, and talks
reflect on and share lessons learned from the workshops and idea labs we do
shift more of my talks to interactive formats
build mentoring relationships with people who can help me plan my learning

I plan to share what I’m learning with you through blog posts, sketches, lessons learned, and talks.

Looking forward to the adventure!

More posts about: facilitation, learning, planning, plans // 2 Comments »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/6960

http://www.facilitatoru.com Steve Davis

Hi Sachu,

That’s great that you want to learn more about Facilitation. I want to invite you to my site at http://www.FacilitatorU.com where I offer lots of free resources on this subject.

Best,
Steve
http://www.high-geek.com/ Mike

I will be happy to read your share about what you learned…
I thing i have to improve my facilitation skills too…

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