Facilitating is the Art of creating Contact, Focus and binding Commitment in Groups
Facilitation is the professional process support of a group in order to jointly identify and utilize potentials, to find solutions for seemingly unsolvable problems that exist in companies or groups of all kinds, to plan actions that are supported by everyone and to increase overall group efficiency.
Facilitating literally means "enabling"
In order for this enabling to succeed, everything is done in facilitation to ensure that the ability for self-management and self-organization can unfold in a group. The basic assumption behind this is that all the potential and all the solutions needed to bring about really good developments and changes lie within the group itself. The number of participants is irrelevant, and facilitative processes are particularly suitable for large groups.
Facilitators are therefore “enablers”, the moderators who professionally accompany this process. They design the methodological, spatial and temporal framework in which a group works on its own essential topics and concerns.
In short:
the facilitator is responsible for the framework conditions of the group process, the group for the content.
This creates genuine, lively and deep contact and dialog between all participants. The different perspectives, opinions and points of view can be experienced. The collective intelligence of the group can unfold. Decisions and agreements become binding. In this way, facilitators support teams, networks and organizations in using existing knowledge and potential and advancing specific projects.
Facilitative Attitude
The clear facilitative attitude, the facilitator’s trust in himself/ herself, and above all the fundamental trust in the group and its potential is essential for the group process. The facilitator is guided by the conviction that, whatever the group is currently experiencing, is simply the right thing – even and especially when it gets difficult, when the conflicts seem unsolvable or when the process takes other directions than planned. The facilitator’s calm and relaxed attitude towards the group process is essential for its success. And, of course, a facilitator does not just need experience, but also good tools and the safe handling of methods which support the ability for self organization of people.
Competencies of the Facilitator
For the group process to succeed, a facilitator needs expertise and knowledge in a wide range of areas. He/she must be able to establish a cooperative relationship with the client and work on an equal footing This allows for the group to be creative together, plan and to implement group processes that enable people to show themselves, approach each other even in conflict, develop solutions together in a safe “container” and elicit creativity to lead a group to the results it has defined and desired in the time available.
