Facilitation Skills Certificate Program
Instructor: Jari Holland Buck
Building community requires groups of individuals to work together on behalf of the whole. In a country built on individual performance, working as a collective is foreign and hard work to many of us.
Employing proven "facilitation" techniques makes it easier for participants to accomplish objectives and encourage others to share information, cooperate, achieve consensus and constructively use conflict to advance collective goals. We can do all of this while, while remaining neutral, to resolve problems and ultimately function more effectively in our professional, personal and public lives.
Join us as we learn how to earn respect from others while showing respect to fellow residents and government partners through the use of the facilitation skills taught in this program. You will learn enable groups to solve problems while maintaining the relationships necessary to live in community with others.
Over the five two-hour sessions we will:
- Describe the key elements of group dynamics, task and process, using behavior-based interpretations;
- Differentiate between the roles of facilitator and member;
- Contrast decision-making methods with outcome endorsement;
- Understand the basics of a well-run meeting;
- Experience being moved through the steps involved in consensus decision-making;
- Appreciate the differences in process and outcome using consensus;
- Grasp alternatives to use when personal opinion becomes an issue;
- Value the practice of establishing standards and how they provide a group with rationale;
- Identify the techniques to use and the value in recording participant's contributions;
- Understand the specific responsibilities of the facilitator, recorder, secretary;
- Recognize a meeting room set-up for optimum individual participation;
- Appreciate the value of frequently used meeting forms and know how to access/use them;
- Practice through simulations of group meetings, receiving peer and instructor feedback;
- Diagnose problems and offer solutions to prior meeting difficulties;
- Discuss the overarching skills used in the facilitation of a group process in the local community setting;
- Examine the role of contracting and its correlation with success and failure in group outcome;
- Appreciate the value of periodically used meeting forms and know how to access/use them;
- Incorporate the concept of group development stages into meetings and managing decision-making; and
- Recognize the alternatives, strengths and weaknesses inherent in alternatives to consensus.
