What Every Facilitative Leader Needs to Succeed
4.3.2019
Anyone can be a great leader with the right tools and training. My new book, The Handbook of Facilitative Leadership: Concrete Ways to Boost Performance shows how you can begin using facilitative leadership almost immediately. There are a few things that you will need to be able to do though, but don’t worry, they are easily achievable with a small amount of training and practice. Below are three important competences that a facilitative leader needs to be effective.
The first is to remain content neutral in meetings or workshops. A facilitator leads group processes while remaining neutral to content. Allow the group to communicate, participate in decision making, and even resolve problems, while you as the facilitator concentrate on the process (structure, timing, group level tools) of the meeting.
This is important to do so that the meetings become more dynamic and are not stagnated by a leader who is focusing on both the content and the meeting process, and thus dominating the floor and talking 70% of the time. If you find it really difficult to let go of the content, you can choose to delegate the role of the facilitator to someone else, so that you are only focused on the content itself. You could also choose to run the process of the meeting, and then focus on the content and decision making later.
The next are of competence for a facilitative leader is creating a meeting that has the correct structure. Facilitative leadership is all about working as a group, and to make sure everyone is on the same page and working together for effective decision making, you need to adopt what is called the CSA structure. First you need to clarify what the problem or the goal is, then you create solutions, and finally you create an action plan and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Finally, a facilitative leader must have the correct tools in their arsenal to help lead a group create and choose ideas. There are tools to create ideas and there are different tools to select ideas, and there is a time and a place for each. A good facilitative leader knows when and how to use these, and in a way that is engaging and efficient. If you have all these competences, then you will have a happy and effective team.
The tools, methods, and theory behind facilitative leadership are something I share with people daily, and I want you to learn more about them, too! A great place for you to find out more is in my new book, The Handbook of Facilitative Leadership: Concrete Ways to Boost Performance. You can read a preview of the book and find out more simply by clicking this link: The Handbook of Facilitative Leadership: Concrete Ways to Boost Performance.
If you would like to hear about our Facilitative Leadership training, please let us know. We would love to hear from you!
Other inquiries: contact Pepe Nummi, [email protected].
Feel free to reach out in case you would like a tailored training
for your team or organization: [email protected].
We are more than happy to help you!
