When people ask to co-facilitate with me, many factors run through my brain quickly as I consider whether to work with them. I want to work with people who bring in perspectives, experience and cultural identities that I don’t have. Recently I said no to someone who wanted to know why. That prompted me to really think about the skills sets I’m looking for in a co-facilitator.
Awareness and Tone
- Demonstrates high needs consciousness, holds all needs as valuable
- Recognizes own judgment, can self empathize and easily shift to generative thinking
- Demonstrates openness to trying new ways of doing things
- Believes in the resourcefulness, courage and inspiration of each individual
- Reads the energy, voice and body language of each person in the room
- Shares vulnerability and is open to learning and growth
- Demonstrates comfort with group process and conflict
- Values own learning as much as participants; dances on the growing edge
- Solicits developmental feedback and continuously works on self improvement
Facilitation Skills
- Offers empathic reflections
- Elicits learning from the wisdom of the group
- Dances with aliveness, stays present and changes course
- Holds multiple agendas simultaneously
- Demonstrates tracking skills and weaves in the threads
- Creates experiential activities on the fly
- Exudes passion for making learning fun, bold, playful
- Elicits creativity using collaborative approach
- Creates aesthetically appealing flip charts
- Dances spaciously with co-facilitator – blending, taking the lead, covering, tracking, holding the container for learning
- Adds to co-facilitator’s learning, leveraging each other’s personal growth
Cultural Humility
- Demonstrates awareness of power, privilege, rank and culture
- Honors cultural differences
- Connects authentically
- Addresses oops and ouch with directness and compassion
- Works on self—biases, stereotypes and beliefs
- Can support people in changing their behavior without making them wrong
- Invites people into the conversations for exploration
Modalities
Experienced designer and facilitator of Organizational Development interventions
- Visioning Process
- Strategic Planning
- Appreciative Inquiry
- World Café
- Future Search
- Open Space Technology
- Sociocracy
- Board Governance
- Diversity Dialogue
- Non-profit Leadership Development
Other Skills
- Demonstrates wide range of skills: training design, coaching, consulting, mediation, negotiation
- Articulates the observations and sensations that inform intuition
- Creates space and encourages playfulness, humor, wackiness and love
- Makes requests that are connected to needs awareness
- Diagnoses stage of organizational development and creates appropriate interventions
- Designs experiential training using NLP to match different learning styles
- Practices spiral wizardry and uses language that resonates in different cultures
- Understands and actively works on diversity issues and multiculturalism
- Ties design to learning and organizational objectives
- Holds the details and ensures logistics are covered
- Creates handouts with appealing lay-out and design
- Knows or can find subject matter experts to collaborate
- Leads engaging teleclasses
Expression
- Expresses transparently, vulnerably and authentically
- Reflects back feelings, needs, and implied requests
- Assists people in making doable requests
- Communicates concepts and directions with clarity in 40 words or less
- Interrupts as soon as people stop listening, demonstrating care and understanding for the speaker
- Debriefs learning on four levels – observations, feelings, needs, action
- Vocalizes appreciation without generalizing or labeling
- Gives caring, honest, inspirational feedback
- Authentically shares mourning, celebrations, and gratitude for contributions
Timing
- Establishes connection, inclusion, tone, trust, intimacy, and engages participants immediately
- Ensures that every voice is heard within the first 15 minutes
- Meets needs of both fast and slow-paced participants
- Shares consciousness of time and can hold agreements
- Slows down to do deep work and holds silence during transformation
- Sequences learning activities that build on each other
- Creates closure that captures and transfers learning
- Starts and ends on time, yet generates a sense of spaciousness
Gets Results
- Facilitates meetings where everyone is heard and the group get results (balances process and task)
- Captures salient points on flip chart
- Builds consensus and gets agreements
- Creates action plans with accountability structures
- Designs metrics for evaluating and improving the quality of the program
- Hears the emerging needs of the client and can design/sell the next phase of the program
Sales
- Leverages networking skills, brings people together, recognizes opportunity
- Can get in the door, connect and sell programs that delight clients
- Hears the clients’ pain fully before offering strategies for easing the pain
- Creates ease, helping clients share their hopes, dreams and budget
- Articulates program options that meet client needs
- Elevates client relationships to see new possibilities
- Asks for and receives enough money to sustain future work and contribute to underserved communities
- Writes proposals that resonate – in the client’s language
- Develops sustainable support systems and builds community
Written by Martha Lasley
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