Help groups deliver results with an updated approach to facilitation and consulting

The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Trainers, and Coaches, Third Edition is a fundamental resource for consultants, facilitators, coaches, trainers, and anyone who helps groups realize their creative and problem-solving potential. This new edition includes updated content based on the latest research and revised models of group effectiveness and mutual learning. Roger M. Schwarz shows how to use the Skilled Facilitator approach to: boost improvement processes such as Six Sigma and Lean, create a psychologically safe learning environment for training, and help coaches work with teams and individuals in real-time. This edition features a new chapter that explains how to facilitate virtual teams using conferencing technology.

Facilitation skills are essential in many kinds of work, and if you are looking to bring your skills up to date it is critical that you rely on trusted information like the knowledge offered in this go-to reference.

• Develop the facilitative mentality and skills that enable you to help groups get better results, even in the most challenging situations
• Help groups achieve greater performances, stronger working relationships, and higher levels of individual well-being
• Quickly develop productive and trusting work relationships with the groups you help
• Establish the functions of your facilitative role
• Implement a research-based, systematic approach to diagnose and intervene in groups and improve their performance and results

The Skilled Facilitator is a practical resource for corporate, government, non-profit, and educational practitioners, as well as graduate students in group-focused programs. This edition contains up-to-date material, based on recent studies, to help facilitators move beyond arbitrary tactics to utilize cutting edge, research-based strategies that improve group processes, relationships, mindsets, and outcomes.

ROGER SCHWARZ is an organizational psychologist and president and CEO of Roger Schwarz & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that helps teams create fundamental change to get better results. He facilitates leadership teams and teaches, consults, coaches, and speaks on facilitation, leadership, and developing effective teams. He is the author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams and The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook, and blogs for Harvard Business Review. Contact him at www.schwarzassociates.com or find him on Twitter @LeadSmarter.

Klappentext

PRAISE FOR THE SKILLED FACILITATOR

"This book replaces about a dozen that I have on my shelf. It has become the book on facilitation that aspiring and accomplished consultants should read."
—Geoffrey Bellman, author of The Consultant's Calling and Extraordinary Groups

"There is no better guide for how to intervene effectively in organizational groups than Roger Schwarz. His incredibly useful third edition of The Skilled Facilitator adds a framework that makes clear distinctions among roles such as coach, consultant, and facilitator, and makes cogent recommendations for each role. At the heart and soul of Schwarz's wisdom is the notion of mindset—that we must first consider and alter our own thinking before we can work productively with the complexity of group dynamics."
—Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School and author of Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

"The Skilled Facilitator is essential reading for every group facilitator, consultant, and team coach to be grounded in the values, assumptions, principles and practice of group facilitation. In the third edition, Roger Schwarz continues to address these matters thoughtfully, coherently, and comprehensively so readers can help groups create the results they need."
—Sandor P. Schuman, editor of The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation: Best Practices from the Leading Organization in Facilitation

"The heart of Roger Schwarz's approach to facilitation is mutual learning between the facilitator and group and between all members of the group. As he points out so aptly, mutual learning is a different mindset than unilateral control and when under stress it is common for facilitators to default to control. This book provides a launching point for the deliberate practice required to facilitate high performing work groups."
—Jeffrey Liker, Professor, University of Michigan and author of The Toyota Way

"I'm deeply grateful to Roger Schwarz, the modern master of facilitation theory and practice, for giving us a sleeker, tighter, and more modern version of his magnum opus. For many years, my Wharton students have reaped the powerful rewards of his earlier edition's careful instruction; it's changed their minds and their lives. With this seamlessly coherent and crucially substantial upgrade to what was already the field's gold standard, future students of collective action seeking a rigorous, highly practical method have a yet wiser guide."
—Stew Friedman, author of Total Leadership and founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program

Inhalt

Preface to the Third Edition xvii

What The Skilled Facilitator is About xvii

Who This Book is For xix

How the Book is Organized xix

Features of the Book xxii

What's Different in the Third Edition xxiii

Part One The Foundation 1

1 The Skilled Facilitator Approach 3

The Need for Group Facilitation 3

Most People Who Need to Facilitate Aren't Facilitators 3

Is This Book for You? 4

The Skilled Facilitator Approach 8

Experiencing the Skilled Facilitator Approach 10

Making the Skilled Facilitator Approach Your Own 11

Summary 12

2 The Facilitator and Other Facilitative Roles 13

Choosing a Facilitative Role 13

Basic and Developmental Types of Roles 23

Serving in Multiple Facilitative Roles 25

When It's Appropriate to Leave the Role of Facilitator 25

The Group is Your Client 28

What is Your Responsibility for the Group's Results? 29

Summary 33

3 How You Think is How You Facilitate: How Unilateral Control Undermines Your Ability to Help Groups 35

How You Think: Your Mindset as an Operating System 36

Two Mindsets: Unilateral Control and Mutual Learning 37

How You Think is Not How You Think You Think 37

The CIO Team Survey Feedback Case 38

The Unilateral Control Approach 41

Values of the Unilateral Control Mindset 41

Assumptions of the Unilateral Control Mindset 45

Unilateral Control Behaviors 46

Results of Unilateral Control 50

Give-Up-Control Approach 55

How Unilateral Control Reinforces Itself 55

How Did We Learn Unilateral Control? 56

Moving from Unilateral Control to Mutual Learning 57

Summary 58

4 Facilitating with the Mutual Learning Approach 59

The Mutual Learning Approach 59

Values of the Mutual Learning Mindset 61

Assumptions of the Mutual Learning Mindset 75

Mutual Learning Behaviors 77

Results of Mutual Learning 80

The Reinforcing Cycles of Mutual Learning 84

Are There Times When Unilateral Control is the Better Approach? 85

Summary 86

5 Eight Behaviors for Mutual Learning 87

Using the Eight Behaviors 87

Behavior 1: State Views and Ask Genuine Questions 89

Behavior 2: Share All Relevant Informati…