WFED880:

Lesson 1: Introduction and Understanding Group and Team Facilitation

Facilitating Team Building

Now that we understand the origin and purpose of teams, we can begin to explore the current methods, tools, and practices that help to facilitate overall team development. This course will guide you through some of the practices used to help work teams capitalize on their skills, talents, and abilities in a collaborative fashion in order to achieve solutions to complex issues.

To begin, we must understand the role of facilitation and the role of the facilitator.

Facilitate

This definition fits perfectly for the role of the facilitator in team environments:

• To help make the process of team development a little easier, a little less difficult.
• To help group dynamics and processes move forward.

In his studies on team/group facilitation, Frey (1994) states that facilitation involves

“any meeting technique, procedure, or practice that makes it easer for groups to interact and/or accomplish their goals” (p. 4).

Facilitator

In helping to make the team process easier, successful facilitators must possess certain skills/attributes. A successful facilitator, as best described by Kolb, Jin, and Song (2008), is

Three Dimensions of Facilitation

The video below provides an overview of the facilitator role by defining three critical dimensions of successful facilitators: the architect, pilot, and guide.

Facilitating Teams Successfully

The challenge of successful facilitation is the “how” aspect:

• How do facilitators make teamwork easier?
• How do facilitators assist in the process of team building?
• How do facilitators use actions or processes to assist in team development?

The answers to these questions, and much more, will be the focus of this course. As a benchmark, let's see how much you already know about the role of the team facilitator.

References