Roger Schwarz and Matt Beane

The Facilitative Leader
August 4-8

Facilitation skills used to be something you called on a facilitator for. Now, facilitation skills are a core competency for leaders, managers, and consultants - almost anyone who works with groups.

This course provides a solid foundation in The Facilitative Leader approach - an approach to helping individuals, groups and organizations become more effective. It is designed for you if you work with others and you have a stake in the outcomes.

If you attend, you will learn a set of integrated concepts and principles, techniques, and skills to help groups produce higher quality decisions, increase the level of genuine commitment to decisions, decrease the time for effective implementation, improve working relationships, and increase learning. Some of the principles we will explore for achieving these outcomes include transparency, curiosity, accountability, commitment, and compassion.

The course is based on the belief that helping groups achieve these outcomes involves both external and internal work. Externally, it involves helping group members reflect on their thinking and feeling in order to help them become more effective. Internally, the challenge is to become aware of how your own thinking and feeling contribute to the difficulties you are facing, and to redesign the way you think in order to lead more effectively in groups.

Monday
The Facilitative Leader approach demonstration
The Facilitative Leader approach overview
Identifying gaps between what we espouse and how we act
Practice identifying the theories that guide our behavior
Changing how we think to change the consequences we get

Tuesday
Noticing patterns in and intervening on group interaction
Using ground rules to develop effective groups

Wednesday
Practice applying the Facilitative Leader approach

Thursday
Contracting with groups regarding change
Practice applying the Facilitative Leader approach

Friday
Practice applying the Facilitative Leader approach
Developing your skills

In order to use the class learning time effectively, we encourage you to read parts of The Skilled Facilitator and to write a case assignment before the workshop. We will actively seek your input into the design and content of the class, both before and during the course; you will receive more detailed information regarding this when you register.

Roger Schwarz, Ph.D., is president of Roger Schwarz & Associates, a consulting firm that helps people learn to think and act differently so they can create high quality results and productive relationships, often in ways they didn't think were possible. He serves as consultant, facilitator, and coach to corporations, governments, and nonprofit organizations, and he speaks on the topics of facilitative leadership, facilitation, and organizational change. He is the author of The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches, New and Revised (Jossey-Bass, 2002), which academics, consultants, and executives have called a standard reference in the field and is co-author of The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook (Jossey-Bass, 2005). Roger was formerly associate professor of public management and government at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can learn more about his work at www.schwarzassociates.com or at 919-932-3343.

Matt Beane is a consultant with Roger Schwarz & Associates. His focus and passion lie in helping people assess gaps between their behavior and their espoused values, allowing them to make more informed choices about their behavior and values in the future. He has worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies in the financial, professional services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, hi-tech, travel, consumer-goods, and hospitality sectors, with non-profit and governmental organizations and in the public workshop format. He is a contributing author to The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook.

Previously, Matt was an employee at the Forum Corporation, a consultancy specializing in workplace learning solutions. He had strategic and managerial responsibility for ResNet, a 250-member virtual, globally-dispersed group of independent training and learning professionals that delivered one-third of Forum's revenue.