Focus on Facilitation

April 17th, 2009

Focus on Facilitation

by Dr. Edward de Bono

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What if you could walk into any meeting, with any group of people and help them be more effective? Can you imagine how sought after you would be? And how productive your meetings would become? The biggest complaint in most organizations – too much time is wasted in unproductive meetings. Unbelievable, isn’t it, how many millions of dollars are wasted everyday. Yet, most businesses haven’t thought to invest in equipping key employees with a set of practical tools and skills to lead productive “thinking together meetings” that secure business futures.

That’s what Focus on Facilitation™ is all about.

This new course shows you how to combine tools from all three de Bono Thinking Systems core tools to become an expert facilitator for any kind of meeting. Get employees engaged and help them accomplish much more–before, during, and after attending the new kinds of meetings you will plan and facilitate for them.

This instructor-led workshop teaches practical tools; requires multiple, coached facilitation practices and includes many useful resources to support you in applying your new techniques:

Executive portfolio with room for all your facilitator visuals
Complete facilitator handbook (we call it the facilitator’s bible!)
Exercise book to collect all the tips you get and thinking you do during the workshop
Facilitation cards to “deal” yourself a visual map of the agenda you’re planning
Table mats that engage your meeting participants in tracking group progress
Slide rules so participants can easily call to mind the steps in the de Bono thinking methods
Capture cards for writing, sorting, and assessing ideas generated
Energy dots to indicate top priority ideas and to measure buy-in on decisions made
Catalog of colorful, practical facilitation supplies, both de Bono specific and generic

With the proficiency gained from this course, you’ll have complete confidence in your ability to work with groups as an expert de Bono facilitator. Participants will show up prepared and will contribute fully when you employ all your new tools and techniques. They will rave about your meetings and the results that come from them!

Focus on Facilitation™ is Advanced Training

Focus on Facilitation™ goes much deeper than the regular basics of facilitation and meeting management workshops which are in abundant supply. The major distinction — Focus on Facilitation™ will equip your employees with proven tools and processes to facilitate the thinking that needs to take place in meetings in order for groups to arrive at well thought through solutions that can be supported and implemented. There is no other facilitation tool kit like it.

Here are some of the types of breakthrough meetings your employees will be equipped to facilitate:

Innovation, ideation and creativity meetings
Decision making meetings
Restructuring meetings
Information and data clarification meetings
Planning meetings of every sort
Business development meetings
Change implementation meetings
Project planning and update meetings
Marketing meetings
Opportunity search meetings
Problem solving meetings
Obsolescence planning meetings
Asset optimization meetings

Focus on Facilitation™ is Powerful

“Lynda, as I prepared for and led my first YMCA Board strategic planning session, I heard your voice coaching me to lead a successful meeting. Four CEO’s asked that I call them to discuss on-site work, and a Board member recommended me to be President next year. Thank you for all you have done to prepare me for this exciting and rewarding work.” - Mary Kay Uhing, People Power

The Tool Kit

Core tools from de Bono’s Lateral Thinking™ and DATT™ tool kits are combined within the flexible Six Thinking Hats® method. The tool power is fantastic. Facilitators have 29 quick tools to choose from and work with. A card deck enables facilitators to quickly deal the cards for any type of meeting. The meeting framework is elegant in its simplicity. It incorporates de Bono’s TEC tool.

T	Target	Tools are selected to set the target for thinking in the meeting.
E	Expand	Tools are selected to expand each persons thinking about the challenge in the meeting.
C	Contract	Tools are selected to contract the thinking about the challenge in the meeting ending with an action plan.

We believe a key ingredient in successful meetings depends upon the facilitator’s ability to: target the thinking of the group, expand the thinking of the group in a productive and constructive way, and then contract the thinking of the group to end up with a plan of action.

We Focus on 3 Key Facilitation Skills:

How to facilitate parallel thinking — getting everyone using the same tool at the same time on the same topic. This saves time and speeds up the process.
How to design meeting agendas to solve a wide variety of challenges. Different types of challenges require different thinking frameworks and tools.
How to improve participant input by facilitating using content language without having to be the expert.

Training Outcomes:

Plan, organize, and lead a wide variety of meetings using appropriate de Bono tools. Keep clients moving forward to achieve success.
Work with clients to define and test the overall goal to ensure a successful outcome and confirm it’s important.
Help clients sort out their concerns and then determine which frameworks will resolve them: ideation, problem solving, decision making, opportunity searching, etc. (different concerns are resolved with different frameworks)
Design flexible meeting plans to meet client needs. End with an action plan that will be supported and can be implemented. Measure the level of commitment.
Help clients focus on future consequences and balance risk versus opportunity.
Set priority on risks to be minimized, data to be gathered, and benefits to be realized.
Use powerful idea generating tools that yield fresh new solutions.
Help clients become comfortable with the front-end messiness of idea generation.
Develop frameworks for rigorous idea evaluation linked to corporate objectives, strategy and customer needs.
Work with idea sorting and idea power tools.
Lead clients thorough business challenges to identify hidden opportunities that “out-think” the competition.
Interview appropriate attendees in advance to gather helpful information.
Decide what can be done in advance of meetings to save time during the meetings.
Help clients decide who should attend meetings and for what purpose.
Ensure groups stays on track throughout meetings. Remain neutral and minimize ego plays among groups.
Define how decisions are going to be made during the meeting.
Offer suggestions to clients to make meetings stimulating, enjoyable and useful.
Use visual aids to stimulate and provoke the thinking of the attendees.
Foster a meeting atmosphere that attendees will enjoy.

Focus on Facilitation™ is Powerful

“The Six Thinking Hats methodology was openly embraced by the advisors and we truly got much more robust output from the meeting than conventional advisory boards.” — Betsey King, Professional Relations & Education Manager, AstraZeneca