The book provides guidance for the effective implementation and development of facilitation, raising awareness and enabling readers to create their own model.
Written by Marsha Acker, the book is a guide to understanding facilitation and how to use it in teamwork in a way that promotes collaboration and productivity. The author shares her expertise and experience with examples from various scenarios to help implement this competency, which is fundamental for Scrum masters and agile coaches. With practical lessons and tips, it is a very enjoyable book that guides readers who want to develop in this role starting from our own thinking system and patterns.
INTRODUCTION: What is facilitation?
What is expected of people in this role? Why do we need an understanding of facilitation? We find answers to these questions in the introduction of the book. Facilitation is discussed as a way of creating collaborative cultures, improving agility and communication, and promoting cohesion. The task of the person who takes on this role is not to organize the meeting room, invite the relevant people to the meeting or be a decision maker. Contrary to misconceptions, taking on this role requires enabling teams to access their collective intelligence, using self-awareness, self-management, group consciousness to achieve desired results, and being able to see how people think, how teams behave and develop. The science part in the title of the book is based on this. The art part is based on the need for the person in the role of facilitator to be able to see what is happening in the team at that moment, to hear what is behind the team members’ conversations with each other, to notice what is not being said, so to speak, to have this flexibility. The book discusses facilitation in 5 basic principles in order to create a basis for those who undertake this role and to support their awareness. Let’s take a brief look at these five principles.
SECTION 1: PRESERVING NEUTRALITY
The focus of the person who takes on the role of facilitator is not on the content of the meeting, but on the process, that is, they own the process. The purpose of the facilitator here is not to solve problems but to help the team to solve their problems. The facilitator focuses on the process by maintaining his/her impartiality without putting forward his/her own opinion, point of view and intervening. But how do we know if we are making the right contribution as a facilitator? How will we get the right feedback and support from the team? How will we maintain our impartiality while putting our questions into words? How can we manage multiple roles within the team? The first part looks at the answers to these questions through various scenarios and practices.
CHAPTER 2: SURVIVING THE STORM
The second part focuses on the management of conflicts and tensions within the group. How can we see different points of view at such times? How can we ensure that everyone can speak and be heard? Human nature tends to avoid opposing voices and crises. With the right approaches, by asking the right questions, we can manage crisis moments and reach the real issue underlying what is being said. In this section, alternative scenarios and practices are presented to prepare readers for crisis moments.
CHAPTER 3: HONOURING THE WISDOM OF THE GROUP
What is meant by honouring wisdom is trust. Whether it is an agile coach, a team leader or a team member, whoever takes on this role trusts that the team has the necessary knowledge, equipment and skills to reach a solution. In the first section, we said that the task of the facilitator is not to solve problems because the person in this role does not want to give the team members the message that you are not capable of solving this problem, he/she maintains his/her neutrality. How long would you be able to maintain your neutrality if you realised that the other people in a meeting you were involved in were not as knowledgeable and experienced as you are, and that they did not see the situation from your point of view? This may not be so easy in practice. This chapter discusses common mistakes, as well as the role of the facilitator, with almost end-to-end steps to ensure that the right people attend meetings, that the purpose of the meeting is clear, that individuals are engaged in conversations, and that time is not wasted.
SECTION 4: AGENDA
This section discusses three different levels of agenda that may arise in the facilitation process. – The meeting agenda includes the purpose, desired outcomes and plan. – The agenda that emerges as the dialogue continues and new ideas are generated. Differences can be seen from the agenda set here. – Agenda and topics that the facilitator helps the team to develop in their work with agile teams The process on the way to the desired result may not always be regular and linear. Such times can be an opportunity to recognise the unexpected and to see points of improvement. One of the most important tasks of the facilitator is to listen to the environment. As a facilitator, you can take a look at this section for suggestions that can guide you to be able to distinguish what emerges, different agendas, and guide the team to hear what they need.
CHAPTER 5: SUPPORTING THE AGILE MINDSET
If working with agile teams, the team may need the expertise of an agility facilitator to fill knowledge gaps and create the environment and conditions that support collaboration. This combines the role of both coach and facilitator. In this section you can find steps and examples on how to develop an understanding of agile mindset and practices, assess how agile the team is, and then understand how to guide your own role.
CHAPTER 6: DEVELOPING AND SPECIALISING YOUR FACILITATION STANCE
Following the principles presented in the first five chapters, the final chapter offers suggestions designed to help teams communicate and collaborate, deepen and develop your own skills, whatever the topic. If you are asking what kind of questions you can ask when working with other facilitators to support development, how you can analyse your own behaviour and actions for self-awareness, how you can better support the team, you can find many ideas and perspectives that may be useful in this section.
CONCLUSION
The book provides guidance for the effective implementation and development of facilitation, raising awareness and enabling readers to create their own model. You can benefit from this book if you want to find information to develop communication competencies and new ways of working, to present problems differently, to ensure that the right dialogues can emerge to see solutions.
