Leadership essentials: facilitation skills for improving group effectiveness

Excellent facilitation skills are a leadership essential for today's IT professional. Increasingly, as organizations have downsized or eliminated layers of management to cut costs, teams are being utilized and given the decision-making responsibility previously reserved for middle management. A competent facilitator can help groups collaborate and effectively meet the challenges of today's work environment. An increase in a facilitator's competence can result in higher levels of group productivity and organizational efficiency. Understanding facilitation, facilitator roles and types, and basic facilitation techniques, methods, and tools will help leaders ensure that the challenges of today's work environment are met with success. Moreover, effectively facilitating team meetings and developing strategies to capitalize on group conflict will help leaders maximize group productivity. Finally, leaders that develop an understanding of the current facilitation body of knowledge will be able to assess and evaluate the facilitation skills and training needs required of themselves and their teams.