The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "What Is Facilitation?".

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
FACILITATION SKILLS
What is Facilitation?

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
The traditional role of the manager has always been to take
a visible lead. He or she was all-knowing, all-doing and all-
being. This role fitted the needs of top-down, controlling
organisations. But today things are changing fast. The old
style workplaces are rapidly giving way to a new approach.
Instead of control, they call for understanding; instead of
hierarchies, they require self-management; and instead of
thrusting leaders who know best, they need facilitators who
are there to help others perform.

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
A DEFINITION OF FACILITATION
The following are three definitions of "facilitation":
1. "Facilitation is means or opportunities that render
anything readily possible." (Chambers Dictionary)
2. "Facilitation is a helping process designed to correspond
to specific instances of individual and group need, based
on a view of man as in constant interaction and
relationship with others." (Jarlath Benson)
3. "Facilitation is the provision of opportunities, resources,
encouragement and support for the group to succeed in
achieving its objectives and to do this through enabling
the group to take control and responsibility for the way
they proceed." (Trevor Bentley)

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
OLD AND NEW
Facilitation is a new word for a modern management
concept: the idea that you can manage people in successful
ways that do not rely on directing them, forcing them,
controlling them and threatening them.
Facilitation is about creating the conditions in which people
make choices of their own about how to act, how to work
and how to grow. It is a way to work with people not against
them.
Facilitation arises out of modern non-authoritarian
approaches to people management. It has its modern roots
in people-centred therapy and healing. However, its
philosophical roots go back much further to cultures that
existed thousands of years ago in societies such as Ancient
China.

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
PEOPLE LEADERSHIP
Facilitation is one of the skills in the family of modern
approaches to people management. These skills stand in
direct contrast to the old ways of managing people through
hierarchical control and authoritarian power.
The old view of management was that people were
resources just like any other resource in the working
process, such as raw materials, machinery and money.
People could be bought and sold, hired and fired, directed
and told, motivated and disciplined, to get the best out of
them.
The new approach revises the idea that people are only a
resource. It sees them as complex, multi-dimensional, full of
possibilities and potential, able to change and grow. Instead
of being managed, facilitation calls for people to be led.

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
UNDERLYING BELIEFS
There are a number of underlying beliefs that facilitators
have about people without which facilitation cannot be fully
effective.
These are that...
• each person is to be valued for who they are
• each person, whoever they are, their rank, intelligence
or potential has it within them to become an aware,
growing and fulfilled individual
• only individuals themselves can find their route to
personal growth
• the route to personal growth is not always easy
• the journey of personal growth can be made easier
("facilitated") by others in a group and by the particular
actions of the group leader.
"We become ourselves through others." (Lev Vygotsky)

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
PRINCIPLES ABOUT GROUPS
There are a number of underlying beliefs that facilitators
have about the value of working with others in groups.
These are that...
1. Being in groups is an ever-present feature of living and
working.
2. Groups can both restrict and enhance an individual's
abilities to perform a job well.
3. Groups allow us to do things we couldn't do alone;
4. We discover who we are in groups.
5. Groups are not just a static collection of individuals;
they can grow, develop and change.
6. Groups provide individuals with different forms of
leadership.
7. Groupwork is complex and multi-dimensional.
8. Only through people-centred approaches to groupwork
can the potential of the group be realised.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
BELONGING TO GROUPS
Although we have individual identities as people, our lives
are determined and influenced by the groups we belong to.
At any one time each of us may be active in any number of
work or non-work groups.
Non-work groups include those connected to: family; school
and college; church and faith; social, sports and arts groups;
town, region, nationality; minority or special interest
grouping; profession or trade.
Work groups include those connected to: the organisation;
the department; the section; the immediate team;
committees; sub-groups; projects; you and the boss.
"This is the age of the group." (Bernard Lievegoed)

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MTL Course Topics
GROUP TENDENCIES
Man is both an individual and a social creature. This creates
two opposing pulls when we belong to groups:
1. the pull to belong wholeheartedly to the group
2. the pull to retain our own individuality.
Some psychologists define the group tendency as the "will"
principle. It is typified by the predominantly male
characteristics of competing in the group, wanting to win
and control. It affirms itself most strongly when the group
has a task to perform. The pull to individuality is defined as
the "love" principle. This is typified by the predominantly
feminine characteristics of nurturing, feeling and
relationships. It affirms itself most strongly when the group
develops as a unit.
These opposing pulls of the will and love tendencies create
a tension in group life which can be harnessed for positive
outcomes.

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MTL Course Topics
MEETING OUR NEEDS
The pull towards group membership arises because groups
fulfil a wide range of needs throughout our lives.
This range of needs has been described by Abraham Maslow
as a hierarchy or pyramid. At any one time we will join and
remain in a group for as long as group membership seems
to meet one or more of these needs. According to Maslow,
a lower order need, eg for food and shelter, needs to be met
before higher order needs, eg for spiritual experience and
self-fulfilment.
The group's behaviour can be seen as a constant interplay of
individual needs, so that while one member of a group may
be hungry and want to break for lunch, another member
will want to finish a task for the admiration of the rest.

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A HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
There are some nine levels of need on the hierarchy of
human needs. These encompass the human drives for
physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual well-being.
They are:
1. Basic Needs: air, water, food, sleep, shelter, sex, survival
2. Security Needs: protection, security, peace of mind,
certainties of faith
3. Social Needs: to belong, to love, to communicate
4. Esteem Needs: to be valued by others
5. Intellectual Needs: to learn and understand, to know
about our environment, to make sense of things
6. Aesthetic Needs: the search for truth, beauty and order
7. Self-actualising Needs: the search for identity
8. Power Needs: to have control over our environment
9. Freedom Needs: to be at one with everyone and
everything.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROUPS AND OTHERS
Groups provide opportunities for a greater level of self-
awareness than solitary living. Within a group, we can
experiment, take risks, try things out and at the same time
get reaction, feedback and response from others about
ourselves.
Through experimentation and feedback, groups tell us...
• how good we are at doing things
• what role we are most suited for in life
• our place in a hierarchy of group importance
• what kind of relationships we need and like
• what more we need to do to become happy and fulfilled.
""I" needs "We" to be truly "I"." (Carl Jung)

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROUP DEVELOPMENT
A number of social psychologists have charted the stages of
group growth and development. Bruce Tuckman uses a five-
stage model that charts a group's development through the
stages of forming, storming, norming, performing and
disbanding.
Theodore Schultz uses a three-stage model:
1. Inclusion: the need to connect. Group member is
dependent; group leader in the mother role of nurturing.
2. Control: the need for power. Group member is
independent; group leader in the father role of permitting.
3. Affection: the need to inter-relate. Group member is
interdependent; group leader acts as adult encouraging
commitment and identity.
If left alone, the group would still go through these stages;
with a facilitator, it goes through them more easily.

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MTL Course Topics
LEADING A GROUP
All groups need leaders of one form or another. While
leaders may emerge from the group, it is impossible to be
an effective leader and an effective group member.
Leaders play different roles in non-facilitative groups:
1. Talking-shop Groups. In these groups the leader is only
interested in collecting ideas from the group. There is
no development of the group as an entity.
2. Manipulating Groups. In these groups, the leader may
pretend that he or she is interested in the ideas of the
group but is really using his or her position and power
to direct the group to accept a pre-ordained outcome.
3. Control Groups. In these groups, the leader allows for
no deviation from the rules that prescribe the group's
functioning. The group follow the lead of the leader and
are required to do what they are told.

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TALKING SHOP
Many groups exist as communication channels and little
else. They are there to pass information to members and
collect information back. At a productive level, such groups
may be highly efficient but they do not meet an individual's
needs for growth or belonging. In such groups, the leader's
role is purely administrative.
In a group that is purely a "talking shop", the leader...
• has no sense of the group's potential to grow as a group
• is only interested in what the group know now
• is more interested in discussing a topic, not experiencing
it
• stifles opportunities to try things out
• avoids the risk and pain of change and confrontation
• is satisfied with a collection of ideas.

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MTL Course Topics
MANIPULATION
Manipulative group leadership is one stage on from a talking
shop style of leadership. Here the group meets and is led
through the motions of interaction in order to arrive at a
pre-set conclusion.
We manipulate when...
• we know the outcome
• we know the outcome and keep it hidden
• we know the outcome but pretend we might go
elsewhere
• we know the outcome and persuade people it's their
best destination
• we know the outcome and force others to go there
• we know the outcome and believe that's where others
should be
• we know the outcome and head there whether they
come with us or not.

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MTL Course Topics
TRICKING THE GROUP
There is often a fine line to be drawn between manipulating
a group to do what you want them to do and facilitating or
helping them to go where they want to go. There are some
leadership theories that encourage the duplicity: get people
to go where you want whilst thinking they're going where
they want.
Manipulation is invariably devious, hidden, contrived and
exploitative. We know we are manipulating when we have
already planned how things will turn out in the group,
possibly because our sponsors (eg higher management)
demand it or we are frightened of what will happen if
people do what they want. Manipulation is also a refuge for
those who are frightened of giving up their control.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
CONTROL
Control forms of group leadership are at the opposite end of
the spectrum from facilitation.
Control leadership involves: predetermined outcomes;
hidden agendas; people controlled by fear either explicitly
or implicitly; rigid structures; authority supreme; neat
endings; process as a means to an end; power over people.
Facilitation involves: unknown outcomes; open agendas; a
safe environment; loose structures; freedom is valued;
questions more important than answers; process as the key;
power to the people.

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MTL Course Topics
COMPLEX GROUPS
Groupwork is a highly complex phenomenon. At any one
time, many things may be happening in a group, all at
different levels of experience.
1. the individuals in a group may be experiencing what is
happening in the group at an emotional, intellectual,
physical and intuitive level
2. members of a group have continually changing and
developing needs
3. at different times, the members of a group may want to
leave the group, stay in it or make the most of it
4. different things will be experienced as the group (or
team) spirit develops.
This is why facilitation does not and cannot rely on being
learnt as theory or textbook learning. When we forget about
learning how to facilitate, it becomes intuitively easier.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
FACILITATION AT WORK
While facilitation has grown out of its use in group therapy,
its value is now recognised at the highest levels of many
organisations. In practice, many successful business leaders
facilitate what goes on in their companies.
Examples of where facilitation can be valuably practised
include:
• team meetings
• training sessions
• brainstorming and problem-solving meetings
• mediation and conciliation of grievances, conflicts and
disputes
• leading teams
• motivating groups.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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What is Facilitation?
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn