Improving Facilitation Skills and Building a Community of Practice

The Challenge 

The Director of Innovation at a financial services company wanted to improve his team’s facilitation skills in their Innovation Lab so that they could more effectively help the organization think creatively and come up with more innovative solutions for the business.

This challenge is one of developing cohesive teams and creating inclusive change – cohesive teams are psychologically safe, generate more innovative ideas, make more informed decisions, and perform better, and an inclusive approach to change helps people to embrace something new and different.

The Engagement 

When we first observed the team of facilitators in action, we learned that each individual had different strengths and opportunities for improvement. This inspired us to build a community of facilitators so that they could practice with and learn from one another. We also codified our decades of facilitation experience and designed and delivered a skill-building session that provided the Innovation Lab’s facilitators with a common language and method for self-evaluation and improvement through peer-to-peer feedback. The engagement introduced a new way of thinking about facilitation, new habits and skills, anda new way of collaborating as a community.

The Result 

Innovation Lab participants reported improved experiences. Six months after our engagement facilitators were regularly rated at a 4/5 on average, which showed significant improvement. We were able to build a way for the team to leverage each other’s strengths and identify areas for development together too, which was motivating to the facilitators. This community of facilitators continues to support each other and now are offering ongoing support to improve group facilitation skills across the organization.

The sr4 Insight 

“Facilitation is the art of confidently guiding people toward a defined objective by actively listening and asking thoughtful questions to accelerate the results.” We defined facilitation in partnership with our clients and determined that there are a variety of ways that it can be done well. We believe that every individual has specific strengths that are not always fully recognized. By helping to show that good facilitation outcomes can emerge from diverse approaches, we created possibilities for the team be more authentic in their approach and bring themselves into the process.