June 2015 - The FoCuSeD™ Facilitator eNewsletter

Making Employees Productive is Key | Gary Rush Facilitation

Engagement is the trend in business today. Our FoCuSeD™ Structured Facilitation Technique has evolved to become integral to new methods. Methods such as Agile, Scrum, Six Sigma, Lean, and others all prescribe using facilitated workshops to engage stakeholders achieving significant productivity gains – increasing their ROI as well. These methods are ineffective without properly trained people to facilitate the various workshops – project scoping, requirements elicitation, after action reviews, and others. These depend on the Facilitator understanding "how to" develop effective and useful structured processes along with people tools to stimulate participant involvement ensuring better outcomes.

What?

Facilitation Skills (to make easier) are needed abilities for Business Analysts, Project Leaders, Data Base Architects, Enterprise Architects, Black Belts, Green Belts, Scrum Masters, and others. These skills are not presentation skills. These include an understanding of both People and Process Skills – skills that enable people to work together and skills that enable people to build a product. They require knowing:

• “How to” assess the situation to incorporate the appropriate process and people tools.
  
  
• “How to” develop a structured agenda incorporating those tools that elicit meaningful ideas from the participants.
  
  
• “How to” incorporate workshops/meetings into the method.
  
  
• “How to” deal with participants who present disruptive behavior – the drop out, the dominator, the attacker, etc.
  
  
• “How to” form the participants into a team.
  
  
• “How to” capture the decisions and input for project deliverables.

Developing these abilities requires thoughtful training that covers "how to" prepare for a workshop, design a process, integrate with project methods, present yourself, deal with a diverse group, engage people, not be in charge, manage conflict, actively listen, question effectively, and facilitate decision making and problem solving.

How?

Set the Context - Thoughtful training needs to define the role of facilitation and “how to” effectively incorporate facilitation skills into your role. Many people wear multiple hats – multiple roles – and need to understand “how to” use the skills, “how to” remain neutral when applicable, and “how to” remain focused in their role. We ensure that students understand the value of and “how to” properly conduct a workshop/meeting.

Develop the People Skills - Thoughtful training is learning “how to” understand the participants, their characteristics and how they affect group performance – group dynamics. What it takes to build a team, as well as “how to” assess group performance to ensure that the team exists in a constructive environment. We ensure that students learn “how to” use the appropriate people tools to enhance the performance of the group.

Develop the Process Skills - Thoughtful training shows “how to” develop structured agendas that enable groups to follow and produce the desired outcome in a seamless process. It enables an understanding of structured thought processes – a way of organizing thoughts ensuring that the needed structure is there for decision-making, problem solving, etc. Without these process skills, people cannot guide groups – groups will struggle and break down allowing dominant people to prevail making win-win difficult at best. We ensure that these important structured thought processes get you from point A to Z by incorporating tools to correct group dysfunction and improve creativity.

Practice and Feedback - Thoughtful training requires practice and feedback to perform immediately upon completion.

Benefits of Training Employees

Organizations need to make the most effective use of their resources and human capital is the most important resource an organization has. A return on investment from this thoughtful training is almost immediate. The first meeting or workshop that a student facilitates saves the organization more money than it costs to send a student to our class – that includes salary, tuition, travel, and expenses. The savings to organizations continues to grow because of how their employees can get a group of people to come together, step them through a structured thought process, and accomplish a task.

• If a Business Analyst makes $100,000 per year, then 8 weeks of requirements gathering costs $15,385. In a 3-day facilitated workshop, the same requirements can be gathered at a cost of $1,154. That means that gathering requirements 8 weeks of requirements in a 3-day facilitated workshop saves over $14,231 for the one Business Analyst. When you include the actual number of Business Analysts along with the clients involved during the 8 weeks to gather requirements the savings are even greater.
  
  
• If an IT project costs $1 million and the requirements phase requires one-third of the effort, then requirements cost $333,000. Using facilitated workshops to gather requirements cuts the time to ¼, saving almost $250,000 out of $333,000. That amounts to one-fourth the cost of the project – just for requirements!
  
  
• In addition, because the requirements are consensus-based and more complete, development time is reduced and quality increases adding to the savings.

Next…

Our FoCuSeD™ Facilitator Academy, an IAF Endorsed™ Training Programme, by Gary Rush, IAF CPF, MGR Consulting, Inc., provides the required thoughtful training and practice to develop effective facilitation skills providing your workforce with the skills needed to engage in clear communication, problem-solving, decision-making, etc. - making facilitation a way of business, not a collection of tools. You will gain productivity and savings – giving your organization a competitive edge.

Contact Gary Rush, IAF CPF, MGR Consulting, Inc. for additional information.

June 2017 - The FoCuSeD™ Facilitator eNewsletter

Managing the #1 Fear in the World - Public Speaking | by Gary Rush, IAF CPF

My Dad, my first music teacher, taught me clarinet and one of the first things he had me do was perform a solo at a band contest – I was 8 years old and scared out of my gourd, yet I’ve been in front of groups ever since. People often say that it must be easy for me and that I couldn’t possibly be nervous. Well, when it comes to nerves, I get as nervous as anyone else. In fact, when I get up in front of groups, my adrenaline is so pumped, that (at least to me) my face feels flushed, my heart races, and my stomach flips.

Fear of public speaking is the #1 fear in the world – more than death (actually, 75% of people are afraid of public speaking – more than the number who are afraid of death???) – apparently, in life you die once, but in public speaking, you die a thousand times over. Since I make a living in front of groups, whether teaching, presenting, or facilitating, I’ve found some tricks that help manage my nerves. By the way, you don’t eliminate the fear; you learn “how to” manage it.

First of all, my fear is about being judged. So, it isn’t about what I’m going to do or say; it’s about what I think the audience is thinking. Knowing this has helped me because, to me, it is more about how I relate to the audience.

Step Away from the Lectern

When people give presentations, usually they stand behind a lectern putting a gap between themselves and the audience. When nervous, that is the worst place to be. What do they do? They grab onto the sides of the lectern as if it’s their life preserver. Standing with a box between you and the audience, only reinforces that gap and that gap emphasizes the fear of “judgment”. What do I do? I avoid lecterns, even to the point of having them removed from the stage because it prevents me from walking around, which helps dissipate the adrenalin, which helps reduce my nervousness.

Connect with the Audience

Looking at the audience as if they are in their underwear, as many presenters advise, is distracting – I’d rather connect with them. I walk to the audience to feel closer to them. I joke with them when appropriate to ease tension. I make eye contact to connect. If they have nametags, I use their names and shake their hands to make a personal connection. The more I connect with my audience, the easier it becomes for me because I feel part of the group.

So…

I get nervous like the rest of y’all but I’ve learned “how to” manage my fear by removing the gap – stepping away from the lectern and connecting with the audience. Try it; it’ll make you a better presenter.

November 2011 - The FoCuSeD™ Facilitator eNewsletter

Putting Facilitation Training to Use | Gary Rush Facilitation

There is misconception that Facilitation Training is only for Facilitators. It’s for everyone. Facilitation Training is one of the most critical and most effective tools for improving performance and effectiveness. People, companies, and organizations work smarter when Facilitation skills are incorporated into their culture.

The Problem

Today, the world we live in has become polarized, complex, and demanding. This requires that people, companies, and organizations become flexible, adaptive, and able to tap into all of their resources – especially the collective wisdom of those around them – making the old style of command and control management ineffective. The solution – Facilitation Skills as a core competency.

The Solution – a Core Competency

Facilitation skills are, and should be, a core competency in all positions given that using Facilitation skills increases productivity by more than 25% and improves team performance. Everyone that has been trained in facilitation skills has consistently out-performed those stuck in the old way of doing business.

Some ideas to think about:

• Every organization needs full-time Facilitators. These Facilitators will facilitate strategic plans, team-building, product ideation, and other topics involving a variety of issues. These Facilitators use effective applications of exceptional processes that enable a group of people to come together to accomplish a task, and are capable of facilitating the senior management within their organization.
• Business Analysts should gather requirements in facilitated workshops – Facilitative Business Analysts. Reverting to individual interviews costs the organization money. Facilitated workshops to gather requirements saves 75%!
• Project Managers should facilitate every project meeting. Facilitative Project Managers are skilled at getting the project team to come together and accomplish a great deal of work. Facilitating projects engages the collective wisdom of the project team and stakeholders.
• Auditors should facilitate audits – the information gathering that is required. This will change perceptions of auditors from policing to enabling.
• Managers should be facilitative – Facilitative Managers are effective Leaders and Leaders lead by getting people to come together and accomplish good work. A Facilitative Manager is the best way to ensure success.
• All employees should be trained in Facilitation Skills. This engages staff and stakeholders and helps improve communication. Facilitation skills make a difference in everything you do – in business and in life.

Make it Part of the Culture

When people, companies, and organizations make facilitation part of their culture:

• Plans, requirements, decisions, directions, etc. are developed through facilitated workshops.
• Because facilitation is key to collaboration, Facilitator skills are highly valued.
• Because people, companies, and organizations understand consensus and the decision-making process, they understand the need for divergent ideas, discussion of different perspectives, and convergence to a decision.
• The people in companies and organizations are equal, but not equivalent. They contribute according to their individual strengths and abilities.
• Decisions are made considering input from stakeholders.
• Goals and targets are set based on collaboration and more easily met through collaborating.
• The people in the companies and organizations understand and support decisions because they are involved.
• A larger pool of ideas exists because all members are involved. Brilliant ideas from all parts of the organization will surface and be considered.
• Meetings are run following facilitation guidelines, such as a purpose, an agenda, and ground rules (I know of a CIO who stated that if a meeting was convened without an agenda, attendees had permission to leave). Properly run meetings save organizations over 50% of the cost of meetings in time saved.
• People, companies, and organizations are more adaptable in a changing world.

Summary

Facilitation training costs money but the returns far outweigh the cost. When organizations make Facilitation skills part of their daily practice, they gain far more than they can imagine. When employees use their Facilitation skills, they contribute to the overall well being of the organization. Sounds like win-win.

June 2016 - The FoCuSeD™ Facilitator eNewsletter

Structured Thought Processes - "Process Skills" | Gary Rush Facilitation

As an IAF CPF Assessor, I’ve noticed that a weakness Facilitators have in common is poor process skills. They all deal well with people issues, but they all struggle defining a clear, thought-process for the group to follow. I’m talking about processes that help structure the thinking of a group so that they can make effective decisions to ensure well thought-out solutions.

How often have you been in a meeting where people work together well, but can’t get from point A to point B when making decisions? It isn’t because they can’t decide. It’s because something is missing – a structured thought process. For example, a group is in a meeting developing criteria to choose between vendors for a project, but they disagree about the criteria. Why? There are two (2) major reasons why groups disagree about criteria:

1. They don’t have an overarching goal to guide the criteria.
2. They disagree about “subjective” criteria (e.g., vendor viability).

A well-structured thought process solves both problems.

Process Skills are Misunderstood

People make the mistake of thinking that process relates to business procedures. Process is a way of organizing thoughts, ensuring that the needed structure is there for decision-making, problem solving, etc. Too often, groups jump ahead to solutions without defining the problem, so they struggle because they don’t share a common goal. These are process issues.

Process Skills are Crucial

Process Skills are just as important as People Skills. Without process skills, Facilitators cannot guide groups – groups will struggle and break down making win-win difficult at best.

People Need Balanced Holistic Learning

In my Facilitator training, I devote 50% of class time to People Skills and 50% to Process Skills, providing balanced Holistic Learning. People need to know “how to” form teams (people skills) and they need to know “how to” guide teams to a well thought-out solution (process skills).

Process Skills provide deliberate, structured thought processes to build something of value.