Facilitations

What is Facilitation?  |  Strategic Planning Outline

Bob Losyk is a skilled facilitator, as well as a keynote speaker and trainer who designs facilitations for meetings, conferences, conventions, and retreats. With many, many, group facilitations to his credit, (and over a thousand more keynotes and seminars) Bob can help your next gathering achieve their desired outcomes. Whether it's helping your board or group create a strategic plan, planning your next project, resolving issues, building a team, or solving problems,
Bob will lead the way by:

• Interviewing a sampling of the participants  beforehand.
• Searching for and identifying the potential pitfalls.
• Designing, planning, and creating the tools, techniques, and processes needed.
• Setting the tone and defining the ground rules for the meeting.
• Guiding the group through each activity.
• Getting everyone in the group involved---that's right--100% participation.
• Motivating the participants to get the desired results.
• Building team spirit.
• Making peace when there is conflict.
• Keeping the team focused on the agenda.
• Making it fast-paced, highly productive, and fun.
• Keeping the energy level up throughout the meeting.
• Encouraging innovation and creative thinking.
• Praising & recognizing contributions and achievements.
• Helping to achieve the desired objectives.
• Assisting you with follow through after the meeting is over.
  

Bob's Clients Said:

What is Facilitation?

Facilitation is an art and a science. It comes from the Latin word facil, which means to make easy. Facilitators bring people together in a structured meeting to plan, solve problems, reach consensus, and make decisions. Why? Because most groups, no matter how talented the individuals are within, are not always effective in achieving results. They get bogged down along the way. A facilitator makes the group's job easier. A facilitator, using skilled techniques and proven methods, will enable the group to eliminate roadblocks. They get results.

Skilled facilitators use a different set of skills than speakers and trainers. A speaker and trainer gives information. A facilitator draws out and generates high-quality ideas and content from the participants. To be effective, a facilitator doesn't need to know the answers, but knows all the right questions to ask to get to the answers. They know how and what to ask, how to clarify and restate, and how to summarize and process the ideas generated. They get maximum participation and involvement from everyone in the group. And, every group member is more likely to support the decisions, as the ideas came from them!

With the proper skills, activities, techniques, and processes, facilitators are able to plan an agenda to get to the desire results. For example, a skilled facilitator may not know all there is to know about strategic planning, but is effective at creating the process, so that a group can leave with a strategic plan ready to implement. A skilled facilitator may not know how to plan a project that a group must undertake, but they know how to guide the group through the process of identifying the objectives and resources, and creating a group action plan that can be readily implemented. A skilled facilitator can't solve a group's problems alone, but can take them through the problem solving techniques. A skilled facilitator enables the group to identify the symptoms vs. causes of the problem, brain storm alternative solutions, reach consensus, and create a step -by- step implementation of the best alternative.

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Strategic Planning Facilitation

Many groups come together with the best of intentions and agendas, hoping they will walk out of a meeting with a workable strategic plan. However, many roadblocks come up during the planning process that take the group off track, and prevent them from reaching their goals. Different people have their own agenda, which can sabotage the best of plans. Often, a strong board member can attempt to sway other members over to their point of view. A skilled outside facilitator can prevent your planning session from becoming a disaster, or accomplishing very little. A facilitator can make the difference between success and failure.

      As your facilitator, Bob Losyk, will be a neutral leader of your session, will maintain an open climate, and keep everyone on track so they walk out with both a plan that works and a sense of accomplishment. As an experienced facilitator and consultant, he brings a wealth of experience and adds valuable insights and new perspectives to the strategic planning process. As your facilitator, Bob will use proven techniques and processes that will allow the group to create their own unique vision, and then turn that vision into reality. Your group will decide together how it will be implemented. Your group will be on the road to achieving the strategic business goals that they came to accomplish, and have fun doing it.

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