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Seven Facilitation Strategies for Leaders

In your leadership journey, you will increasingly find yourself at the front of the room. You’ll be standing there with the goal of influencing anywhere from five to 5,000 people in a particular course of action, sharing corporate policy decisions, facilitating a learning experience, discussing business challenges, developing and integrating business plans, and more. You’ll be faced with managing external compliance goals, internal policy decisions, varying leadership opinions, and diverging employee preferences. Your desire generally will be to broaden the perspective of the audience, and gain consensus around a set of values, strategies, and actions.

Walking into the room solely focused on your agenda is a recipe for disaster. You must anticipate every aspect of the topic, environment, and attendees to properly prepare for and address your subject matter. Your approach may be interactive and participatory, or more formal and direct. But building a relationship with your audience is always critical for success. As a leader, part of your growth is understanding how to facilitate others’ learning experiences, to accomplish organizational objectives. In the process, it’s important to be open to continuous learning from those around you. (more…)