A facilitator enables groups of people to work or learn together productively.

A frequent comment after a well facilitated meeting is: “We achieved three months work in a day!”

A facilitator may lead meetings, workshops or training courses. Facilitators can also improve the effectiveness of your conferences and away days.

Facilitators also play a key role in bringing about organisational change.

A professional facilitator has the expertise to design an appropriate process for your workshop. A facilitation process is a robust structure for a meeting. The facilitation process outlines the types of activities planned for the workshop and how the facilitator will allocate the available time.

Having a facilitator with an appropriate process for your workshop, means the group are free to involve themselves fully in the content of the meeting.

The facilitator may design the facilitated meeting or workshop to include some or all of the following;  open space, idea generation sessions, creative problem-solving, learning exercises, decision making, action planning.

A professional facilitator may be called in to facilitate groups on diverse tasks. The facilitator may be needed to help with major strategic planning initiatives e.g. - to develop strategy  or to undertake technology roadmapping  or scenario planning.

A group facilitator also adds significant value when groups are working together creatively; generating ideas, inventing new products, new services, new processes, or a new business model.

Sometimes groups can generate a lot of ideas in a brainstorming session without a facilitator. However, after brainstorming, groups without a facilitator may feel overwhelmed by ranks of post-it notes lined up on pages of flipchart paper. Sometimes nobody knows how to move the workshop forward.

A professional facilitator guides the group beyond the brainstorming, helping the group with the key stages of idea selection and idea development. An experienced facilitator ensures that the group’s creative thinking is developed all the way through to winning product concepts or imaginative and effective plans.

The Skilled Facilitator

A skilled facilitator has a very wide range of skills, gathered through many ‘facilitator hours.’

During a facilitated meeting the facilitator leads the session.

He will at all times be attentive to ensuring that there is a supportive climate in the workshop so that team members remain engaged and  feel that they can safely express their opinions and ideas.

A skilled facilitator is able to communicate in a non-hierarchical way. The facilitator will remain ‘present’ and will model the behaviours and attitudes that promote a climate for creativity and innovation.

A professional facilitator manages ‘air-time’, ensuring that everyone gets a chance to ‘have their say’ and that strong personalities are not allowed to dominate the meeting.

A professional facilitator has an in depth knowledge of group dynamics and can handle any rivalries that may arise within the group.

The facilitator will also keep the group focused on the main tasks. In this way the facilitator ensures that everyone’s great ideas, diverse points of view, and concerns are brought into the meeting.

By holding facilitated meetings, your organisation will be accessing a greater amount of the potential of your people.

The professional facilitator’s large toolbox includes techniques for idea generation, visualisation, re-framing and much more. The professional facilitator also has facilitation tools and techniques for ‘unblocking’ the group if they get stuck.

Some organisations have managers with facilitation skills. Other organisations prefer to bring in external facilitators. A particular benefit of an external facilitator is that she can be seen as ‘neutral’ by all participants in the meeting.

One of the defining characteristics of a successful facilitator is that she is flexible. She is able to flex her style and her process to suit the needs of the group - even as the group’s needs change during the session. The facilitator does this to ensure that the desired output is achieved.

Business Benefits Of Facilitation

• Increased productivity in meetings
• Improved return on investment.
• Greater degree of buy-in to plans

Meetings are expensive. If you ran a taxi meter for your meetings you would find that with travel and accommodation costs, you have run up a large bill even before the meeting starts. As each hour goes by, the cost of your executives’ time drives that meeting bill even higher.

But how productive are your meetings?

Having a professional facilitator means you cover more ground in your meetings, and gain stronger commitment to action.

Why Choose A Facilitator From Anatellô?

Along with world-class facilitation skills, Anatellô facilitators have real understanding of business issues. They talk your language along with the language of creativity and innovation, this means they can both understand your business problems and also help you look outside the current paradigm for solutions.

Anatellô facilitators have engaging personalities. They are dynamic facilitators, committed to getting results. This means that your team will be in safe hands and team members will have an enjoyable and productive experience.

Our facilitators have extensive experience and continue to develop their facilitation skills.

• We will select a facilitator to match your specific requirement

Are you looking for a facilitator with board-level credibility? A facilitator who can challenge the team to take greater risks in their thinking? A facilitator who is particularly talented in facilitating specialist scientific or technical information?

• Anatellô provides facilitators in all major European languages – and some non-European languages.

When designing workshop and meetings processes, Anatellô facilitators draw on the extensive Anatellô body of knowledge. Anatellô facilitators ensure that your team work intensively in your meeting, while also enjoying the experience.

Anatellô facilitators draw on their process skills and interpersonal skills to ensure that your team leave the meeting strongly committed to the action plan.