Building Internal Capacity: A Workshop on Facilitation
At The Purpose Business, we’re always striving to improve our professional skillset by learning from each other. As we help our clients on their sustainability journeys, the ability to help shape, unpack and ease those critical conversations around ESG is key.
Luckily, within our network, we have seasoned and beloved Advisor, Dr Margaret Burnett (Maggie). With over 30 years of experience helping clients integrate sustainability principles into organisational culture and core decision making, Maggie shared her expertise with us in successful facilitation techniques and practices.
Earlier this month, Maggie held a hands-on workshop for the team. TPB folks in Hong Kong gathered together with colleagues in Manila over Zoom for a lively afternoon. The session was packed with learning, doing and sharing activities that were all aimed at improving our facilitation skills - recognising when to use certain techniques for different situations . In four hours, the team learned helpful tips and techniques to add to our toolbox for future engagements.
Key takeaways from the workshop
Facilitation is the art and science of making a process easier without getting directly involved with the work. A good facilitator is both a mediator and an enabler.
The facilitator must adequately prepare and quickly adapt to different scenarios to ensure that the meeting’s objectives are still met. Facilitating requires analysing the context, the task at hand, and the participants to effectively manage the flow of the discussion.
Formulating and phrasing the right questions is critical to having rich and deep conversations to draw actionable insights from.
A good facilitator does not have to be the expert on the topic at hand, but must possess great listening skills and the ability to break down siloes, connect viewpoints and build bridges.