Facilitation Services
We help clients achieve exceptional results in a surprisingly short time by facilitating conversations that are stimulating, productive and vital. We design and facilitate each working session to engage participants from the first minute, whether they interact face-to-face or virtually. Clients work with us to create clear objectives, ground rules, preparation packages, and agendas that meet or exceed goals. We help clients select the best tools and technology that can accelerate and enrich results. Each session includes an action-planning component to maintain momentum and foster commitment to results.
- Planning and Running Effective Remote Team Meetings
- Blended Facilitation
- Guidance and Coaching for Successful Remote Team Building
- Project Jumpstart Workshops
Planning and Running Effective Remote Team Meetings
Purpose:
Accelerate time to results through productive conversations, whether face-to-face or remote
Intended results:
- Meetings achieve or exceed intended outcomes
- Objectives and expectations are clear at the outset
- Participants come prepared and ready to contribute
- Important issues are acknowledged and addressed
- Vital output is captured and available for immediate use
- People are energized and committed to following through
Structure:
We work with clients to:
- Clarify objectives and agree on intended outcomes
- Identify important parameters and constraints
- Realistically assess how much time and which participants are needed to achieve intended outcomes
- Determine meeting methods and technologies that can best achieve goals
- Create detailed agendas and activities designed to make the best use of meeting time
- Identify additional methods of communication that will enhance results
- Prepare client sponsor and participants, enabling everyone to fully contribute right up front
- Determine roles and responsibilities of participants, sponsor, and others
- Ensure that clients will make the necessary commitments to follow through and communicate progress
- Keep conversations focused and on track
- Provide meeting output that can be applied immediately for quick results
Getting Started:
To explore how we can help your organization accelerate results through focused conversations, please contact us for more details.
Blended Facilitation
Purpose:
To engage participants in highly productive conversations, whether face-to-face and remote, by applying the right facilitation technology and tools at the right time
Intended Results:
- Meetings are shorter and far more productive
- Make the best use of time, talent and money
- Good ideas flow faster and more easily
- Engage only the people you need for any given topic
- More people can participate fully, regardless of location
- People come prepared to contribute their best thinking from the first minute
Structure:
We work with clients to:
- “Convert” activities intended for face-to-face meetings into a series of high-impact remote working sessions
- Create realistic agendas and select best combination of facilitation methods and tools to get the job done for both remote and face-to-face working sessions
- Prepare participants for productive working sessions, both asynchronous and synchronous
- Facilitate guided conversations with engaged participants that lead to rich results
- Capture and distribute workshop output quickly using the powerful FacilitatePro online conferencing tool
Getting Started:
Contact us to find out how we can help you achieve better ROI for the time, money and energy you spend in planning and running meetings. You can also visit http://www.facilitate.com/ to learn about FacilitatePro, the conferencing tool we use for both asynchronous and synchronous working sessions, whether remote or in-person.
Guidance and Coaching for Successful Remote Team Building
Purpose:
Provide leaders and participants of global and virtual teams with tools, techniques and knowledge to build successful working relationships that lead to great results
Intended results:
- Teams get more work done in less time through better communications
- Leaders are able to prepare and facilitate meetings more effectively, whether face to-face or remote
- Interactive meeting time is put to more effective use
- Current challenges and bottlenecks are identified openly and addressed with practical solutions
- Team members agree on methods, tools and timing to ensure that accurate and relevant communications are exchanged in a timely way
Structure:
We work with clients to:
- Share best practices for virtual and global team collaboration
- Assess the needs and prevailing perceptions of team members
- Evaluate the effectiveness of current team communications
- Identify barriers to successful collaboration for client organization
- Show how different collaboration tools and technologies can increase the effectiveness of client teams
- Create sample agendas and activities
- Model facilitation skills and methods for clients to learn from
Getting Started:
To explore how we can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your current global and virtual team communications, please contact us for a complimentary consulting session.
Project Jumpstart Workshops
Purpose:
Get project teams out of the starting gate quickly by reaching agreement on key factors most likely to affect the speed, quality and results of important projects
Intended results:
- Minimize chances for costly disruptions as the project moves forward
- Validate project scope, major deliverables, and timeframe
- Articulate critical success factors, risks and key dependencies
- Clarify roles, responsibilities and reporting relationships
- Identify organizational interfaces, politics and cultural considerations
- Reach agreement on team processes for decision-making, reviews, change requests, and issue resolution
- Develop a communications process for project team and stakeholders
- Provide a safe forum for surfacing potential issues
- Creation of shared operating principles for key aspects of the project
- Cultivate an appreciation for different learning styles and communication preferences
Structure:
We work with clients to:
- Assess needs of each unique project team, whether face-to-face or virtual
- Agree on stated objectives and intended outcomes
- Identify participants and their roles
- Interview participants to understand hopes, fears and concerns
- Customize each agenda and set of activities to maximize participation by all core team members
- Prepare participants and client sponsors for a successful session
- Facilitate the Project Jumpstart workshop
- Capture issues, questions and concerns that must be addressed later
- Identify action plans, owners and delivery dates
- Ensure that workshop output is clear, accurate and timely
- Debrief with client sponsors
Most Project Jumpstart workshops require a two-day commitment from core team participants to achieve the best results, but remote participation is possible for some activities.
Getting Started:
Please contact us for a complimentary needs assessment to see if a Project Jumpstart is right for your team. Meanwhile, we invite you to read our related information sheet for more details.
“Nancy is an expert in facilitation in many different forms – planning, making sure meetings are effective, working out what will be done, who need to be there, how it will work, and addressing issues that come up. She truly enjoys bringing people to agreement, facilitating conversation and moving things forward.”
Program Manager
Leading Integrated Healthcare System
“Nancy was very well-organized, and did a marvelous job of keeping the discussions moving along, without letting any one person dominate the floor. Everyone was offered an opportunity to speak and ask questions, and we could have extended our discussions for hours.”
Pharmaceutical plan administrator