Soul of Facilitation Approach

External Versus Internal Tools and Skills

Facilitators use any number of tools and skills to help a group accomplish the tasks and achieve the outcomes it is seeking. These facilitation tools and skills are external. We can see them being used. They have names like, action learning, appreciative inquiry or affinity diagramming. And there are many books and workshops that go into detail on how to use those external tools and skills.

What is less common, is the acknowledgment and description of the internal skills and tools that a facilitator can use to enhance his or her effectiveness with a group. Many facilitators, by nature or inclination, tend to be tuned to things about a group that are not readily apparent to the physical eye. When we talk about soul we are talking about the essence of something that transcends its physical appearance. As we develop our ability to work from and with that essence we enhance the impact our skills and tools have upon the physical many fold.

Most, if not all, professional facilitators have a toolkit that they constantly add to during their careers. Often when they go to a conference, work with other facilitators or even get on the internet they discover some new process or exercise that can add to the tools they already have. You will gain tools in this workshop you can put in your toolkit that are internal as well as external. The adage about sharpening your axe can help clarify the workshop’s intent. If you don’t take time to sharpen the axe you will take more time to chop the wood (A point Steven Covey made famous in his Seven Habits book). To go a step further with this metaphor, the Soul of Facilitation approach focuses on you (facilitator) the user of the axe without forgetting about the axe (process of facilitation) , the wood (the group) and the purpose the wood will used for (objective). The tools and skills for the facilitator are inherently internal while those for the process or the group are more external. Strengthening the users of the tools will help them be more effective with the tools and groups they work with.