This section is incomplete and still under construction.
What is facilitation ? Some definitions:
"Facilitation is the art of leadership in group communication. A facilitator is one who fulfils this leadership role." Antioch University McGregor
"The facilitator's job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements" - Kaner
Sam Kaner with Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk and Duane Berger (Authors); Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making Jossey-Bass; ISBN 0-7879-8266-0 (2007)
"One who contributes structure and process to interactions so groups are able to function effectively and make high-quality decisions. A helper and enabler whose goal is to support others as they achieve exceptional performance" – Bens
Ingrid Bens (Author); Facilitating With Ease!: A Step-by-Step Guidebook with Customizable Worksheets on CD-ROM, Jossey-Bass, ISBN 0-7879-5194-3, (2000)
"An individual who enables groups and organizations to work more effectively; to collaborate and achieve synergy. She or he is a 'content neutral' party who by not taking sides or expressing or advocating a point of view during the meeting, can advocate for fair, open, and inclusive procedures to accomplish the group's work" – Doyle
Michael Doyle, quoted in Kaner, et al, 2007, p. xiii.
Established practices and theories of facilitation
Facilitation is sometimes considered an undervalued and often dismissed speciality, irrelevant to the bulk of organisations and their practices. This is a misunderstanding, but a misunderstanding for which traditional facilitation practice has to shoulder some responsibility.
The tradition of 'six-category intervention' (John Heron)
Action-Learning Sets
Critique of established practices and theories
The groupwork aspect of facilitation
The many disparate approaches to groups
An integrative approach to working with groups: drawing from all the schools of groupwork
Facilitation grounded in integral depth-psychology
Complexity Theory applied to groups: established structures and emergent Processes
The fractal self-organising nature of groups, organisations and social systems
The group as an open system
The group from a bodymind perspective
The neuroscientific contribution: mirror neurons, empathy and group dynamics
The role and task of the facilitator:
Parallel Process in facilitation
Use of self by the facilitator
Large Groups / Open Space
Conclusion: integral broad-spectrum facilitation