Family Business Facilitation

Make Things Happen offers a full range of services to facilitate your meeting whether its purpose is to plan a better future or speak the unspeakable.

Good facilitators can close the gap between meetings that are ho-hum and more of the same and those that produce high performance groups and transformational change. We allow you to participate in the meeting you would normally be leading. We extend your HR department by providing skills you don't have, or don't have enough of. And, operating as outside contractors, we protect the confidentiality of issues that are not ready to be discussed more broadly within your organization.

Make Things Happen offers a full range of facilitation services for:

  • Families who own businesses
  • Partners
  • CEOs and Boards of Directors
  • Management groups and work teams
  • Committees, coalitions and task forces

Stay on Track

Basic facilitation is just that - leading the meeting. Basic facilitation helps a group to temporarily improve its process long enough to solve a specific problem and reach its objective. Examples of this kind of facilitation are information sharing meetings, strategic planning and establishment of long-term goals.

All facilitation begins by interviewing significant stakeholders to gather relevant information, objectives, expectations and set the agenda. This could mean speaking with one or all individuals involved with the meeting.

Develop Capacity

Developmental facilitation helps a group learn how to continuously and permanently improve its process so that it can solve problems on its own in the future. There is a training aspect to this type of facilitation where the client takes on some of the responsibilities of facilitation while we shift our role to that of providing real-time feedback and performance coaching.

A trained facilitator can increase a group's awareness, develop individual skills and/or change group behaviors by using self-knowledge instruments and experiential learning exercises.

Self-knowledge instruments are used to help groups understand some aspect of their interpersonal dynamics. Questionnaires can increase awareness, create understanding and engender respect for individuals' similarities or differences within the group around personality, social identity, learning preferences, thinking styles, leadership, conflict resolution, problem-solving and decision-making styles.

Experiential learning activities are ones designed to provide insight about how the group works together. There is an educational component created to teach new skills, behaviors and perspectives that are relevant to the current situation or issue and build capacity for the group to solve its own problems in the future. Some of the topics suited to these activities are communication skills, decision-making, problem solving, and simulations - really, there is no limit.

Speak the Unspeakable

Advanced facilitation is more challenging because the goals and relationships increase in complexity. We also refer to this as process consulting. Advanced practitioners skilled at working with interpersonal relationships and emotions bring conflict resolution, mediation and remedial teambuilding skills to the process.

Process consultants are advanced practitioners who make reasoned and intentional inputs into the ongoing events and dynamics of the group with the purpose of helping it to expand its awareness of dysfunctional and unproductive behaviors. A highly skilled process consultant will have competencies in academic theory, behavioral skills, intervention skills and a significant amount of self-knowledge.

Process facilitation is not group therapy however when the energy required to suppress negative feelings is not available to the individual, group or organization it can result in a buildup of resentment or interpersonal conflict and loss of productivity. The purpose of dealing with emotions in facilitation is to resolve the stuck energy thus allowing the group to becoming more effective at its work. In this type of facilitation resolving interpersonal conflict is the group's sole objective.

Responsibilities of Facilitator

Facilitators are responsible for "how" the meeting goes and we call this the "process." The process has two parts: tasks and relationships. We have the responsibility to understand the complexity of your goals so we can lead you across the finish line. Facilitator task responsibilities include:

  • Agenda setting
  • Regulating time frames
  • Establishing behavioral guidelines
  • Idea generation techniques
  • Decision-making methods
  • Problem-solving steps
  • Reaching agreement

Facilitators are responsible for the interpersonal dynamics of the group by maintaining good relationships during the meeting through observing, moderating, encouraging and/or interrupting. Facilitator relationship responsibilities include:

  • Participation
  • Inclusion
  • Power dynamics
  • Influence factors
  • Dysfunctional behaviors
  • Problem members and
  • Anger management

Good facilitators can make the difference between meetings that are status quo and those that produce high performance groups and transformational change.

Contact Make Things Happen today to see how we can help you improve the performance of your meetings!