Author : Roger M. Schwarz Screen Reader : Supported Works with : Source : Status : Available | Last checked: 3 Hour ago! Size : 22,842 KB |
The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Trainers, and Coaches, Third Edition is a fundamental resource for consultants, facilitators, coaches, trainers, and anyone who helps groups realize their creative and problem-solving potential. This new edition includes updated content based on the latest research and revised models of group effectiveness and mutual learning. Roger M. Schwarz shows how to use the Skilled Facilitator approach to: boost improvement processes such as Six Sigma and Lean, create a psychologically safe learning environment for training, and help coaches work with teams and individuals in real-time. This edition features a new chapter that explains how to facilitate virtual teams using conferencing technology.
Facilitation skills are essential in many kinds of work, and if you are looking to bring your skills up to date it is critical that you rely on trusted information like the knowledge offered in this go-to reference.
The Skilled Facilitator is a practical resource for corporate, government, non-profit, and educational practitioners, as well as graduate students in group-focused programs. This edition contains up-to-date material, based on recent studies, to help facilitators move beyond arbitrary tactics to utilize cutting edge, research-based strategies that improve group processes, relationships, mindsets, and outcomes.
The third edition of The Skilled Facilitator by Roger Schwarz is the thoroughly revised and updated resource that has become the standard reference in the field. Well grounded in research and theory, this comprehensive and integrative approach to facilitation is designed for consultants, facilitators, coaches, trainers, and anyone who helps groups realize their creative and problem-solving potential. The Skilled Facilitator approach is a proven systems approach in which all the parts fit together and reinforce each other because they are based on the same set of core values, assumptions, and principles. This enables groups to achieve three results: stronger performance, more productive working relationships, and greater individual well-being.
While retaining the essential information from the previous editions, this new edition offers completely revised models of group effectiveness and mutual learning. Roger Schwarz highlights the roles of the consultant, coach, and trainer, and offers a detailed explanation of how to approach a situation depending on the facilitative role. In addition, there is a completely new chapter on facilitating virtual meetings using conferencing technology.
The Skilled Facilitator explores the foundational skills needed to work from a productive mindset, explains how to adopt the effective mutual learning approach, and includes ideas for determining the right role for the right situation. Experienced facilitators and those new to the profession will have the information needed to effectively observe a group, figure out what is happening that is limiting the group's effectiveness, and when to intervene to help the group become more successful. In addition, the author offers step-by-step instructions for reaching an agreement to work with a group and offers advice for deciding whether to work with a partner. Schwarz also includes suggestions for working internally within your organization.
The real-life stories and verbatim examples from the author reveal how to effectively apply the Skilled Facilitator approach in everyday practice and the pitfalls to avoid. The author explains how using this proven approach will strengthen improvement processes and create a psychologically safe learning environment for training. In addition, Schwarz provides help for coaches who work with teams and individuals in real-time.
Facilitation skills are essential in many kinds of work. For anyone who wants to hone their skills and bring them up-to-date, The Skilled Facilitator is their go-to reference.
PRAISE FOR THE SKILLED FACILITATOR
"This book replaces about a dozen that I have on my shelf. It has become the book on facilitation that aspiring and accomplished consultants should read."
Geoffrey Bellman, author of The Consultant's Calling and Extraordinary Groups
"There is no better guide for how to intervene effectively in organizational groups than Roger Schwarz. His incredibly useful third edition of The Skilled Facilitator adds a framework that makes clear distinctions among roles such as coach, consultant, and facilitator, and makes cogent recommendations for each role. At the heart and soul of Schwarz's wisdom is the notion of mindsetthat we must first consider and alter our own thinking before we can work productively with the complexity of group dynamics."
Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School and author of Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy
"The Skilled Facilitator is essential reading for every group facilitator, consultant, and team coach to be grounded in the values, assumptions, principles and practice of group facilitation. In the third edition, Roger Schwarz continues to address these matters thoughtfully, coherently, and comprehensively so readers can help groups create the results they need."
Sandor P. Schuman, editor of The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation: Best Practices from the Leading Organization in Facilitation
"The heart of Roger Schwarz's approach to facilitation is mutual learning between the facilitator and group and between all members of the group. As he points out so aptly, mutual learning is a different mindset than unilateral control and when under stress it is common for facilitators to default to control. This book provides a launching point for the deliberate practice required to facilitate high performing work groups."
Jeffrey Liker, Professor, University of Michigan and author of The Toyota Way
"I'm deeply grateful to Roger Schwarz, the modern master of facilitation theory and practice, for giving us a sleeker, tighter, and more modern version of his magnum opus. For many years, my Wharton students have reaped the powerful rewards of his earlier edition's careful instruction; it's changed their minds and their lives. With this seamlessly coherent and crucially substantial upgrade to what was already the field's gold standard, future students of collective action seeking a rigorous, highly practical method have a yet wiser guide."
Stew Friedman, author of Total Leadership and founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program
ROGER SCHWARZ is an organizational psychologist and president and CEO of Roger Schwarz & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that helps teams create fundamental change to get better results. He facilitates leadership teams and teaches, consults, coaches, and speaks on facilitation, leadership, and developing effective teams. He is the author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams and The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook, and blogs for Harvard Business Review. Contact him at www.schwarzassociates.com or find him on Twitter @LeadSmarter.