13.

3 What is Facilitator Do
A facitator is typically a neutral third party tasked with monitoring a team's
process and helping improve its effectiveness The facilitator focuses more on a
team's process or now t acnleves its goals (e.g., methods, procedures tools. and
norms of interaction), than on the content or what the team is doing (e.g goals
tasks agenda items, subjects discussed, decisions made). Unlike the leader who
takes control of the meeting and promotes a particular point of view, the
facilitator provides structure and manages participation to ensure that all views
are heard. Rather than make decisions or give orders the facilitator helps the team
clarify its own goals and develop its plan for achieving them. For example, if you
were facilitating the team in the opening scenario, you might ask the team at the
start of the next meeting:
«I understand that you are tasked with creating an advertising campaign for one of
our clients, and that you’ve been given 30 days. Now that you’ve had some time to
discuss the task, what do you think about the requirements and constraints? Is 30
days sufficient? How polished is management excepting the campaign to be?»

These questions can help the team clarify the goal that was supplied to them and
think oubo through any issues that might get in the way of achieving this goal.
Just because management "said so" may cause problems later on. If a goal is
unrealistic or unsupported, it is better to discuss these issues at the start of
the task/team and make adiustments than disappoint management and the client later
on. This process of helping the team clarify its goal and einee with managing
expectations among those with vested interests is a case of an ounce of prevention
heing worth a pound of cure. The responsibilities of a facilitator vary from team
to team, depending on the goals, technical requirements, duration, and employee
makeup of that team. Emplovees or students who have worked on teams before, or who
have been working with one team for a long time, may require less facilitation than
would members of a newly formed team. In the case of our opening scenario, it seems
that some members have more experience than others. A facilitator can help ensure
that the more experienced members don't dominate the less experienced members.deem
such sic The facilitator's role may not be confined to what happens during
meetings; many work outside meetings to further group cohesion or help gain
sponsorship or support from key groups or individuals external to the team. While
facilitators' responsibilities may vary with respect to teams' expected outcomes,
technical requirements, and employee makeup, they often do whatever it takes to
help the team improve its processes and outcomes. This might start with helping a
team clarify and buy into its goals and objectives, and progress through coaching a
team to present its recommendations to management and eventually implementing these
recommendations.

Contributions of a Team Facilitator

•Helps team define its goals and objectives and access needed resources to achieve
them.
•Helps members assess their needs and skills and create plans to meet and develop
them.
•Provides processes that help members use their time efficiently.
•Guides discussions to keep them on track.
•Ensures that assumptions are surfaced and tested.
•Ensures that all members' opinions are shared and considered in decision-making
processes.
•Helps to create a positive, productive, and collaborative environment.
•Models and teaches facilitative skills, helping the team diagnose its own
processes and eventually become self-facilitating.
•Ensures individual members take responsibility for team processes and outcomes.

Finally, facilitators model and educate team members in the use of facilitative
skills. It would be very easy for a facilitator to provide continual assistance in
improving team processes and outcomes. However, team members would likely become
dependent on that help, rendering themselves unable to function effectively without
the aid of a facilitator.

When a facilitator not only helps the team use meeting management techniques, for
example, but also teaches the team why and how to use them, the team will
eventually become self-facilitating. In other words, good facilitators often work
themselves out of a job.

In sum, as the accompanying box shows, facilitators do whatever it takes to help

the team improve its processes (and outcomes). Facilitators may do many things,
from helping