What is a Facilitative Leader? Facilitative leaders create organizations where engagement is the norm, collaboration is the vehicle, and higher levels of achievement are the result. Unfortunately, many leaders continue to view their role primarily as one of setting direction, allocating resources, and putting in place rewards, support, and development systems that ensure their people stay focused on achieving that direction. In the changing workplace, this archaic view of leadership is completely inadequate. More and more, employees are seeking to understand where their organization is going and to influence the paths taken to get there. This shift in the workplace requires a new set of leadership skills. Leaders must know how to inspire people around a vision, foster trust, manage group interaction, build consensus, resolve conflict, and adapt their approach to the specific needs of each person they lead. They must be able to facilitate rather than dictate. This new direction calls for facilitative leaders. Praise for 8 Core Practices of Facilitative Leaders "If you want a great book that takes a facilitative approach to leadership, here it is! The 8 Core Practices of Facilitative Leaders offers practical and insightful strategies any leader can apply immediately. Read this book and learn the best ways to create engagement, buy-in, and alignment in your organization." --Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The New One Minute Manager(R) and Leading at a Higher Level "Michael credits me with teaching him to value thinking and communication preferences. He has written a practical guide to help you understand the behaviors needed to be highly impactful as a facilitative leader." --Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, chief thought leader and chair of the board at Herrmann, creators of the HBDI Assessment and Whole Brain Thinking

The Secrets of Facilitation delivers a clear vision of facilitation excellence and reveals the specific techniques effective facilitators use to produce consistent, repeatable results with groups. Author Michael Wilkinson has trained thousands of managers, mediators, analysts, and consultants around the world to apply the power of SMART (Structured Meeting And Relating Techniques) facilitation to achieve amazing results with teams and task forces. He shows how anyone can use these proven group techniques in conflict resolution, consulting, managing, presenting, teaching, planning, selling, and other professional as well as personal situations.

Of all the skill sets that support the shift from a traditional management role to a more collaborative approach, none is more relevant than that of the role of the facilitator. The beliefs, behaviors, and practices of facilitation are precisely what all leaders need to acquire and put into action. In Facilitating to Lead! renowned facilitation expert Ingrid Bens applies her proven concepts of facilitation to the leadership role and demonstrates that facilitation is an effective work style, not merely a meeting technique. Throughout the book, Bens outlines the organizational and personal benefits of facilitative leadership and includes useful checklists to help leaders determine the situations when facilitative leadership is most appropriate to apply. Because empowerment is a core issue in the implementation of facilitative leadership, the book presents a four-level model that reframes empowerment from a vague concept to a concrete structuring tool.

"That was an awful meeting. What a waste of my time!" How often have you had this same thought? Why do we tolerate bad meetings? Consider the last meeting you attended. How many of these pitfalls were evident? - Did not start on time. - Missing key people. - Lacked a clear purpose. - No agenda. - Few people engaged. - One or two people dominated. - Discussion wandered, repeatedly. - Key issues were not addressed. - No decisions made. - No follow-up actions. - The meeting was not worth the time. Have we lowered the bar so far that bad meetings have become the norm? Enough is enough. It is time to ignite a meetings revolution. How Do You Transform a Bad Meeting Culture? In The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, Michael Wilkinson provides leaders with a step-by-step guide for igniting a meetings revolution. The result: a complete culture transformation in which bad meetings become unacceptable! This book supplies a step-by-step guide for igniting and sustaining a meetings revolution which, if successful, will permanently change the way meetings are run in an organization. In his book, Wilkinson recommends that executives empower their people with a set of meeting rights. He then provides a comprehensive meetings transformation program that equips meeting leaders and meeting participants with tools for masterful meetings. What this Book Contains - 10 Meeting Rights to empower every participant. - 10 steps to transform your meeting culture. - 15 meeting problems and how to address them. - 4 strategies for eliminating unneeded meetings. - 6 tips for getting meetings started on time. - 3 robust tools for resolving disagreements. - 4 techniques for rescuing poorly run meetings. - 14 strategies for maximizing virtual meetings. - 6 agendas to use to gain the results you want. - 4 checklists for executing Masterful Meetings. - And much more. Give Yourself a Gift. Give a copy of this book to everyone whose meetings you attend: a gift that truly keeps on giving!

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

What takes place in the head and heart of an effective facilitative leader? How do they find the inner resources to draw upon? What is the source of their powerful effect on people and situations? The 9 Disciplines of a Facilitator examines these questions and explores the self-mastery it takes to become a great facilitator. Written by Jon and Maureen Jenkins, two of the long-term members of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), this much-needed resource explains that facilitation is more than a process or a set of techniques for managing groups—facilitation is its own profession with its own set of disciplines that help define the facilitator's role. Throughout the book the authors detail the nine personal disciplines of effective facilitators: Detachment, Engagement, Focus, Awareness, Action, Presence, Interior Council, Intentionality, and a Sense of Wonder.

When it was published in 1994, Roger Schwarz's The SkilledFacilitator earned widespread critical acclaim and became alandmark in the field. The book is a classic work for consultants,facilitators, managers, leaders, trainers, and coaches--anyonewhose role is to facilitate and guide groups toward realizing theircreative and problem-solving potential. This thoroughly revisededition provides the essential materials for anyone that workswithin the field of facilitation and includes simple but effectiveground rules for group interaction. Filled with illustrativeexamples, the book contains proven techniques for starting meetingson the right foot and ending them positively and decisively. Thisimportant resource also offers practical methods for handlingemotions when they arise in a group and offers a diagnosticapproach for identifying and solving problems that can underminethe group process.