Advanced Facilitation Strategies

From Ingrid Bens, the author of the best-selling book Facilitating with Ease!, comes the next-step resource for project leaders, managers, community leaders, teachers, and other facilitators who want to hone their skills in order to deal with complex situations. Advanced Facilitation Strategies is a field guide that offers practical strategies and techniques for working with challenging everyday situations. These proven strategies and techniques are based on experience gleaned from hundreds of facilitated activities in organizations of all sizes and in all sectors.

Both novice and seasoned facilitators who have had firsthand experience designing and leading meetings will benefit from this reality-based playbook. Advanced Facilitation Strategies is filled with the information facilitators need to
* Become better at diagnosing facilitation assignments and creating effective process designs
* Broaden their repertoire of tools to make impromptu design changes whenever they are needed
* Learn to be more resilient and confident when dealing with dysfunctional situations and difficult people

This book includes techniques for dealing with dilemmas in facilitation, shows how to maintain neutrality in various situations, and reveals how to work effectively with group leaders. Bens outlines six common decision quandaries and offers tips on how advanced facilitators resolve them. She suggests various tools that can be used to intervene in group conflicts in order to put participants back on track. The author also outlines five steps for managing complex situations-assessment, design, contracting, implementation, and follow-up-and shows how to implement each step to maximize effectiveness.

Advanced Facilitation Strategies, with an accompanying CD-Rom, is a valuable toolkit filled with customizable instruments, charts, tools, checklists, references, and guides for all practitioners.

Praise for Ingrid Bens's Facilitating with Ease!

"Facilitating with Ease! is a gold mine of tools, tips, and wisdom, useful for both novices and experts. In a world where everyone must facilitate or fall behind, this guide will help you stay ahead!"
-Jim Gannon, senior vice president of human resources development, Royal Bank Financial Group

"Facilitating with Ease! is a must-have resource. I've been in OD for fifteen years and this is one of my 'go-to' books."
-Rob Mullins, senior training consultant, The Boeing Company

"Facilitating with Ease! is so thorough and so well organized, we've made it the centerpiece of our facilitator training program."
-Karen H. Wunderlin, president, Wunderlin Consulting