Facilitation Stance

New Name: Advanced Facilitation Workshop is now Making Behavioral Change Happen!

If you landed here looking for information about Advanced Facilitation and learning facilitation skills, you’ve come to the right place. Our Advanced facilitation skills course does have a NEW name. Advanced Facilitation Workshop is now Making Behavioral Change Happen!

Why we’ve made that change, is what this article is all about.

If you are an agile coach, professional coach, facilitator, workshop group leader, or change management professional, and in need of advanced facilitation skills, let’s make behavioral change happen, together.

Why the Advanced Facilitation Workshop Has a New Name!

The number one reason we’ve changed the name of this workshop is that while this work of becoming more fluent in communication is an advanced facilitation skill – it’s actually much more than just facilitating!

It’s the core of how we believe that behavioral change happens.

The technology that Structural Dynamics creates for everyone allows individuals, teams, and organizations to be able to navigate the discourse of interpersonal communication and change the nature of the outcome.

What Is Behavioral Change?

Behavioral change refers to behavior change, the process of modifying or altering an individual’s actions, habits, or patterns of behavior.

It involves making intentional adjustments to one’s current behavior, to achieve a desired outcome or improve overall well-being.

Behavior change can occur in various areas and stages of life, including personal habits, health behaviors, relationships, work performance, and more.

Behavioral Chance as a Conscious Effort

Behavioral change typically involves a conscious effort to replace existing behaviors with new ones that align with specific goals or values. It requires self-awareness, understanding, motivation, and a willingness to adopt new habits or discard old ones.

The process of behavior change can be challenging, as individuals may need to overcome obstacles, resist temptation, and persistently practice new behaviors until they become ingrained.

Facilitation of Behavioral Change

There are different approaches to facilitating behavior change. Some common strategies include setting specific and achievable goals, creating action plans, monitoring progress, seeking support from others, using rewards and incentives, and employing techniques like positive reinforcement.

We at TeamCatapult have previously facilitated behavioral change for participants in our Advanced Facilitation workshop and will continue to prepare them to do so in our Making Behavioral Change Happen workshop moving forward.

The Impact of Behavioral Change on Your Personal Life

Behavior change can have significant impacts on various aspects of life, including physical and mental health, productivity, relationships, and overall quality of life. It can lead to positive outcomes such as improved well-being, increased self-confidence, enhanced self-control, and the development of healthier habits.

The Impact of Behavioral Change on Your Leadership Skills

Behavioral change can have a profound impact on your leadership skills. As a leader, your behavior sets the tone for the entire team or organization, and making intentional small changes in your behavior can positively influence and affect those you lead.

Behavioral change can enhance your leadership skills and teams by improving self-awareness, communication, emotional intelligence, cognitive adaptability, and resilience.

By modeling these behaviors, you can inspire and motivate your team to embrace personal growth and skill development, ultimately creating a more effective and cohesive work environment.

How Behavior Change Enhances Your Leadership Skills

Why would you want to change your behavior? How will it help you in your current career?

Self-awareness: Engaging in behavioral change requires a deep level of self-awareness. By actively examining your own behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses, you can gain a better understanding of how you impact others as a leader. This self-awareness allows you to make adjustments that align with your leadership style and values.
Role modeling: Leaders who demonstrate a commitment to personal growth and improvement through behavioral change serve as powerful role models for their team members and influence group dynamics. When you actively work on changing behaviors that may hinder your effectiveness as a leader, it inspires others to do the same and fosters a culture of continuous learning and development.
Communication and influence: Behavioral change often involves improving communication skills. As a leader, effective communication and influence are vital. By refining your communication style, actively listening, and adapting your approach to different individuals, you can create a more inclusive and collaborative environment where people feel heard and valued.
Emotional intelligence: Behavioral change often involves developing emotional intelligence, which is the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions and understand the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence is closely tied to effective leadership, as it enables you to empathize with others, resolve conflicts, and build strong relationships. By enhancing your emotional intelligence through behavioral change, you can become a more empathetic and emotionally intelligent leader.
Adaptability and resilience: Behavioral change requires a willingness to adapt and embrace new ways of thinking and doing things. These qualities are highly valuable for leaders in today’s rapidly changing and complex work environments. By actively seeking opportunities for growth and being open to change, you can demonstrate adaptability and resilience to your team, encouraging them to do the same.

Why Is Behavioral Change Difficult?

Behavioral change is difficult due to various factors.

One challenge is the presence of deeply ingrained habits that have become automatic and require minimal conscious effort. Changing these well-established patterns of behavior demands significant effort, willpower, focus, and persistence.

Humans tend to find comfort in familiar routines and behaviors, resisting change and preferring to stay within their comfort zones. This resistance can make it difficult to embrace and sustain behavioral change.

Another hurdle is the lack of awareness regarding the behaviors that need to be changed or their negative consequences and impact on ourselves and others. Developing self-awareness and recognizing the need for change is a crucial initial step.

Overcoming barriers and obstacles, both external and internal, is of course also a part of the challenge. These barriers can include environmental influences, social pressures, self-doubt, fear of failure, and lack of motivation and energy.

Sustaining change over time presents another difficulty, as it requires consistent effort, ongoing motivation, confidence, and resilience to stay motivated in the face of setbacks.

Finally, the complex nature of human behavior, influenced by multiple factors, adds to the complexity of behavioral change.

Despite these challenges, behavioral change is possible with the right mindset, tools, strategies, and support, combining self-reflection, goal setting, planning taking action, accountability, and perseverance to achieve lasting change.

How Does Structural Dynamics Fit In With Advanced Facilitation?

Structural Dynamics fits in with Advanced Facilitation by providing a framework and technology that supports effective communication and facilitates positive change.

Advanced facilitation involves using sophisticated techniques and approaches to guide groups or individuals toward achieving their goals and making desired changes in behavior.

Structural Dynamics technology enables individuals, teams, and organizations to navigate the dynamics of interpersonal communication more effectively. It provides insights into the underlying patterns and structures that influence communication and relationships.

By understanding these dynamics, facilitators, and participants can identify areas for improvement and implement strategies to enhance communication and collaboration.

David Kantor 4 Player Model of Communication

The David Kantor 4 Player Model of Communication is a framework that describes the different roles or “players” people can assume in a communication process.

It categorizes communication behaviors into four distinct roles: Mover, Follower, Opposer, and Bystander.

Each role represents a different style of communication and contributes to the overall dynamics and effectiveness of the communication interaction.

Through the use of Structural Dynamics, advanced facilitators can assess and modify the nature of the outcome in a facilitation session. They can identify and address communication barriers, power imbalances, conflicting agendas, or any other factors that may hinder productive dialogue.

This model helps facilitators create a safe and inclusive environment where participants can openly express their perspectives, engage in meaningful and relevant discussions, and collectively work towards desired outcomes.

Navigating Complex Group Dynamics With Structural Dynamics

By leveraging the insights and tools provided by Structural Dynamics, advanced facilitators can navigate complex group dynamics, manage conflicts, facilitate consensus-building, and foster collaboration.

This model serves as a valuable resource in designing and delivering facilitation processes that are tailored to the specific needs and objectives of the individuals, teams, or organizations involved.

Structural Dynamics contributes to advanced facilitation by equipping facilitators with the knowledge and tools to effectively analyze, understand, and influence the dynamics of interpersonal and group communication.

It supports facilitators in creating an environment conducive to positive change, enabling individuals and groups to achieve their desired outcomes more efficiently and collaboratively.

What about Advanced Facilitation Skills Training?

Don’t worry, in the Making Behavioral Change Happen workshop, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice effective facilitation and learn additional facilitation skills.

The advanced facilitation skills course has not gone away, it has changed names for clarity purposes.

For those facilitators who are in charge of teams, the new Making Behavioral Change Happen workshop is the perfect place to uplevel facilitation skills including virtual facilitation, identify behavior change and practice new leadership skills.

If you are a professional facilitator looking for new skills, you are in the right spot!

About the Making Behavioral Change Happen Workshop

Making Behavioral Change Happen is about increasing your self-awareness so you can read the room, name the hidden group dynamics beneath the surface, and effectively help groups modify their behaviors to achieve the best possible outcomes.

This multi-day program of advanced training by TeamCatapult faculty will take you on a personal journey to learning how to deepen your own knowledge and leadership practice as a facilitator, coach, or team leader.

Self-Mastery and Reading the Room

Transform the way you coach. Transform the way you lead. For those of you working with teams, or even coaching teams, this workshop will help you become more aware and adept at identifying communication challenges in groups and teams so you can help them unlock the wisdom that resides within.

Takeaways from the Making Behavioral Change Happen Workshop

Here is what we cover in the Making Behavioral Change Happen Workshop.

Seeing and working with conflict
How to recognize your impact on others
How to diagnose and change stuck dynamics
Giving teams a language for skillfully holding tough conversations
Working with group behavior using an implicit mental model and an explicit model for intervention
Understanding the bMaps Behavioral Assessment Tool with Structural Dynamics and how to apply it in day-to-day interactions
Recognizing the content, style, and structure of a group’s behavior

Kickstart Your Leadership Career Right Now!

Everything you need to move the dial forward in your leadership career is in this workshop. We encourage you to reach out to our team if you have questions about this workshop.

If you are ready to kickstart your leadership career with new communication skills, advanced facilitation skills, and the ability to read the room, sign up!

3 Things Needed to Lead Successful Virtual Meetings for a Hybrid Team

It’s Nearly 2023. Is Your Team Hybrid?

At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, most in-person teams went remote, forced to go this route due to worldwide quarantine orders. In the USA that meant that nearly all of our workforce stayed home, and learned to navigate working remotely.

It’s safe to say that by 2021, most of us figured out how to lead virtual meetings for fully remote teams. Now that we are headed into 2023, what does your team look like?

There are companies who are requiring employees to return to the office.
Others have fully embraced all things remote and don’t want anyone back in the office.
Then there are those who have found a balance; creating a hybrid workspace that allows employees to divide their time between working in the office and working from home.

Team Meetings for Hybrid Teams

What do team meetings for hybrid teams look like.

It can be messy!

While virtual meetings for hybrid teams by design take place… well, virtually, it doesn’t mean that everyone likes these types of meetings or gets the most out of them.

Those in the office might be resentful of having to sit in front of a computer and join a Zoom video call. At the same time, those working remotely can suffer from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) of what’s going on in the office – and even feel excluded or isolated.

The 3 Things Needed to Lead Successful Virtual Meetings for a Hybrid Team

If you are the facilitator and in charge of a hybrid team, here are 3 ways to move forward! Remember, that we’ve all had to figure this out and it might take some time to get it right. The more you practice and the sooner you get familiar with these types of meetings, the smoother these meetings will run.

1 Determine the purpose of the meeting.

Ask yourself these questions AND take the time to answer them honestly.

Why are you meeting?
What’s the desired outcome?
What will be accomplished at the end?

2 Decide if it’s a meeting or an email.

Many of the meetings that occur today are one way monologues where people show up to receive a download of information. If your purpose is to ‘understand’ or ‘be aware of’ then write an email, or record a video that people can watch . There is no need to gather everyone to listen to one or two people in a one-way conversation.

If your meeting is about buy-in, new ideas, decision-making, collaboration, co-creation, and gathering input on a decision then have a meeting, and have a facilitator.

3 Design the meeting to match the desired outcomes.

People will support what they help to create. If you truly want participation then create a meeting design that supports hearing all voices.

This is what that looks like:

Create a question based agenda
Send it out ahead of time

These 3 ways help you get your team to a meeting. Now, to get them engaged and active, read these next 7 tips to increase engagement.

7 Ways to Increase Engagement During a Virtual Meeting for a Hybrid Team

The following tips can be shared with your team and become standard practice for every Zoom video team call.

Expectation should be set that from no matter where you join, from the office or remote, these standards are firm.

Ensure high-quality video resolution
Hide your self-view
Ask people to refrain from using gifs or really detailed graphics in their background
Look at the camera
Check-In with everyone who joins the call
Invite people to a virtual collaboration tool like Mural or Miro and ask them to participate
Agree to unmute

Virtual Meeting Resources for Facilitators

If you need help, here are additional resources!

5 great resources to get started as a facilitator

Virtual meetings

Team meetings

Virtual training

Last but not least, we offer a variety of virtual workshops for those on their journey to facilitation mastery.

They are offered throughout the year, please take a look at the workshop calendar to find your preferred workshop and dates.

Facilitation workshops offered include:

Agile Team Facilitation

Advanced Facilitation

Virtual Facilitation Masterclass

5 Great Resources to Get You Started as a Facilitator

The definition for the word facilitation comes up as “the action of facilitating something.”

To understand what it means to “facilitate” we need to go to this definition: :make (an action or process) easy or easier.”

A facilitator makes the process of team members working together, meeting together and making decisions together easier by being a communication guide and leader.

Examples where facilitators can guide include:

Virtual meetings
In-person meeting
Hybrid meetings
In-person training
Virtual training
Project planning
Conflict Resolution
Project Management

Facilitation is a great, often first step in someone’s leadership journey.

If you are ready to explore facilitation as a skill you want to master, or improve upon, read on as we are sharing five resources if you wish to become a skilled facilitator.

1. The Art & Science of Facilitation

For anyone ready to lead with self-awareness and group insight, this book is designed to help you navigate group dynamics so that your team can work more efficiently and effectively in a truly collaborative environment.

Published in 2021, this book is your guide to moving your team further forward using the groundbreaking Five Guiding Principles of the Facilitation Stance. Whether you are new to the concept of facilitation or have experience leading meetings, this book is for you!

You can learn more about this book or order a signed copy today!

2. Facilitation Planning Toolkit

For those facilitators who want to uplevel their planning skills, TeamCatapult has put together The Facilitation Planning Toolkit, a resource to help plan out meetings.

Included templates:

The Planning Canvas
The Design Canvas for Meeting Agenda
The Agenda Item Design Canvas
The Facilitator’s Guide

Having the toolkit from this free download is a great adjunct to the mindset we focus upon in all our workshops .

3. TeamCatapult Website and Blog

Another great resource we want to share with you, is our website and blog.

You may have noticed that we recently updated our website.

As a tool for you, as a guide for your leadership journey, we developed the Journey pages where, based on your role, and your level of competency, you’ll have quick access to the resources that will support your journey…or fuel a refresher that we often need.

Choose from Facilitator/Scrum Master, Agile Coaches, or Leaders/Executive paths and we drill down to 3 levels:

Getting Started
Developing
Mastering

In addition, we have a robust collection of facilitation blogs we want to draw your attention to:

4. Facilitator Self Assessment

Next, we invite you to take the Facilitation Skills Self-Assessment!

Are you ready to support your team with powerful and effective facilitation skills?

Find out with the Art & Science of Facilitation Skills Self-Assessment – and start your journey to mastery today.

Start here.

5. Facilitation Workshops

Last but not least, we offer a variety of virtual workshops for those on their journey to facilitation mastery.

They are offered throughout the year, please take a look at the workshop calendar to find your preferred workshop and dates.

Facilitation workshop offered include:

Agile Team Facilitation

Advanced Facilitation

Virtual Facilitation Masterclass

Your Leadership Journey Starts with Facilitation!

We invite you to learn more about facilitation by checking out any of the resources mentioned above.

We wish you all the best on your journey to becoming a master facilitator, feel free to contact us with any questions you might have about any of the resources!

How to Lead Engaging and Productive Meetings (Part 2)

..with purpose, clarity and confidence so that Agile will work for you and your team.

In part 1 of this series, I gave you scenarios on what successful facilitation looks like, and what common mistakes people make when first facilitating.

Agile ceremonies seem simple enough, but leading them w/o any training in facilitation can get you into deep water with a team.

The team will start to distrust you or more likely, the agile processes. Which ultimately leads to resistance of ‘agile’.

Therefore, I’d like to take you through a 3 step process to lead engaging and productive meetings.

How to Lead with Purpose, Clarity and Confidence

1 The Mindset and Practice of Being Neutral

Maintaining neutrality is 1 of 5 cornerstones of our agile facilitation stance that we cover in our programs.

2. The Key Steps of Planning and Designing

Collaborative meetings start before you ever get in the room – in person or remote! Learn the invaluable first two steps of our five step Facilitation process, so you can be more intentional and deliberate about your meeting design.

3. Decide How to Decide

It’s just what it sounds like. In the room, be transparent about the decision process.

Don’t Participate, Facilitate!

Let’s start with one of the most common mistakes I see facilitators make. Participating rather than facilitating!

Facilitation is both an art and a science. Yes, you need a process to help guide you in planning and design. And tools in your back pocket to help you navigate different stages of collaboration.

But most importantly you need first to work on your own mindset and beliefs about leadership and leading others.

In our complete Facilitation course, we start with the mindset and beliefs about leading and facilitating, because if you can identify where your mindset might be getting in your way of your work with groups, then that’s the first thing to work on.

We call this the Facilitation Stance – the mindset and beliefs of agile team facilitators.

Interested in Reading and Learning More About Facilitation?

In “The Art & Science of Facilitation”, I dive deep into all 5 cornerstones of facilitation.

The cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance include:

Click the links of each cornerstone to learn more and visit the book’s website!

1 The Cornerstone of Maintain Neutrality

The most common mistake I see is that people read these cornerstones and intellectually think – “I get this”! The challenge is that the nuances of implementing this are much more difficult. Some of these cornerstones are so nuanced in the moment, that they don’t feel like that big of a deal, when in reality these small choices you are making in the moment can be derailing your whole collaboration experience.

How To Practice Neutrality

Focus on the process not the content
- Facilitate don’t Participate!

As the facilitator you own the process – the agenda, the room setup or virtual space configuration, how you’re going to get the group from point A to point B. That’s plenty to be focused on! Stay out of the content. Let the team own the work and what’s getting generated. No one wants to be invited to a meeting and asked for their opinion only to be told they got it all wrong or it’s not what you wanted.

Define the role of facilitation up front with the team.

Not everyone knows what it means to facilitate. AND how the job of the facilitator is to help the group achieve the desired outcomes. Not contribute to creating the outcomes.

Explain the value of being neutral and holding process authority while the team will hold content authority
Ask permission from the team to facilitate – I’m going to try something different today. As long as we reach our desired outcome, are you willing to try this? By asking for permission, the power of facilitation is granted to you from the team.

Facilitators Need To Stay Out of Content

As a general guideline you need to stay out of content! I always say, if this is something that you know about and you believe you have a perspective that might help the group right now, and continuing to remain silent feels inauthentic, then you may step aside from your facilitation role for a moment and contribute content or offer your perspective.

Find a way to do so that is clear to both you and your team. You might say “I’m going to step out of facilitation for a minute” say what you need to say, then get back into the role. Do not ‘hang out there’ for the rest of the meeting.

Here’s why clarity on the role is so important. Trust is needed within the team and between the facilitator and the team. They need to trust that when you say you’re going to help THEM get those objectives accomplished that you mean it. Not that you’ll help them until you believe you have a better way at which point you will shut them down, offer your own opinion, and then ask them if they agree with you.

2 Get Input During Planning

Your stance is one component of skillful facilitation. But what do you do when you find yourself facing resistance to even coming to a meeting or participating?

There can be lots of reasons why people resist meetings, but here is one of the first places I look when people tell me that they are getting resistance to attending an agile meeting – Stand-up, Retrospective or any of the planning meetings.

Don’t make These Mistakes During Planning

Not having a clearly designed purpose and agenda before the meeting starts.
Cutting short the planning and design phase or not planning at all before the meeting.

These mistakes result in meetings that people don’t know why they are there, or how they are supposed to contribute. The conversation goes in circles, one or two people dominate the conversation. The meeting ends without a clear decision or action item and overall participants feel like it was a waste of time.

We are all stingy with our time. Many of us spend more than half our time in meetings each week.

Look at this data:

We surveyed 182 senior managers in a range of industries:

65% said meetings keep them from completing their own work.
71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient.
64% said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking.
62%said meetings miss opportunities to bring the team closer together.

~ HBR August 2017 ‘Stop the Meeting Madness’

That’s incredible! Meetings are expensive and worth it – if done well. But look at the impact if they are not done well.

What Participants Want From Meetings

They want meetings to be…

Relevant
Valuable
Purpose driven
Outcome oriented
Timeboxed
Clear on roles
Engaging
Collaborative

How do you solve this problem then? You start working on all those characteristics before you get in the room.

If you wait until you’re in the room to start, you’re too late!

If your team finds Retrospectives a waste of time and does not want to participate, then find out why. There is likely a really good reason. Engage them in the planning and design for the meeting and Listen to what they have to say.

At TeamCatapult, we use a five phase model for Facilitation called The Facilitation Process.

Two of the most important, yet often skipped or minimized steps in this process is Planning and Design. Planning and Designing happen before the meeting starts, Conduct is what happens in the room. Then Document and Evaluate and Adapt take place after the meeting.

Within Planning there are several very important scope and boundary activities going on but the one I want to highlight today is Identify the Participants and Involve the Participants!

Just like you would not build a custom home for someone without talking to them first. Don’t design a custom meeting without knowing first what people hope to get out of the meeting.

3 Deciding How To Decide

Do you remember the movie with Bill Murray called Ground Hog Day, where he kept waking up each day and having the same day all over again?

If you make decisions in your meetings only to revisit them the next you get together, that’s a clear sign that your decision making process is missing it’s “stickiness” and your decisions are not durable, meaning they don’t last much beyond the meeting

Another sign is lack of energy or follow-through on implementing the decision.

This will be that action item or decision that was made and somehow the progress on it just drags out and you might be perplexed about why it’s taking so long.

A third sign of lack of durability is watching how engaged or not participants are in the decision making process itself. When people use language like ‘It’s fine’ or “yes, let’s just move on’ or ‘just tell me what you want me to do’. These are signs that something might be missing.

Decide BEFORE the Meeting!

Meeting with your meeting sponsor during planning and talk with this person about these three questions:

What is in the team’s scope of authority?
How complex is this decision?
What are you seeking? Consensu, Agreement or Majority Rules?

The greater the complexity the greater the need for consensus. In the room with the team – be transparent about the decision process.

How Will You Grow Your Facilitation and Team Coaching Skills?

Will you keep ‘winging it’ or make a deeper commitment to yourself? What do you want to be known for? How will you make a lasting difference in your team? One that outlasts your time with them? One that lives on with them regardless if you are there or not? Which way will you choose?

You can spend a bunch of time attending free meetups, webinars and watching others as part of self -study. You might find a mentor who can give you some feedback.

All of which can be good strategies. But done alone don’t always provide you the solid foundation for really mastering the craft of facilitation.

Join us for a workshop or our 9 month cohort program.

We need leaders, scrum masters, agile coaches who know how to skillfully connect others and lead collaboration!

If you’re charged with leading change in your organization – at any level – I want to leave you with this thought. Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Advantage said “There is no greater way to have a fundamental impact on an organization than by changing the way it does meetings.”

I believe that we can change cultures by starting to change the way people meet. You don’t have to change your team, or your boss, or your HR department. You just need to shift your mindset and change the way you lead your meetings.

Be the one who leads meetings that people will cancel other meetings in order to attend yours.

That’s how we start to change cultures.

How Advanced Facilitators Gain Self-Mastery and Can Read Group Dynamics

Are You Ready To Become an Advanced Facilitator?

In my book The Art and Science of Facilitation, I explain the five cornerstones of the Agile team Facilitation Stance.

The cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance include:

These aforementioned cornerstones are important for all facilitators, but especially helpful for those at the beginning of their facilitation journey.

The links above will guide you through several resources to get you started. You might also need some tools – we have a wonderful free Facilitation Planning Toolkit for you!

Once you have a clear understanding of these principles, what’s the next step?

Next Step: Advanced Facilitation

Advanced Facilitation is about increasing your self-awareness so you can read the room, name the hidden dynamics beneath the surface, and effectively help groups modify their behaviors to achieve the best possible outcomes.

Is this you?

☆ You might be ready for a more personal journey to deepen your skills as a facilitator, agile coach, or leader of collaboration.

☆ You might be ready to build your own capacity to lead and work collaboratively in order to help others do the same.

Self-awareness and the ability to confidently read the group are key characteristics of leadership range. Are you ready to further develop your leadership skills?

About Gaining Self-Mastery

“Self-mastery is being in control of the internal thought processes that guide your emotions, habits, and behaviors.”

~ Thai Nguyen

That means turning within yourself.

Practicing mindfulness and self-awareness along with journaling and auditing yourself can help you gain self-mastery. Sometimes self-mastery includes knowing when to hit the “pause” button to self-assess.

About Reading Group Dynamics

How we communicate with one another either propels a group forward or holds it back.

Models and frameworks for communication, behavior and group dynamics help us make sense of what’s happening in the room and allow us to focus on something other than our own ego or personal agenda.

Having a deep understanding of the theory and science behind group dynamics will also inform how you guide the meeting.

Before you enter a room, have a model or models that provide you with a basis for understanding how groups and teams interact and perform.

The core model we at TeamCatapult use is Structural Dynamics, encompassing Daivd Kantor’s theory of face-to-face communication. Because they are structurally based, Structural Dynamics are visible in the room and, with practice, you will be able to see the structure of the interactions of the group!

Advanced Facilitation – The Workshop

In the TeamCatapult Advanced Facilitation Workshop, we cover:

Understand what it means to ‘read the room‘ and reveal the hidden dynamics
How to recognize your impact on others
Seeing and working with conflict; diagnose and change stuck dynamics
Giving teams a language for skillfully holding tough conversations
The Kantor Behavioral Baseline Profile and Structural Dynamics
Understanding your Kantor Baseline Behavioral Profile and how to apply it in day-to-day interactions
Working with group behavior using an implicit mental model and an explicit model for intervention
Recognizing the content, style, and structure of a group’s behavior

Our multi-day advanced training will take you on a personal journey to deepen your leadership practice as facilitator, coach, or team leader.

Become adept at identifying and overcoming communication challenges

Use real-world experience to work with group dynamics at a much deeper level
Uncover your own behavioral model for working with difficult dynamics
Learn to help teams modify their behavior for enhanced dialogue and collaborative performance
Discover how to name structural patterns and make intentional choices to change them
Identify the behaviors that challenge you most as a facilitator in order to better serve your team

Unlock The Wisdom Within!

For those with previous facilitation training and demonstrable knowledge of basic facilitation skills, Advanced Facilitation will help you become more adept at identifying communication challenges in groups so you can help them unlock the wisdom that resides within.