Functional group training in consensus
From: Rob Sandelin (floriferousmsn.com)
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 10:32:01 -0600 (MDT)
Sharon asked in the Consensus and Majority vote thread: What kind of
training do they do? Is there a handbook they use?

Training varies but often looks like this: Core training is done for all
members in the decision process, facilitators get special training. Most of
the groups I have worked with have their own process handbooks which they
keep to bring  new decision makers  up to speed and to ground each other.

As many of you know, I am a big fan of facilitation teams, having seen that
people who are into it and good at it, do much better at facilitation than
those who really don't do the homework. A great facilitation group makes all
the difference in a well functioning process and is a common denominator in
my own (subjective) evaluation of groups I have seen function very well.

There are some good resources for training manuals, but all of them lack
parts and so you need several to get all the parts. What I recommend  is
training facilitation skills as a yearly budget expense, and then send your
fac. team annually for skills improvement. Tree and Laird are good community
based resources for this, there are tons of other business based workshops
which can have some good nuggets, especially the, How to get along with
difficult people, sort of stuff.

My one personal favorite facilitator book is: The skilled facilitator, by
Roger Swartz, he has some good examples of intervention, which I think is
the most under utilized and important facilitation skill for communities.

Rob Sandelin, former facilitator trainer, now naturalist teacher/writer
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