Facilitator’s and Trainer’s Toolkit

Every day, every person experiences changes that impact how we live our lives. Some changes we see as helping us, others we see as hindering us. These shifts happen in our home life, our work life, and everywhere in between.

Master frameworks, techniques, and tools for conducting meetings, leading sessions and workshops, and transferring knowledge through education and training. In addition to focusing on proven methods, this book contains many new and innovative ideas developed through decades of the author’s experience.

There are 12 chapters:

• Chapter 1, Facilitation Framework, classifies all facilitation types into four generic categories: Strategies and Solutions, Programs and Processes, Learning and Development, and Cooperation and Collaboration.
• Chapter 2, Value Proposition, leverages the Career Steps Framework to prove the return on investment of facilitation skills and competency.
• Chapter 3, Facilitation Process, explains each phase of the facilitation process: Contract, Prepare, During Session, Conclude, and Evaluate.
• Chapter 4, Facilitation Leadership, explores Napoleon Hills’ eleven factors of leadership, along with values, ethics, and competencies established by the International Association of Facilitators.
• Chapter 5, Engagers and Energizers, reveals the art and science of educating and transferring learning to adults and optimizing the engagement of session participants using Dr. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.
• Chapter 6, Tools, introduces the foundational technique of brainstorming and shows how to use 35 handy facilitation tools for a variety of situations including problem solving, group dynamics, and storytelling.
• Chapter 7, Workshop Environment, outlines facilitation-friendly principles followed by guidance on room set up, various seating patterns, equipment, food, and supplies.
• Chapter 8, Virtual Facilitation, provides suitable alternatives to face-to-face facilitation using practical techniques in four key areas: Engagement, Relationship, Communication, and Technology.
• Chapter 9, Cross-Cultural Facilitation, introduces proven techniques for how to facilitate learning transfer and effective collaboration across cultures through the application of Dr. Geert Hofsgtede’s dimensions of cross-cultural communication.
• Chapter 10, Visual Facilitation, introduces the power of Visuals and Graphics Recording as a tool for effective collaboration and communication in organizational settings.
• Chapter 11, Self-Development, provides guidelines on how to develop your facilitation competency and track your progress. This chapter concludes with the author’s own journey on becoming an accomplished facilitator.
• Chapter 12, Tools Library, outlines a step-by-step approach along with templates and examples where each of the 35 tools from Chapter 6 can be successfully leveraged.

The book concludes with a section on facilitator and trainer resources.

Good facilitation is often the difference between a meeting that delivers outputs and actions, and one that delivers breakthrough solutions and results. Artie Mahal, who is a master facilitator and trainer, has delivered an easy to read book that describes the science and art of effective facilitation. He offers insights, techniques, tools, and knowledge that anyone can use to improve their facilitation and training skills.
Paul Marabella
Vice President & Chief Information Officer
K. Hovnanian Companies, LLC
USA

In this book Artie has brought together a great collection of tools, techniques and advice that provides a sound basis for anyone looking to become a more engaging and effective facilitator.
Phil Short
IT Director, Speaker, Business Process Practitioner
Canada

Artie Mahal used his wealth of experience in process management to create an easy to read book and a process to follow for any facilitator and trainer. The book contains valuable tools, templates, checklists, methodology, and a framework. He created a great framework structure for any facilitated session to deal with various business issues such as strategies, processes, projects, and team cooperation and collaboration.
Bassam A. AlKharashi
Director of Business Innovation Services, ES Consulting
Saudi Arabia

Artie Mahal has taken a difficult and often misunderstood skill and made it easy to learn for the professional and novice alike. As a skilled facilitator for the past twenty-five years, this book has helped me “sharpen the saw” with new tools and concepts to help tackle any business challenge. For the novice facilitator, this book is an excellent guide as Mr. Mahal provides in-depth background and context for each facilitation concept before diving in with tools, tips, and techniques to master that concept.
Jeffrey Diton
BPTrends Certified BPM Professional, Business Process Center of Excellence Director
USA

Knowledge in any form aims to bring transformation. Mr. Mahal has articulated his own experience and training skills in form of this book as an endeavor to share his expertise and bring transformation in many lives. Today, the world is full of challenges and I would say that the challenges are like strangers’ appearing on the floor all of sudden. You need to be equipped with all tools and techniques to face such exigencies. For this, either you have to be trained or you must know how to train others to achieve desired goal. This text caters to both requirements. The flow of text is tremendously designed from Framework to proposition, process, Leadership, Engaging, Techniques of training and environment. Each part of the book is thoroughly shaped up and presented in real terms.
Dr. Sandhir Sharma
Dean, Chitkara Business School, Chitkara University
India

Artie Mahal has kindly given the blueprint on how to “wow” your audience every time they attend a session. The book in essence lays out practical processes facilitators can follow to ensure learning is happening, collaboration is taking place and your learners will be engaged! After reading this book, you will never facilitate a workshop, training session or meeting ever the same again.
Faisal Usta
Senior Account Executive in Learning and Development.
USA

Sooner or later you will have to facilitate. You have two options to get or improve facilitation competence: a) the long and painful trial and error way or b) the short and smart way, namely, using other experiences to prevent the errors, learn the shortcuts and avoid the pitfalls. This is a book for novice and even experienced facilitators. Read it. Use it. Learn from it. Take the short and smart way!
Alexandre Magno Vazquez Mello
BPM Experts, Partner and CEO
Brazil

People working together provide the foundation of human achievement. As we continue to move toward work that is more intellectual than physical, unlocking, compiling and harmonizing divergent views toward some common understanding is best accomplished through competent facilitation. This is not easy. In this groundbreaking book, Arjit Mahal moves far beyond a description of tools and techniques by providing a framework for the development of a career and, if desired a successful business in the growing area of facilitation.
Dr. Edward Peters
Chief Executive Officer, OpenConnect Systems Incorporated
USA

After Action Review

Master the After Action Review (AAR) to improve the outcome of any personal or professional activity.

From the beginning of time, humans have survived and thrived by learning from their experiences – both good and bad – and then tweaked their actions for better results next time. This continual quest for improvement stems from the difference between “what was” and “what could be.”

Even if we’re not consciously aware of it, we’re constantly seeking improvement in this very same way. If we turn to this analysis in a more intentional and methodical way, with an eye towards continuous improvement (CI), then next time around the outcomes can be more rewarding and desirable.

After Action Review (AAR) is a continuous improvement approach for reflecting on the work of a group or team. Learn how to apply both informal and formal AAR approaches. Along with a complete walkthrough, the book includes resources and materials you can use in your work right now. For example, the Group Insights template will help you distinguish “likes” from “wishes,” and the Planning Template will show you how to optimize the time spent during the AAR.

Chapter 1 covers basic facilitation skills needed to conduct an AAR including active listening, questioning, information gathering and analysis, public speaking, presenting, intervening, and managing group dynamics. Chapter 2 explains the AAR in detail including its value proposition and frameworks. Chapter 3 explores the informal AAR and Chapter 4 the formal AAR.

How Work Gets Done

How Work Gets Done will provide the business or IT professional with a practical
working knowledge of Business Process Management (BPM). This book is written in a conversational style that encourages you to read it from start to finish and master these objectives:

• Learn how to identify the goals and drivers important to your organization and
  how to align these with key performance measures
• Understand how business
  strategies, business policies, and operational procedures need to be connected
  within a Business Process Architecture
• Know the basic building blocks of any
  business process – Inputs, Outputs, Guides, and Enablers
• Learn how to create a
  BPM Center of Excellence in your organization
• Acquire the skills to establish
  a BPM methodology addressing Enterprise-level, Process-Level, and
  Implementation-Level priorities
• Learn how to build a Process Competency
  Framework encompassing all BPM stakeholders
• Obtain the knowledge to improve a
  process step-by-step with easy to use techniques and templates such as
  swimlanes and flowcharts

How Work Gets Done is a clear, concise, and well-navigated journey into the world of Business Processes and Business Process Management. From a practical introduction through advanced topics around methodology and competencies, it is suitable for business process newcomers and seasoned practitioners alike. It should be required reading at all levels of
every organization.
Eugene Fucetola – Global Application Messaging and
Integration, Operations Manager, Mars Information Services

If you have always wished you had a very practical friend who could sit down and talk you through just what is involved improving how work gets done at your organization, this is the book!
Paul Harmon – Executive Editor, Business Process Trends and Chief
Methodologist, BPTrends Associates

Artie Mahal has done something that was thought to be impossible – produce an easily readable book about business
process management. He paints pictures with words, offers many easy-to-grasp analogies, and stimulates with simplifying charts of complex concepts.
Leon
Fraser- Lecturer, Rutgers Business School

Chapter Listing:

• Chapter 1 – Enterprise Business Model
• Chapter 2 – Business Process Hierarchy
• Chapter 3 – Business Process Blueprint
• Chapter 4 – Anatomy of a Process
• Chapter 5 – Process Knowledge
• Chapter 6 – Business Models
• Chapter 7 – Process Configuration
• Chapter 8 – BPM Methodology
• Chapter 9 – BPM Competencies
• Chapter 10 – BPM Services
• Chapter 11 – Software Tools
• Chapter 12 – NewAge Foods Business Process Case Study