Why use an independent facilitator
By Damien Edmonds – 3 minute read.
Professional facilitation expertise is beneficial in defining strategy, solving organisational problems and identifying opportunities. Here are six good reasons to hire Edmonds Facilitation:
1. Ability to fully participate: Adding external facilitation support for workshops means leaders can be fully engaged alongside participants in discussions. It’s impossible to contribute fully whilst also guiding discussion to a tight agenda, maintaining engagement and documenting outputs. We encourage the participation of all, while managing the tendency for some members of the group to dominate the conversation.
2. Impartiality: As independent professional facilitators, we bring a neutral approach that helps to break through barriers that are causing issues and friction. Dynamic discussions can produce a lot of information and ideas. Without taking sides, we can summarise the various statements in ways that respect all the different voices and help you and your team identify areas of agreement and unresolved issues.
3. Experience: We come with a structured methodology and an extensive toolkit of tried and tested creative facilitation techniques honed over many years. We have a clear passion for communication and always bring creative energy and thinking to our sessions. This means we’re ready to shake things up and encourage new perspectives and inject energy if needed.
4. Broader market perspective: As experienced marketing and sales professionals with knowledge across a range of industries, we bring external insights and challenge internal thinking. We are also skilled at honing-in on the big issues and passion points whilst also balancing the big picture. We add value by keeping everyone on track, safeguarding workshop focus and outputs for a real difference to organisational outcomes.
5. Efficient use of time and money: Bringing people together, whether face-to-face or for a virtual meeting, has a real cost. Time wasted in unproductive meetings saps morale and prevents participants from fulfilling their other responsibilities. As professional facilitators, we the group accomplish more in less time, eliminating the need for multiple meetings, and generating forward momentum on the issues under discussion.
6. Inspire and engage: We focus on ensuring participants’ voices are heard, helping to frame alignment behind workshop outcomes. Through careful workshop design with a range of activities, we ensure team members can add their respective value, whilst feeling engaged and invested in outputs. In our facilitation exercises we seek to enable and encourage the group to generate previously unconsidered, creative solutions that can resolve apparent differences.
