Coaching assignment Week 13: Facilitation

Chi Phuong NGUYEN

The Best Facilitation Experience that I could remember happened when we had a meeting for a team project last semester. The project required us to define the business model through several steps such as manufacturing, packaging, distribution, marketing and analyzing the alternative models. Because there was so much work and we didn’t know where to start from, we spent two hours talking about many things but we got into too much details and the meeting seemed to last forever without reaching any decision or have any result. We didn’t get to anywhere. Thus, I decided to take the role of facilitator and I had an approach of facilitation, Engagement. I drew the whole plan, taking into account all the ideas from other members, building the plan with them, dividing the work that we had to do and set out the deadline for each task. At that moment, I had responsibility for the group process, and set out some rules regarding the deadline and divided tasks to maintain the effectiveness of the group. My decision to take the role of facilitator with Engagement came from my recognition of the dysfunction in the group. I turned the attention of all the group into our main concerns, and used an agenda to help the group to follow, focusing only on our group to help the group overcome the block. An approach of Focus was used here to enable the group to concentrate on finding its effectiveness. I also let members in my group to choose the task that they are comfortable with or are good at that field, allowing each member to contribute more on the work, to share the same vision. Another aspect of facilitation was applied in this situation is Action. I decided to intervene at the moment when the group was stuck, and that dysfunction blocked the motivation and dynamism of the group. I acted with decisiveness and commitment, even though my action could deteriorate the relationship with the members in our group. We didn’t have a real leader in our group as we were afraid to take the role of leader, to hurt the relationship with other members in the group. I was one of the people who really believed in the feasibility of our project and I tried a lot to realize that project, I wrote to eight companies to explain about our ideas and asked for their help or advice. I kept calling to several farms in Orleans island to ask for a visit and have questions on their manufacturing process. I was in contact with the department of Entrepreneurial Laval of the university to explain our ideas and seek for help from them. Therefore, I think that I brought my credibility, care and passion to our project to make others believe in our ideas. An aspect of Presence can be recognized as my presence in the project helped us to believe in the success of our project. Despite the obstacles that we had, I still decided to go ahead and motivated to believe in our common purpose, I stuck with our project, I rode with it through the waves of doubt or criticism. After my action of facilitation in that meeting, we continued to keep that method of working, setting the plan as clear as possible, dividing the tasks and having appropriate deadline. People felt more committed to the project, contributed more actively to the project as they could choose the part that they were good at.