Archive for Facilitation & Empowerment

You can empower others in a big way by helping them to see a new story about themselves that embraces their potential. This new story may be a silver lining in a problem-saturated story. For example, let’s say that a direct report has been late several times to an important meeting. The normal thing to [...]

5 tips on How to Empower Others by Building on Their Strengths: 1. Provide an empowering organizational environment. Build an organizational culture that emphasizes the use of people’s strengths. This culture provides a fertile soil for people to sprout their strengths. 2. Seek and organizational culture where people feel affirmed, valued, accepted and supported. Convey [...]

Good coaching and facilitation brings out the best in people. When you facilitate you encourage people to grow. When you lead with command and control, you just get their hands to carry out the task. You don’t even get the best part of their minds, their creativity. Good facilitation is like the true story of [...]

Empowerment – Here are 4 tips on empowerment: 1. Keep your eye out for things that work. When your direct report or peer does something new that works, compliment them. Then, if it is not apparent, ask them, “How did you do that?” This simple question can do a world of good. It lets the [...]

We can empower other people by having positive expectations for them. This was the point of a play called Pygmalion that was renamed My Fair Lady. A professor bets a friend that he can take a flower seller and make her into a lady. As he trains her to speak better English, he also empowers [...]

Would you like to improve your ability to do group facilitation? If you are a leader, there are probably group situations where you will get better results through facilitating the group instead of directing it. Here are some suggestions for group facilitation: 1. Focus on the big picture. Give the group your goals for it. [...]

Good facilitation is built on a foundation of acceptance. How do you have an attitude of acceptance toward those you wish to facilitate? Here are 5 suggestions: 1. Listen well. I have covered listening in many other articles so suffice it to say here that you need good listening skills to make facilitation work. When [...]

Good facilitation does not mean giving someone a fish. Rather, it means teaching them how to fish. Then they can continue to fish on their own. The temptation is to give a person a fish in one way or another because this makes us feel good or important. We know better how to do something [...]

Do you want to facilitate others to be more resourceful? You should if you want to be successful at work and at home. Leaders can often do better with facilitation than with directing. Professionals can often do better with facilitation than with advising. So what do I mean by “facilitation?” Here is a continuum that [...]

Recently, I heard a lecture given to us Harvard Business School alumni by Bill George, Professor at Harvard Business School, on the topic, “Leadership in the 21st Century.” He asserted that many of the problems our corporations are in now, including the current mess on Wall St., are the result of bad leadership. Bad leadership [...]