A best practice.

Why outside facilitation of group decision making is a best practice that you should use:

OBJECTIVITY. An outside facilitator is less likely to share the biases of the leaders and can be more objective.

PROCESS EXPERTISE. Professional facilitators are fair and neutral process experts who bring skills and experience to help the group generate creative solutions, reach consensus and obtain successful outcomes.

INPUT. An outside facilitator can help shape issues for discussion and obtain valuable stakeholder input.

BOUNDARIES AND BUY-IN. Good facilitators set boundaries, spot biases and promote buy-in and follow-up.

QUESTIONS AND ISSUES. As a third party, a facilitator can ask questions and spot and raise issues that leaders miss or avoid.

PARTICIPATION AND UNDERSTANDING. A good facilitator promotes discussion, encourages all to contribute, manages dominant participants, elicits divergent views, enables leaders to participate and builds shared understanding.

TIME SENSITIVITY AND CLOSURE. A good facilitator is skilled in crafting realistic agendas and moving the process to closure.

OUTPUT. A good facilitator captures decisions and unresolved issues and can help assure implementation.

Assuring success.

What we do to assure success when we facilitate for you:

PLAN THE MEETING. Understanding why the meeting is needed. How the meeting will be structured and the facilitator’s role. How decisions will be made. Meeting policies. Meeting logistics. Meeting set-up. Meeting agenda.

SET THE STAGE FOR THE MEETING. Announcements, meeting purpose and logistics. Provision of agenda and materials. Pre-meeting input. Reminders.

PREPARE FOR THE MEETING. Exhibits and presentations. Meeting room. Back-ups. Greeting and seating participants.

FACILITATE THE MEETING. Opening the meeting. Focusing the meeting. Achieving desired outcomes. Avoiding biased decision making. Consensus and commitment. Assuring action. Closure.

FOLLOW UP ON THE MEETING. Immediate follow-up. Fostering action.

What it takes.

We have the experience and skills you want. We know what it takes for expert facilitation:

ORGANIZATIONS OF ALL TYPES. We have facilitated meetings and planning and decision-making sessions for scores of organizations of all types: Businesses, non-profits, associations, governmental entities, start-ups.

KNOWING WHAT IT TAKES. We know what’s needed for successful facilitation: Gaining trust, eliciting views, building consensus, promoting action.

BOARDS, GROUPS, COMMITTEES, TEAMS, AND MORE. We have helped Boards, executive teams, committees, community groups and more deal with difficult issues, lay plans, reach consensus and move to action.

FACE-TO-FACE AND VIRTUAL. We have deep experience working with groups both on site and through video platforms, including Zoom, Go To Meeting and WebEx.

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE. We have facilitated meetings and sessions for more than three decades.

PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP. We have been involved in the International Association of facilitators for nearly a decade and helped found IAF’s Chicago chapter.

Getting a committee on track.

An association of residential property developers and managers reconstituted its education committee. To help the committee come to a common vision and agenda, Forrest Consulting facilitated the committee’s first half-day meeting. The objective was achieved: Our facilitation included exercises to build understanding among members and resulted in the group committing to an annual education agenda

Improving college board function.

The chair of a college Board of Trustees and the college president saw that the new Board needed a clearer understanding of the Board’s roles and responsibilities and to focus on the big issues and opportunities. Forrest Consulting developed a comprehensive presentation on governance best practices. We facilitated a Board workshop that increased understanding, built consensus and helped focus the Trustees on what was most important.

Helping the homeless.

The Board of a coalition of non-profit organizations and governments coordinating county-wide services for the homeless needed expert facilitation to find a consensus view on a critical issue and to lead creation of a strategic plan laying out the way forward. Forrest Consulting’s facilitation of multiple meetings enabled the coalition members to find the shared vision and develop the strategic plan.

Assuring and aligning staff.

The long-time founder and executive director of a non-profit low-income housing agency was dismissed by the Board for lax administration. The Chair of the Board of Directors was concerned that the staff would see the action as an indictment of their work, which was not the case. Forrest Consulting was engaged to facilitate a session involving the staff and Board Chair designed to allay concerns and assure that the staff was aligned on the agency’s mission and would work effectively together going forward as the search for a new staff leader proceeded. Our facilitated session offered a safe environment for staff to get their concerns on the table and receive assurances from the Board Chair. We worked with the staff in a team-building exercise to create a “full value contract,” a short list of consensus behavioral norms to guide future staff interaction.

Building on success.

Four years had passed since Forrest Consulting facilitated development of a local government’s previous strategic plan. We were asked back to facilitate creation of the next plan. We helped assess previous plan results, administered a stakeholder survey, conducted interviews and facilitated planning workshops with the Board and staff leaders. The new plan is guided decisions and initiatives.

Planning for leadership transition.

Forrest Consulting was engaged to work with the partners of a leading governmental relations/lobbying firm to create a strategic plan addressing new opportunities and a pending leadership transition. We conducted a planning survey of clients, firm members and other stakeholders and interviewed the partners. And we conducted an environmental scan and developed a SWOT analysis. Then we facilitated a one-and-one-half-day plan development workshop using Forrest Consulting’s Fast Track Strategic Planning System. The results? The partners developed a new strategic vision, strategies, action steps, strategic initiatives and an implementation plan. The plan is driving the leadership transition and continued firm success.