FACILITATION

Human beings are creative, and groups of human beings can be much more creative than the sum of their individual members - sometimes. At other times groups of human beings slip into conflict, buck-passing or the lethargy of bureaucracy. What does it take to keep a team on track?

The answer lies in one of two strategies; on-going professional facilitation or someone to train the group members to self-manage. Which to choose depends on many factors unique to the group and their purpose. What both require to be effective is a skilled and experienced facilitator, either from within the group or from without. We offer professional facilitation and/or training to groups that don't yet have the skills, who's challenges have outgrown the resources within the group or who are mired in conflict.

Experienced in both corporate and consensus based systems, we have come to believe the way of the future for many organizations lay along the non-hierarchical path. Experience has shown that when power and responsibility have been equally distributed there's a marked increase in energy, "buy-in", creativity and over-all satisfaction. But our culture's has a long history and habit of top-down power structures that has made the skills needed to reap the benefits of a lateral system rare.

We have a track record of supplying both group facilitation as needed, and/or the training for groups to develop an on-going ability to self-manage. Our style of facilitation is frank, personal and results oriented, aimed at developing only as much structure as is needed to achieve success. With groups or individuals involved in struggle, process-based conflict resolution is used to extract the creativity from the energies of strife. Specific areas of service have included: depth process and support groups, intentional communities, NGO's and small businesses.

"Brad worked with our cohousing group during the development phase to assist us in communicating with each other, particularly in areas where we did not agree. His playfulness and light heart made the work more engaging for me."

Pam M.