Facilitation Skills to Maximize Group Effectiveness - Annual Conference Preview

This year the Learning Forward Conference in Boston will feature a session entitled “Facilitation Skills for Group Effectiveness,” co-presented by Carolyn McKanders from Houston, Texas, and Michael Dolcemascolo from Skaneateles, New York. Carolyn and Michael have been invited back to Learning Forward after their presentation in Anaheim, CA last year, and they’ve been invited to next year’s 2013 Learning Forward conference  in Texas as well. Michael and Carolyn’s work is based in the Adaptive Schools Seminars, described below.

Session PC 102 Saturday, December 1, 2012

Robert Garmston and Bruce Wellman are the co-developers of the Adaptive Schools Seminars, based in their text The Adpative School: Developing Collaborative Groups, 2009.

Adaptive Schools consulting, coaching and seminars provide skills development in dialogue, discussion, exceptional meeting management, advocacy, inquiry and other skills sets of collaboration. The seminars provide concepts, models and research for building capacities for organizational development, professional development, conflict resolution, data-based decision making, and working with intractable or wicked problems. Of four distributed leadership hats (facilitating, presenting, coaching and consulting) the Adaptive Schools seminars' primary focus is on the hat or function of facilitating group work.  Learn more about seminars on Adaptive Schools models for improving schools by visiting our website, www.adaptiveschools.com.

Four Hats of Shared Leadership

In an adaptive organization, leadership is shared; all the players wear all the hats. All participants have the knowledge and skills to manage themselves and manage and lead others. Leadership is distributed in meetings, in examining student work, in staff development activities, in action research and in projects. Recognizing the hats and knowing when and how to change them is shared knowledge within the organization, because when values, roles and work relationships are clear, decisions about appropriate behavior are easy.
The Four Hats are:

·      Facilitating

·      Presenting

·      Coaching (Adaptive Schools uses the Cognitive Coaching^SM  model developed by Arthur Costa  and Robert Garmston)

  ·      Consulting