Facilitation and Consensus-Building

Group facilitation with a team of mid-level managers

When you need to make critical decisions in a fully-collaborative setting, skillful facilitation is the most effective way to reach consensus.

And you will find no better facilitator to lead this process than Dr. Mike Armour, SLDI's founder and managing principal.

Dr. Mike excels at facilitating groups and meetings whose purpose is to

  • build consensus
  • create shared commitments
  • articulate core values
  • develop strategic vision
  • resolve conflict
  • design new plans
Mike Armour facilitating a strategic planning meeting

He is extensively trained in the same techniques of guided facilitation which have proven successful for decades in challenging cross-cultural consensus-building and sensitive international negotiations.

When Dr. Mike facilitates your meeting, it stays focused and on track.

 

As a facilitator . . .

. . . Dr. Mike combines probing questions and well-timed summaries with firm reminders to keep the overall facilitation moving forward.

If comments turn to side issues or irrelevant details, he quickly brings the group back to more vital issues. And he readily deals constructively with anyone seeking to sabatoge or derail the process.

In facilitating your meeting . . .

. . . Dr. Mike brings a unique blend of competencies to the process:

Outcome Focused:

  • Through any facilitation, he keeps his eye squarely on the goals and objectives for your facilitated gathering. He astutely steers conversation away from comments and discussions that do not serve those outcomes.

Macro Vision:

  • With his broad interdisciplinary background, he draws on diverse areas of expertise, coupled with decades of faclitating experience, to keep provocative questions before your group.

Interpersonal Dynamics:

  • Dr. Mike's direct, gentle manner allows him to build trust and credibility quickly with people on opposite sides of volatile issues. As a result, he is able to keep a facilitation moving forward, even when parties are far apart.

Ethics and Integrity:

  • To work with Dr. Mike is to recognize immediately that he is highly ethical and principled. People are quickly at ease and open with him as a facilitator, trusting him to treat their input fairly.

Diplomacy:

  • Dr. Mike constantly looks for shared, common ground and handles differences in ways that neither polarize nor close down communication channels.
Mike Facilitating A Strategic Planning Session

Dr. Mike's facilitation skills . . .

. . . were developed during decades of service in church and non-profit settings, where building consensus across a volunteer community is essential for success. Formally trained as a facilitator, he excels in facilitating groups that need to achieve high-value outcomes.

Today he regularly facilitates meetings in both profit and non-profit organizations, particularly in arenas such as articulating vision, planning strategic direction, defining core values, and working through difficult ethical issues.

As a facilitor, Dr. Mike always looks for . . .

. . .  results that will last. To attain lasting agreements, he believes that the participants must be satisfied at three levels:

  • Process Satisfaction: They must sense that the facilitation process was fair, balanced, and equitable, with no hidden agendas.
  • Personal Satisfaction: They must sense, one and all, that their views and concerns were genuinely heard and that they were personally treated with respect.
  • Outcome Satisfaction:They must sense that the facilitated outcome, decisions, and recommendations are appropriate and workable.

While working diligently to bring about a satisfactory outcome, he is equally diligent to maintain process integrity and to provide an atmosphere of openness and respect toward everyone in the group.

This approach can make your next facilitated meeting a great success. When you are looking for an artful facilitator, think of Dr. Mike Armour and the LeaderPerfect® services of Strategic Leadership Development International.