An effective team is crucial for any business, no matter how big or small.
An engaged team is, by its very definition, an effective, productive and innovative team.
But an engaged team isn’t easy to come by. Establishing good engagement and keeping your team engaged is a whole challenge in itself.
There are many brilliant and effective ways to improve team engagement. A good place to start is by ensuring there are opportunities to get people together, whether on-line or in person. This helps your team members develop and maintain the connections that are a crucial part of building engagement.
While good engagement from your team in a workshop or meeting does not automatically mean longer-term team engagement will follow, it is a good starting point. Good engagement in a meeting is an excellent springboard for more sustainable team engagement.
Engagement in this sense also doesn’t magically happen. In fact, a poorly run meeting can have quite the opposite effect!
Bringing in a workshop facilitator to help design and run sessions for your team is a good investment. Workshop facilitators can, quite literally, transform the dynamics in your team and improve collaboration in a very short space of time by creating the space for productive conversations, increasing co-operation and improving trust between team members. Whether a check-in as part of a longer engagement process, or a starting point, this is an opportunity to help you to build a well-engaged and effective team.
What do workshop facilitators do?
First of all, they aren’t ‘meetings coordinators’, nor are they an alternative to a coach. Instead, workshop facilitators are experienced professionals with the tools and skills to guide discussions, encourage participation and build an inclusive environment. This gives everyone in a team to chance to share their ideas and thoughts, to be heard and to add their perspectives in the work towards a common goal. This helps the team to understand better what they can achieve, and enables them to develop a shared sense of ownership and buy-in for the work they are doing.
The key benefits of a session run by a workshop facilitator:
Better communication
A good facilitator will use a variety of techniques to break down the barriers to great communication. Don’t worry: this isn’t about games or ice-breakers or role play. Instead, it’s about agreeing ways of group working, enabling all the members of the team to share their thoughts and to listen. Better communication is the cornerstone of an engaged team.
Focus
A session run by a workshop facilitator will have clear objectives from the start. They will keep the team laser focused on both the workshop objectives and the company or team purpose, vision and ways of working. They will manage the time effectively, steering the conversation back on track when it starts to waver and keep things moving forward rather than around the houses as they often do in team meetings. Keeping everyone engaged rather than distracted.
Everyone included
Workshop facilitators are experienced in supporting everyone to contribute, even those who usually find it hard to take part. Through a mixture of strategies, participatory processes and structured discussions, everyone can take part without feeling pressured. This inevitably leads to a better outcome. When people are left out, they disengage, so involvement and contribution are key to an engaged team.
Diffusing conflicts
While a facilitator isn’t there as a mediator, they are trained to handle, diffuse and turn conflicts into productive contributions. They can take those natural differences that occur in any team and turn them into something positive for an engaged team. Conflict in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s what you do with the disagreements that counts. Simmering disagreements and misunderstandings are a barrier to good team engagement so having the opportunities to untangle these are valuable.
Problem solving
The facilitator isn’t there to solve your problems. However, they will ensure that your team find the answers to questions or issues that often they hold the keys to. A facilitator will use innovative exercises to help your team dive deep into their resources to come up with the right solutions to your problems. Working together on problems or challenges that arise as a team is often quite unifying as an experience and builds engagement.
To benefit from a facilitated workshop, it pays to consider a workshop facilitator with experience in team engagement. A good facilitator will ensure that they find out your goals and aims, as well as understanding about any issues within your team that might be hindering engagement.
Workshop Facilitation
Why not see how we can help improve your team engagement and bring about the benefits above to you, your team and your organisation. Can you imagine how much more productive, creative and communicative your team will be once they are fully engaged? Get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.
