Services
What is Facilitation?
The "act of making easier or helping bring about".
How does she do that?
By asking the right questions, building consensus, and focusing the conversation.
During the workshop or session, your group will apply your unique goal or challenge to a proven strategic framework. Sound intimidating? It’s not.
Kim is there to guide the process with a consensus workshop method that is geared toward getting all of the voices in the room engaged and participating in the process. She will keep asking the right questions and keep the conversation focused because your group is the subject-matter expert and you have the answers.
TurnKey w/ Kim Brown is here to guide and empower.
What it's not.
Frequently, there is a common misconception that Kim has all the answers and is there to present to the group. While you can count on her to bust that myth first thing, know that this process is about discovering the answer. It already exists within your group.
The group is the expert in their area.
Popular Workshops
While we help Human Service Agencies, Businesses, Coalitions, Organizations, Community Groups, and Faith-based Organizations tackle many different types of challenges, these are a few popular workshops and the process that each follows.
The Process
Strategic Planning
- VISION: What do YOU want to see in place in five to seven years as a result of your actions?
- UNDERLYING CONTRADICTIONS: What is blocking us from moving toward our vision?
- MISSION(S), a.k.a., Strategic Direction(S): What are some long-term strategies/ goals that the group/coalition/organization can implement that will deal with the blocks and move them toward the vision they created?
- 12-MONTH “action” CALENDAR: What needs to happen in the next 6 – 12 months?
The Process
Action Planning
- CONTEXT: Planning for single-focus events or projects which entail: reviewing the “givens”
- DEFINING VICTORY: envisioning the day after the event
- CURRENT REALITY: identifying strengths/weaknesses/benefits/dangers
- ESTABLISH COMMITMENT – create small workgroups
- KEY ACTIONS: identify specific tasks
- CALENDAR: establish time frames.
- COORDINATION: finalize details: coordination, leadership, and budget
- RESOLVE: affirm and celebrate.
The Method
Key Component
Building Consensus
This process must foster an environment that promotes a healthy exchange of ideas and demands that all stakeholders participate. Kim wants everyone to be heard. Well, there’s a lofty goal! It’s not. Here’s how we’re going to do that.
Gathering the wisdom in the room.
Consensus Workshop Method
This is where our sticky wall comes in. Through a process of brainstorm, discussion, idea refinement, committing ideas to paper, group evaluations, and clustering, similarities are revealed and direction emerges. There is an internal affirmation for the group participants when these common threads are uncovered. It builds consensus, creates a sense of ownership, and inspires confidence in the direction.
This method creates an atmosphere that fosters “consensus...by using an integrated, collective thinking process [where] all participants feel that their ideas, insights, perspectives, and wisdom have been honored [and] includes their contribution, [meaning]; no one...had to “give up something” so that the group could move forward...each group member owns the group’s decisions, [expands] his or her personal perspective, and is comfortable operating in concert with the rest of the group”
Key Component
Focused Conversation
The reason I went back to school to get my doctoral degree was to learn how to ask the right questions
Put away the papers, circle up, and focus in. Kim will bookends the workshop with a focused conversation, providing the context of the workshop to start, but most importantly to bring resolve at the end.
The ORID Framework
Using the ORID framework (outlined below) the group is able to reach an agreement or clarify differences. It works because the questions lead the group to consider: all that is known (O) and their feelings (R) before considering issues and decisions, which strengths those decisions. With Kim there to help keep the conversation on the topic, groups leave the workshop in a great place. It simply renders success!
O-Objective: ask for facts, information, and sensory impression R-Reflective: asking for meaning, values, significance, purpose, and implications I-Interpretive: asking for personal reactions, associations, emotions, and images D-Decisional: asking for action, future direction, resolve, and/or next steps
Citations:
Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA), USA (2006). ToP strategic planning: focusing collective power for change.
Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA), USA. (2016). ToP facilitation methods. Effective tools for participation.