The Facilitation Star & Facilitation Competency Wheel

Towards the middle of 2005, I decided that we need a vibrant community of facilitators to sustain the culture of innovation in my previous organisation.

The timing for its formation was good as there was a urge in the organisation to move away from the efficient way of reaching agreements to that of the effective way of consensus building. Also, there was a growing recognition that the wisdom in the organisation is in the crowd and the efficient way of doing things has gotten in the way.

We attracted only 14 people at the 1st MINDEF Facilitators' Forum (MFF) on 16 September 2005. As the concept of facilitation was very new at that time, it became apparent to me that to grow the community I need to invest in the education, training and development of facilitators. Subsequently, this led to the introduction of the MFF Developmental Framework at the 30th of November 2005's MFF Gathering.

The years I spent leading the movement has provided me invaluable insights into how the art and science of facilitation could be imparted. The 5 points of The Facilitation StarTM represents the body of knowledge I have accumulated from MINDEF on developing facilitators.



The star is a structured process that could helps current and aspiring facilitators gain mastery over their trade. The star helps them to:

• Understand the characteristics of a facilitator and the nature of facilitation, and to differentiate this role from those of teachers, trainers, coaches, advisors, and consultants.
  
• Uncover the needs of the client who initiated the facilitated session and the needs of those participating in the session.
  
• Apply the above information to design effective group processes that could effectively to Manage the dynamics of goup in conversation, Facilitate the conversations, and Guide the group towards consensus.
  
• Use the skills of facilitation to create a sustainable environment for participation during the conversation.
  
• Deliver the design of the session to the group to enable its participants to create the intended outcome. Please click on this icon for the sample of the design template and the click on this icon for the Programme Run-sheet.

After two years of effort (and literally, of sweat), the membership of the community grew from a mere 14 to 200, and I have hosted 70 participants at some of the gatherings.

I am also very happy that some large departments have adopted the framework as their own, which shows the recognition of facilitators as champions of innovation in organisations.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM

To begin cultivating and growing our facilitation capability and capacity, it is always good to know our current competency in facilitation.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM is a self-assessment tool where facilitators and potential facilitators score 14 different statements against a 4-point scale onto the wheel below to determine his/her facilitation competency.

Understanding the Wheel

Facilitation is divided into the science and art of facilitation. In the science of facilitation, the focus is in the processes, methodologies and tools used in facilitating engagements. For the art of facilitation, the key concern is keeping the negative aspects of group dynamics out from the conversations at the engagements.

The wheel provides three important sets of information on the competency level of the facilitator:

Balance - It shows whether the facilitator is strong in the art or in the science of facilitation, and therefore suggests the broad areas he/she should next develop.

Focus – It provides information on the specific strengths to leverage on and weaknesses to avoid, which allows the facilitator to accurately pin-point his/her training needs and identify the most appropriate training programmes that could address these needs.

Competence – Finally, the Wheel also informs of the facilitator’s competency level. The lower the current competency is the greater the opportunity for growth in that area for the facilitator.

Both the Star and Wheel has been used in several organisations since 2007. These include Ministry of Education's Teacher Network and Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies.

This article was first written in June 2007 and subsequently updated in April, September & December 2008.

Copyright 2007 and 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.