Facilitating with FINESSE: How to Guide People to Powerful Business Solutions is a practitioner’s guide for ten common applications that technically trained professionals are frequently asked to facilitate. The range of applications covers quality and reliability techniques such as block diagrams and tree diagrams through master plans and strategic plans. This article provides five impactful elements for professionals who are often enlisted to lead teams to workable solutions, despite having little or no facilitation training,
Content
The book focuses on ten practical applications and provides specific ways to facilitate them better. There is not a lot of wasted time on the basics covered by most facilitation books. Each self-contained application includes examples – good and bad – from my experiences on some complicated and controversial projects.
Stories
Storytelling creates connections between people and ideas. The book uses twelve stories to help explain the approaches in chapters 2 and 4. Examples from some of my real-world experiences are used to make key points throughout the third chapter on applications. Plus, the entire book is woven together by an epic journey (more on that later).
Separability of Topics
The ten applications are ones that I have facilitated multiple times for multiple organizations in multiple geographies. That said, most facilitators will lead only a few of these applications at any point in their careers. So, each of the ten applications in Chapter 3 is written to stand alone. This makes the book more practical.
CATER and FINESSE
CATER and FINESSE are mnemonics that help practitioners remember and recall the foundations of great facilitation and communication. CATER catches the rising action as the book moves into the ten facilitation applications. In the book, FINESSE re-emphasizes the cause-and-effect relationships of communication as readers transition to the detailed applications at the book’s closing.
Benedick, Beatrice, and Bartholomew
The epic journey of Benedick’s quest for better facilitation and communication is used to make some key points in the opening and closing chapters. The story of Benedick’s journey also provides some relief to some of the heavier content chapters. Some readers will get it immediately; for some, it may take a re-reading, and a few may conclude it is Much Ado About Nothing. Regardless of where you come down on the opening and closing, it was fun for me to write.
Summary
Facilitating with FINESSE: How to Guide People to Powerful Business Solutions is a practitioner’s guide. The book has a unique structure, making it fun to write and hopefully interesting to read. At some point in every technically trained professional’s career, we are called up to bring a group of people to solutions that are created, understood, and accepted by all. The success of your work and your career depend on how successful you are as a facilitator. There is no other book on the market with all the impactful information you will need in one place.
Communicating with FINESSE is the community of technical professionals dedicated to being highly effective communicators and facilitators. Learn more about our publications, webinars, and workshops. Join the community for free.
JD Solomon is the author of Communicating Reliability, Risk & Resiliency to Decision Makers: How to Get your Boss’s Boss to Understand and Facilitating with FINESSE: A Guide to Successful Business Solutions.
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