The Secrets of Facilitation: The SMART Guide to Getting Results with Groups New and Revised Edition

The review for the book “The secrets of facilitation. The SMART Guide to Getting Results with Groups”, Michael Wilkinson.The goal of the book: to provide a reader with the comprehensive tool how to lead a group of people on the meeting to the one agreement supported by everyone.The book main idea: Effective Decision = Right Decision * Commitment to the decision; so you can achieve more effective results when the solution are created, understood and accepted by the people involved.The value of the book: personally I think, that this is the best exhaustive world class book about the facilitation - to make easier to study the current process/situation and find the ways for an improvement together. It contains a lot of technics aimed at the meeting preparation & leading, gathering, grouping & studying information, solution’s creation and prioritization, implementation steps with verbatim examples.The application areas of the book knowledge: developing the skill of asking questions, strategic planning, total quality management, issue resolution, performance improvement, lean processing, communication engagement, town hall meetings etc.

This is an excellent book and what motivated me to attend "The Effective Facilitator" training last week. If you thought the book was awesome, the training was amazing! I took this course as a part of my professional development, and I have taken many courses for work related growth...I must say I think this was the best program I've ever attended. Interaction most of the day for an introvert was challenging, but honesty I have never felt so welcome and comfortable. . Thank you Michael Wilkinson, you sir, are the real deal. Purchasing Facilitating Strategy next!! All the best, Glen

This book breaks facilitation down into processes and steps that make sense and create flow. The writing style is easy to digest. The user cases are both of successes and failures in facilitation meetings. Obviously you won't need every technique for every meeting but it will be good to have the techniques in my tool belt for whatever direction a meeting takes. The additional materials on the web-site make this book well worth the price.

This 'reference manual is very detailed and informative. I have been a facilitator for 15 years and have been delighted to learn more about the art of facilitation. A team can have the right materials, the right people and a great leader but if the facilitation is weak, good solid results can be questionable.I would highly recommend this book whether one is just starting out or a seasoned facilitator. I wish I had had access to this information because some of my past sessions would have gone that much smoother.Thank you Michael!

I bought this for Graduate School. It's easy to follow, and much better that the instructor turned out to be.

This book is hands down the best professional development book available because it builds fundamental skills that no one teaches - and somehow vastly improves over version 1 - which is easily my second favorite professional development book.I taught 5 post graduate courses for professional development directly out of this text and it was my students favorite book as well.

I bought this book to support me up-spilling within the facilitation field as I’ve only been officially training for the last 2 years. The book is fantastic, it just covers everything and more. I’ve managed to completely re-design how I run a session now. Whether you’re running a training session or moderating a senior leadership workshop it manages to capture everything that you need which I have to say is quite a rarity to find in a book. It is probably the best book that I’ve purchased for work that is actually 100% useful. Every trainer should have it on their bookshelf.

This is a really useful book that gives great step-by-step instructions and uses many examples. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to up their facilitation game.