Structured Process. Consensus Decisions.

Facilitate: verb – to make easier, to help bring about, as to facilitate growth

When a group of highly-compensated leaders gather for an offsite meeting for planning, problem-solving, and decision making, what is the true cost of that meeting – not just logistical costs, but time and opportunity costs? Do the outcomes of the meetings always justify that cost?

Expert meeting facilitators ensure that groups accomplish their tasks, and help them improve the way they work together. Facilitators do this by

• Using a process to structure the work of the group
• Managing the group dynamics
• Helping the group hold themselves accountable to making decisions and following up
• Helping the group learn ways to work together more effectively.

AlexanderHancock provides skilled, experienced professional facilitation for strategic planning sessions, management team offsite meetings, town hall meetings, retreats, large group planning or problem-solving sessions, team alignment sessions, project kick-offs, community meetings, and local government retreats.

The groups we have facilitated include executive teams, enterprise wide cross-functional teams, elected officials, global business unit teams, customer-provider teams, broad-based community stakeholder groups.

Facilitation services include:

• Identifying meeting purpose and desired outcomes
• Agenda creation
• Determining prework and preparation
• Pre-meeting communication
• Clarifying roles and responsibilities
• Facilitating the meeting(s), managing group dynamics
• Documenting outcomes
• Follow up

Where desired, we will also secure the facility, meals, A-V, and other logistics to ensure a successful outcome.

Emmie Alexander and Jerry Hancock are founding members of Searchnet, a non-profit network of professionals committed to helping communities build consensus through future search conferences.  They were both trained to facilitate Future Search conferences by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff. Weisbord is the author of Productive Workplaces and Discovering Common Ground. They have also trained hundreds of people to be Expert Facilitators.

To learn more, contact us.