Small and large group facilitation

The way in which all the people in a team, a directorate, an organisation or a system, understand each other and are able to work together often determines success. Whether the group is small or large the need to find common intent as well as foster an ability to adapt to the challenges that confront them are crucial. We are confident and experienced in bringing people together to create, explore and find that common ground and to develop the ways of working that can enable collective progress. We can deliver engagement events for many hundreds or enable participatory and innovative discussions for a small number of key leaders across an organisation or a system.

The mutual understanding and common purpose of both small and large groups often underpins the positive achievement of both organisations and systems. Working with such groups is an essential part of our work. We believe that deliberately building the connections between people, paying attention to the sharing of perspectives, knowledge and skills is at the heart of a collaborative and shared leadership that empowers everyone to make the decisions that take the organisation or system forward towards it’s goal.

  • We are skilled at working to establish common ground as well as exploring and enabling others to recognise and appreciate differences of opinion and perspective.
  • We are skilled at a wide range of methods for engagement in relation to small and large groups from large-scale Open Space events to the intense exploration of opinions, perspectives and conflicts in small groups.
  • We are skilled at developing collaborative leadership in and across organisations and we pride ourselves in supporting systems leaders develop the skills necessary to offer effective leadership to communities. 
  • In these larger groups or systems we often focus on helping leaders manage the conflicts between the needs of organisation and the needs of the system and those that seek support from it. We do this with a focus on interpersonal relationships, alongside an understanding and tolerance of emergence and uncertainty.

In working with small and large groups we are often putting the outcome for the beneficiary, user, patient or community at the heart of your work. In the interactions between members of such groups across organisations or systems we are often helping reshape cultures and behaviour so that they align with the interests of those they are there to serve. In our facilitation we are usually finding ways to enable groups to address profound questions about the ways in which they may have allowed themselves to become part of the problems experienced by users rather than being an driver for a better way of delivering, caring or supporting people.

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