By visionSynergy Staff
Immediately after a network or partnership has held its formation meeting, the tendency is to allow energy to drop off for weeks, even months.
Yet these are critical times for the facilitator or facilitation team to follow through on activities that will help the partnership move forward with health.
Here are six facilitator activities to work on following a formation meeting.
Step 1. Rest & Recreation (i.e. Re-Creation!)
Why is it important for the facilitator to get some rest after the meeting?
- Facilitating a partnership meeting is extremely demanding and if it’s the first time
you’ve done something like this, it will be emotionally and physically draining.
- Facilitating a partnership meeting often means long days — with early mornings and late nights — and very little sleep. The facilitator must recover from this heavy schedule.
The facilitator should not neglect this. Often we go from one meeting to the next, without giving ourselves the time to recover — and the result is that we may not perform in the most effective way!
Step 2. Coordinate Writing-up the Report/Minutes of the Formation Meeting
If the partnership has asked for a report of the partnership meeting to be circulated to the partner members, the facilitator will need to ensure that a report is written. He/she may do this him/herself of may ask someone else or a team to write the report.
Sometimes a partnership may decide they do not want a written report of the meeting, perhaps because of a sensitive security issue. If this is the case, the facilitator may still want to write up some notes — to have a written record of the meeting for future reference. However, make sure that it is clearly noted that this is a private report — and that it shouldn’t be passed along to anyone else.
Good reports will include the following items from the meeting in the Report/Minutes of the meeting:
- Copy of the actual meeting schedule
- List of those attending
- Notes on agency reports
- List of priorities suggested
- The two or three priorities which were agreed by consensus
- What Focus Groups were formed, members of each Focus Groups, leadership of each Focus Group, priorities agreed by each group
- Any significant events in the meeting
- Any actions you are required to take as a result of the meeting
- Financial Report
- Date of next meeting
- If this is only a report, it could also include an evaluation of the meeting — noting what was good and what was weak.
If it was agreed to circulate a report, the facilitator may write the report for circulation — and add a supplementary report with an evaluation of the meeting, which the facilitator would want to keep confidential! Sometimes, since the report may include sensitive material, it may not be circulated in writing for security reasons, as above.
If someone else is writing the official Report/Minutes, the facilitator will want to follow-up with them and try to encourage them to get it finished as soon as possible. (It can also be helpful for the facilitator to ask to see the official Report/Minutes in draft before it goes out – because there may be sensitive issues, which shouldn’t be circulated to the whole world!) We recommend that the report is distributed no longer than a month following the formation meeting – sooner is even better.
Step 3. Communication and Relationship Building
The facilitator will want to develop relationships with three groups of people:
A. The Attendees: The first group is the partners who attended the meeting. Be aware that in certain cultures and ministries the person who represented a partner at the meeting may not necessarily be the head of the partner organization or church. The facilitator will be working on building relationships with these people in a variety of ways. For people who live close to the facilitator, visits are very helpful. However, for people who live further away, then the facilitator will want to use the telephone and e-mail.
As you build relationships be aware of the varying ways relationships are built via online contact and e-mail, telephone, and face-to-face. In communicating with partner members – don’t just rely on e-mail. Voice communication (telephone and web-based telephone) can have definite advantages. There are times when talking to someone provides the clearer communication; sometimes the cost of not talking to the person far outweighs the longer time it takes to make a call.
B. The Non-Attendees: However the facilitator won’t just be building relationships with those who were at the meeting. The second group of people with whom the facilitator will be building relationships are those who the facilitator may have met with earlier but who didn’t come to the Partnership Meeting. The facilitator, in these first steps in the partnership, communicates with those who didn’t come to the meeting to continue to try to build relationships with them and to try to get them involved in the partnership.
Therefore, the facilitator can go and see them or call them – and tell them about the meeting and encourage them to think about coming to the next meeting – and make it as easy as possible for them to come!
C. The New Potentials: And the third group of people are those whom the facilitator didn’t even know about when the meeting was called – people discovered in the course of conversations at the formation meeting, for example. At the meeting, or subsequent to it, the facilitator may learn of others who are either involved or who may want to be involved in ministry among the people. The facilitator is positioned to start to get them involved in the partnership by building relationships with them.
The more communication provided to the partnership, the more the partners will feel that they are part of something beyond their own organization. The facilitator may want to make an occasional e-mail report to the whole partnership – perhaps giving them a report on the progress of the Focus Groups. General communications to everyone are beneficial – don’t forget personal communication to individuals – a personal e-mail, a telephone call – and even face-to-face meetings wherever possible. This is not just at the start of the Partnership but throughout its life. Good communication will make a partnership grow! As one Indian leader commented, ”Put decisions down in writing and share them with all the partners.”
Step 4. Working with the Focus Groups
The facilitator will want to try to avoid getting too deeply involved in any of the Focus Groups. If he or she does, an inordinate amount of the work of the group may be asked of them. The purpose of these groups is to get as many members of the partnership actively involved in some aspect of the partnership.
However, the facilitator does have some role to play in the Focus Groups – mainly in supporting the leaders (or facilitators) of the focus groups.
- They may need encouraging
- They may need prompting (perhaps to call a meeting of the group)
- They may need help producing reports on the progress of the Focus Groups – to keep other members of the partnership informed of the progress being made.
- The demands of the day-to-day urgent issues, which Focus Group leaders are facing in the normal ministry, can often distract them from keeping on-top of the Focus Group. The facilitator can encourage and help them keep on-task.
If the facilitator is regularly communicating with the Focus Groups leaders, asking them how the work of the Group is progressing, it can actually encourage the process to be going on throughout the year. This is much more effective in getting satisfying and effective outcomes from the Focus Groups.
Step 5. Identifying Resources
How might partnerships use resources, particularly funding?
- Funds for the next partnership meeting’s expenses, scholarships, and related costs
- Funds for the facilitator’s travel
- Funds for partnership communications
- Funding for projects the partnership are working on
Funds aren’t the only resource that can be used to great benefit. People’s time and skills are resources, too, that can be leveraged for the development of the partnership. The facilitator can identify those persons who can be used to help the partnership achieve its goals.
The facilitator is likely to be drawn into the task of identifying resources because:
- He/she may be involved in allocating or coordinating financial expenditures
- If a Focus Group is developing funding for any projects, the facilitator can better serve as a clearinghouse on what funds are being requested, for what, and from whom. So the facilitator should be brought into all partnership funding processes. This is particularly important so that the partnership avoids asking for funding for two different projects from the same source (unless they are put in a single request).
Step 6. Developing the Facilitation Team
If a facilitation team has been selected, elected or appointed, certain elements will help the team work effectively. Some best practices:
- Schedule time to meet together at the end of the partnership meeting – even if only for an hour or so
- Schedule times to meet together, even if the team is scattered across state or the world!
- Spend time to re-connect with one another and to care about each other personally, rather than going straight into business
- Schedule generous time together before the start of the next partnership meeting.
- Develop a pattern of copying everyone else on the facilitation team when e-mails are sent on partnership business. Don’t leave some members out of the flow of communication. Consider using an online collaboration space or an email group.
- Communicate beyond e-mail. Talking by telephone or meeting up with individuals can make a significant difference.
- Suggest scheduling a regular conference call – perhaps monthly – or twice-monthly.
Consider the example of one facilitation team, located in different parts of the world. This high-performance team meets at least every six months and also holds a conference call once a month. Another facilitation team never meets between meetings or talks together on the telephone between partnership meetings. The correlation is clear: More communication yields better partnerships!
Filed under: collaboration, Facilitation, Formation, Global collaboration, networking, online collaboration spaces, partnerships, skills of collaboration, teambuilding on February 28th, 2011 | No Comments »