Do you need to foster collaboration in your work?

Are you looking for something beyond Robert’s Rules of Order or leading by the seat of your pants to facilitate your meetings?

Some leaders find that they facilitate by instinct and when something goes wrong they have nothing to fall back on. Are these situations familiar?

• People need to work across departmental lines to reach their goals but it’s hard to align people from independent power bases to be accountable for action.

• Your committee has lots of good ideas but can’t seem to move to action.

• Many of your students never participate in classroom discussions; is it them or you? How can you get them involved?

• It’s a challenge to get your whole group together for more than a couple of hours to do some planning. You need an effective and efficient procedure to produce tangible results in two hours.

• You don’t know how to prevent conflict in a meeting. Getting real agreement that everyone supports is tough to achieve. And, you’re not sure how to get the quiet members listened to when the more outspoken and aggressive people hog the floor.

Using ToP® methods turns these kinds of situations around!

  What is this Technology of Participation (ToP^®)? 

  ToP^®is a collection of highly practical group facilitation methods developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA), an international organization concerned with the human factor in individual, community and organizational development. The methods grew out of the Institute’s work in urban and rural community development in the past thirty years.

ICA staff needed methods that lessened conflict and increased collaboration in community  meetings. They developed some ways to create a safe environment so everyone would feel comfortable participating in the conversations and workshops.  As people openly and honestly shared their ideas, they discovered common ground in spite of their diverse perspectives and planned together how to move toward their shared vision. Collectively the methods have come to be known as the Technology of Participation^®.

All groups and organizations rely on how well their leadership is able to inspire, catalyze, and sustain shared learnings and decision making. Leaders need ways to leverage the diversity of their group by getting everyone fully engaged in making quality decisions that they all agree to and support.

Facilitative leaders around the world now use ToP^®methods to tap the combined wisdom and experience of a group to plan, solve problems or make decisions. ToP ^®gets amazing results in education, government, the arts, business and industry, health care, social services, and communities.   

“We’ve also trained over 200  managers and key players in the ToP methods. These people are sought after for their skills, rather than their positions of power.” Peter Laux, Manager, TQ Development & Training, Texas Instruments

What makes these methods so unique and powerful?

• They enhance collaboration.
• They maximize the use of time spent in meetings.
• They welcome diversity while minimizing polarization and conflict.
• They are flexible and adaptable for myriad situations and meetings.
• They can be used alone or in combination, and within the framework of your own facilitation style.
• They help groups think clearly together, consider diverse ideas respectfully, and reach consensus faster in ways that deliver immediate results.
• They enable groups to have greater capacity for sharing wisdom, deeper levels of commitment, and pride in owning the decisions arrived at collectively.

“It’s evident that your “ToP” is designed to not only creatively engage participants, but also to assure dialogue and commitment in the decision-making process. As evidenced by our output, the Task Force has already embraced the process.”  Baron Evans, Task Force Co-Chair, Arts & Culture Commission of Contra Costa County

“These techniques can be learned to make meetings more engaging, authentic, accessible and rewarding…The techniques follow a natural sequence of collecting information, examining feelings about the data, organizing this data and turning it into real action. Along the way, ToP enables people with different thinking styles and modes of expression to participate more fully and more authentically.”   Philip Horn, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

“I have seen the ICA methods assist new teams to gain vision and momentum, even in newly founded cross-functional teams where there’s an obstacle.” Dan Gerry, Phillips SemiConductors

Wouldn’t you like to have everyone in a meeting engaged and participating fully to produce tangible outcomes faster, saving time and money? Facilitative leaders, like Philip Horn, use ToP^® methods achieve this. . . and more!

Since the 1960s the ICA’s inclusive approach to participative development has gained worldwide recognition and respect. The ICA International in Brussels, Belgium, is the coordinating body for the thirty-five ICA affiliates in its global network. The ICAI has Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (Category II) and with UNICEF.

Sierra Circle Consulting offers the Top^® Facilitative Methods  training in-house to clients  who want to build a corps of facilitators or begin shifting to a more facilitative style of leadership. I offer this training to the public once or twice a year. Contact me to get details on the content of the training and the dates of the next public training and I’ll send you my article: Facilitating, Training, Consulting - What’s the Difference?  There is no obligation to enroll for the training.