“...encourage people to feel comfortable expressing their honest views and opinions...”

Group Facilitation Services

Lawlor & Associates has extensive experience in the area of group facilitation, built on the experience of Stan D. Lawlor, who in addition to teaching courses and seminars at the university level for the past 38 years, served as Mayor of the City of North Bay for half of his twenty year political career. As well, our company has conducted surveys, key person interviews, community consultations, focus group sessions and strategic planning sessions for a variety of clients throughout Ontario.

Clearly, good group facilitation requires that the goals that are to be achieved should be established from the outset. Questions should be clearly stated to ensure that there is no ambiguity. Finally, the facilitator should be sufficiently familiar with the content of the consultation session and possess the listening and communication skills to accurately assess the views of participants.

It is critical that the facilitator be non-judgmental and encourage people to feel comfortable expressing their honest views and opinions, without fear of having them rejected or challenged by the facilitator. We generally start such sessions by focusing on non-intimidating issues and moving gradually to more sensitive material.

In larger meetings we find that it is helpful to use a multi-media public presentation format, allowing all participants to be "on the same page". For smaller sessions or individual meetings, we find it most appropriate to use directive interview schedules and breakout sessions, in order to allow participants to feel comfortable discussing issues, which might sometimes be considered sensitive. Breakout sessions make it possible to maximize the creative input and involvement of all stakeholders - some of whom find large group sessions threatening and intimidating. Although discussion guides are always prepared for these sessions, we have found that the ability of our facilitators to react quickly and creatively to the direction of group discussion is of far greater importance.

3501 Trout Lake Road, North Bay, ON CA, P1B 8G4 -- (705) 497-8991 -- info@lawlorconsultants.com

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