Customer Reviews

The Art of Facilitation: The Essentials for Leading Great Meetings and Creating Group Synergy

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A way of testing the quality of a book is to monitor the amount of dust it collects. Many books are read once, thought about briefly, and then cursed to spend a lonely existence gathering dust on the bottom of a bookshelf.

This book resides happily on my bookshelf, dust free.

There are two primary reasons I find myself continually drawn back to reading the Art of Facilitation. The first is its breadth - it contains a general theoretical overview of facilitation as well as useful practical guidance which is helpful to refer back to. The second reason relates to the gems that it contains. The book is packed full of useful little snippets including processes, intervention strategies, methods for shifting levels in a group as well as questions to reflect on to become a more grounded person/facilitator.

This book is not a fancy, fashionable new approach to facilitation. Neither is it a dense overview of every approach to facilitation possible. It is an informative, very readable, clearly written, highly entertaining book which I would wholeheartedly recommend to novice facilitators as well as those more experienced in the 'Art' of Facilitation.

This book opened my eyes to completely new ways of working with people. In the local government context, the norm is innefficent meetings which often lack purpose and clear desired outcomes. The approach, tools and methods outlined in this book offer an engaging, fun and growthful alternative to this norm.

At the heart of this book lies the 'person centred approach' to facilitating groups and leading group discussions. This approach posits that self awareness, emotional intelligence, empathy and the ability to listen deeply to others are not just 'nice to haves' but base and core skills which every effective facilitator must strive to develop. As well as providing guidance on how a facilitator should 'be' it also suggests what a good facilitator should 'do' - including how to best use intervention techniques, how to resolve conflict, and how to appropriately match processes to particular group dynamics.

In short I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in working with groups in more purposeful, creative and engaging ways - whether you are new to the art of facilitation or are a seasoned facilitator looking for fresh perspectives.

Art of Facilitation by Dale Hunter is a must to have book for anyone who is involved facilitation of groups. The book consists of three parts and covers easy-to-digest theory on essentials of facilitation and some very useful facilitation tools. I got this book in early 2009 without knowing much about facilitation or the book. I wanted to learn about group facilitation since I was going carry out some workshops as part of my PhD research. I read the book in a couple of days with great interest and joy. It was clearly written, fun and easy to understand. The book helped me to learn how to facilitate groups, be a fun and creative university lecturer and resolve conflicts whenever I face them in my life. Strongly recommended!

In simple language, Dale Hunter's "The Art of Facilitation" explores and explains complex issues from the field of facilitation. " It is a powerful book that grabbed my attention and kept me glued to it.