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Facilitation

When might you benefit from professional external facilitation?

If you are planning one of the following, Beacons can help you to sleep at night!:

  • Board of Directors' or Senior Managers' workshop or strategy session
  • Sales Conference
  • Staff Conference
  • Customer Conferences
  • Innovation Workshop
  • Customer/Supplier Partnership Review

Why Beacons ?

Our strengths are :

  • Unrivalled experience in working with organisations in both private and public sectors and quickly getting "under their skin"
  • Specifically skilled at building rapport at senior levels - we apparently have "gravitas!"
  • A terrier-like focus on outputs and action plans
  • An open and trusting style - no hidden agenda
  • A creative, practical and flexible approach
  • We are fun to work with

Facilitating Conferences - our style

If you give us the opportunity to influence the structure of your event as a whole, these are some of our tried and tested preferences :

  • To engage with the group before the course, both through meeting the "sponsor" of the event, and also through a questionnaire to everyone to align them to the programme and to collect their views on priorities for action
  • To divide the day into manageable "chunks" of time - sessions of 60 minutes maximum
  • "Less is more" - to shorten all the presentations, no matter how senior the speaker!
  • To maintain a good balance of presentation, discussion, group activities and reviews
  • To use "cabaret-style" layout, tables of 7-8 people, and consign "theatre-style" to history!
  • To hold 10-15 minute "table-talk" reviews after each session to maximise involvement, avoid dominance by the few over the many, raise questions and contribute to action plans
  • To keep focus, but also give people time to reflect, network and relax
  • To agree action plans, with "owners" and firm dates

    In other words, we facilitate in the literal sense - make easy - and take the weight off the shoulders of the managers responsible for the event!

    Pre-event questionnaire

    Read a sample pre-event questionnaire, which we would distribute to all participants by email 1-2 weeks in advance, collate the answers, produce a verbatim report and discuss early in the programme.

    How do people rate Beacons as facilitators?

    Read the "score card" from a recent conference we facilitated in Portugal. The items in red are those where we exercised direct influence.

    To open discussions about delegating what can be time-consuming and onerous responsibilities to Beacons, please contact us.

    © Beacons Consultants

    The Midlands, Bristol, West Country and Wales
    London, Hampshire and Surrey
    Tel : 01275 848 791

  • Last updated: 7th February 2008