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| The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches | 
 enlarge | Author: Roger Schwarz
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Category: Book
List Price: $40.00
Buy New: $27.72
You Save: $12.28 (31%)
Buy New/Used from $24.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  (11 reviews)
Sales Rank: 160499
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 7.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0787947237
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4036
EAN: 9780787947231
ASIN: 0787947237
Publication Date: June 15, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
When it was published in 1994, Roger Schwarz's The Skilled Facilitator earned widespread critical acclaim and became a landmark in the field. The book is a classic work for consultants, facilitators, managers, leaders, trainers, and coaches--anyone whose role is to facilitate and guide groups toward realizing their creative and problem-solving potential. This thoroughly revised edition provides the essential materials for anyone that works within the field of facilitation and includes simple but effective ground rules for group interaction. Filled with illustrative examples, the book contains proven techniques for starting meetings on the right foot and ending them positively and decisively. This important resource also offers practical methods for handling emotions when they arise in a group and offers a diagnostic approach for identifying and solving problems that can undermine the group process.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 The Best Book on Group Facilitation September 25, 2008
I have read many books about group process and group facilitation. "The Skilled Facilitator" is the best I have read. It is: (a) comprehensive, (b) rooted in actual, tested theories, and (c) practical (though often tough to implement). It advances a set of ideas that are different from those about which most people will already have read, and this sometimes makes the ideas challenging -- sometimes to understand, but certainly to implement. However, difficult as these ideas may be, they are both valid and essential to the understanding and management of healthy organizations. I have found that most books about issues in management either talk down to the reader or over-simplify complex issues for the sake of popularity. If you want an easy book with popular ideas that are immediately understandable by anyone, sound like common sense, and make you immediately feel good, then this book probably is not for you. This book *is* for you if you want a book that: (a) tells the truth, even when it might be tough to confront, (c) will challenge you to learn new ideas, and (c) will challenge you to change your organization, team, or personal style in profound ways, even when such change will be hard. If you're open to being challenged and to changing the ways in which you think and act, reading this book will, at minimum, change the way you think. If you are able to actually implement this new thinking, "The Skilled Facilitator" will also radically improve your organization, your teams, and yourself.
Very insightful and useful March 26, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The skilled facilitator introduces a facilitation approach that is based on 4 core values: Valid information, Free and informed choice, internal commitment and compassion. Most of the work on the values are based on the work of Chris Argyris and his work on Organizational Learning.
One of the key-points in the book is that most people work with a unilateral control theory-in-use. This will automatically make their facilitation in-efficient eventhough they do not realize it. The skilled facilitator approach is to try to move away from this theory-in-use and move to a "mutual learning" theory-in-use in which the facilitator tries to maximize the learning for him and his participants. The four core values provide a basis for that. Next to the core values there are 9 ground rules which are concrete enough to really act upon.
Most of the book explains the ideas behind the core values and the ground rules and shows how the ground rules influence your facilitation. This is done with scenarios in which the author shows a normal approach and a skilled facilitator alternative approach.
The book ends with a wonderful chapter on "the facilitative leader", which shows how you can combine the skilled facilitator values and ground rules and your role as a leader within the organization. This chapter alone would have been worth the book already.
I finished the book fairly quick. It's easy to read and kept me interested at all times. It also kept me thinking about the content when I was not reading it. Changing a theory-in-use is a difficult thing, but thanks to this book, I've become more aware of my own approach to facilitation and have the ability to improve it.
Great for me (techy person) March 9, 2007
When I first read this book years ago, I was a very technical IT person who preferred to work alone. I credit this book with helping to develop my people skills and making me a more effective team member.
 The Skilled Facilitator January 15, 2007
0 out of 16 found this review helpful
A good book but unfortunately both copies arrived damaged by water, one was still wet. They also smelled like rat's urine. I was able to retrieve one after a week of drying in 30 degree temperatures & turning pages every so often. The other is a total wreck. Probably should have been packaged in plastic prior to putting in the box. Disappointed.
What Facilitates Facilitator? August 14, 2004
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Many who want to be skillful facilitators are in a way "misled" by consultants, trainers or books on facilitation in the sense that techniques and recipes are cited and taught.
With many techniques and methodologies delivered, honest "facilitators" sense that they are not getting there - people do not get engaged, people among themselves are not connected.
Roger Schwarz, in his book "The Skilled Facilitator" shows that there is more to techniques, theories and methodologies. The very thinking, motives or mental models of the "facilitator" is an important part of the chemistry of the whole group.
By QuaSyLaTic, Andrew
http://www.360q.com
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