The Change Forum

Interested in taking a more faciliative approach to leadership? Our 'Essentials of Facilitation' and 'Advanced Facilitation' clinics can help... Check What's On for locations and dates... Or CALL 07-4068 7591 to discuss arranging an IN-HOUSE clinic for your leader group or team...

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   Our Approach to Facilitation:

Bill Cropper, Director of The Change Forum, is an accomplished facilitator with more than 20 years practical experience helping groups at all levels from senior management to shopfloor, grapple with diverse issues, problems and challenges including strategic planning, visioning, workplace improvement, work process redesign, organisation renewal, action-learning, team renewal, community action, culture change, customer service and organisation development in a broad range of business settings.

Bill has facilitated senior management teams grappling with strategic, operational, financial, resource, environmental, HRM, structural, policy and political-level issues or to address significant business, corporate, market or sectoral problems and determine courses of action/directions/strategies. He’s run various forums with peak industry/union/government bodies to help formulate policy and evaluate program options/alternatives at national, state and local levels and also been involved in facilitating extensive rounds of stakeholder, customer and community consultation using open-space technology to assist decision-makers develop action implementation plans for a wide range of public sector organisations

Bill has personal mastery of a wide range of facilitation processes, tools and techniques, which are naturally employed in all consulting, training and workshop presentation activity. He’s designed and delivered a large array of Facilitation Skills clinics and trained thousands of executives, line managers, change leaders, trainers, business process/work redesign facilitators, project groups and work-teams, to develop the critical facilitation skills needed to collectively achieve their outcomes.

Not all Facilitators are the same... And different situations may call for a different style or approach to facilitation. You might want to consider what you are expecting from engaging a facilitator and think about some questions to ask.

   Features of The Change Forum’s approach to Facilitation include:

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Versatile and personalised: There’s no one facilitation-size fits all. Our wide-ranging facilitation experience in many different contexts enables us to design facilitation processes and session-agendas to suit your particular situation, challenges, outcomes as well as the emotional complexion of your group.

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Structured Data Collection: we record your group’s ideas, actions and information in formats that are practical, simple, useful and can be readily taken up and acted on after your session. We can also provide a report-back to debrief your group after the event.

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Easy-to-understand: Sometimes facilitation processes can be overly-complicated. We use a wide-range of track-tested tools and techniques that are robust, simple but effective and can be readily understood and used by your group. There’s no mystique or complicated processes where groups get lost. Our motto is use the simplest tool that will get the results you’re after.

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Change models and frameworks: Most facilitation is about helping groups to change, fix, improve or create something. Our extensive background in organisational, team and personal change means we have at our disposal an impressive array of models and frameworks your group can apply to analyse, clarify and act on change.

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Perspective-Sharing: facilitation is often about getting ideas out of individual’s heads and onto the table where different perspectives and ideas can be shared in a safe and criticism-free environment. We use tools that help groups tap their knowledge, learn together, arrive at mutual understanding and develop actions-ideas everyone supports.

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Dealing with dynamics. All groups need to deal with the emotional, interactional, conversational and personality/conflict issues that get in the way of effective functioning – and with our extensive background in Social and Emotional Team Intelligence we help groups work through emotions, handle difficult moments, overcome blocks to working together effectively and unleash higher potential.

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Inclusive and engaging: Getting engagement is fundamental for effective facilitation. Feedback we get often highlights our ability to get people to speak-up. We take an inclusive approach that focuses on the use of dialogue and consensus-building techniques to help groups reach workable agreements that most can actively support (no – we don’t believe consensus requires full agreement)

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Conversational Capacity-Building: Too much undirected talk can get in the way of making headway but poor conversations and destructive debate/arguments can also impede progress. We bring to our facilitation approach an extensive background in conversational coaching that can help your group raise the constructive calibre of their conversations through sharing air-time, questioning, connecting and active listening.

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Relaxed and laid-back: Often people can be tense/uptight facing facilitated situations where they don’t know what to expect. Many of our clients comment on our laid-back and relaxed style that puts people at ease, respects their psychological safety and helps encourage easier engagement and interaction.

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Action-orientation: groups want to feel they’ve made progress and see results by the end of a session. All our sessions end with action-planning and event-tracking activities that ensure people have agreed actions, priorities and accountabilities to help them to work towards the results they’re after.

 

   What People Say about Bill's Facilitation approach:

“While I was RD for Families in Central Queensland Region, Bill Cropper successfully facilitated a series of workshops for my managers and staff and subsequently coached the RMT and LFS teams working on improvement projects in our region. While Bill can be challenging at times, he is also sensitive and supportive to the needs of individuals in the group. He also showed his skills and abilities to engage and have dialogue with indigenous people in a sensitive, non-threatening and supportive manner – but not in a paternalistic way. I put this down to his South Pacific experience working with indigenous peoples in Fiji”. Ron Weatherall former Deputy Director-General, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Services.

“I really enjoy your style of facilitation Bill, as it is a well balanced mix of theory, practical and humour in a relaxed atmosphere, which makes learning much easier when it is fun! I gained more strategies, techniques and tools to further raise my self-awareness and emotional intelligence” Mickey Polkinghorne - Disability Services Queensland

”Keep doing what you are doing – I really liked your facilitation style and your manner of facilitating the group. I learned a lot, not only from the content, but also from your own style of presentation. I may even steal a couple of little activities that you used to use in some of my own facilitation.” Alison Rewald – Community Corrections Mackay

“I just that I thought you did a fantastic job. It was more beneficial than any other team building day I have attended. It is not an easy thing to come into a group of people, read the vibe and work through issues as they are raised.. It brought to the surface bottled up emotions and issues" Terri Reynolds The Benevolent Society

"Excellent day structured in a way that allowed the group to choose how it progressed which to me is great approach. It was a pleasure to have such an insightful genuine, person facilitating and I thank you for your great facilitation and I look forward to another chance to enjoy your knowledge." Charlotte, The Benevolent Society

"I appreciated the humorous way of looking at the way people work, and the way you called behaviour what it was, and didn’t step around issues. I personally like the straight-down-the-line, no-nonsense and matter-of-fact way you facilitated the team dynamic. The dialogue session got things on the table and was a freeing experience. I also think that you were respectful to everyone and their views, and were respectful when you needed to redirect team members or activities (for example, reframing in the dialogue, pointing out that asking quiet people for thoughts can hinder safety, etc). I appreciated your knowledge, expertise, and experience, I think it was reflected in the work you did. It is not easy to impress a room of psychologists and social workers (psychs in particular seem to rip these kinds of things apart), so well done to you! I also think that your personal style helped to make me feel safe. Please keep up the sense of humour, I think this really helped." Stacie Hobbs Dept of Communities

"Thank you for the insightful workshop you facilitated. I just wanted to express how blown away I was from the whole experience. I have attended many "planning days" in the past which involved some very light activities but this was a very positively overwhelming experience. I was so impressed with your quick and accurate analyses of people's responses. It was extremely intellectually stimulating and I felt like I had spent the day reading a book that I couldn't put down! Thanks again for the unforgettable experience and I will be discussing your work with many people for a long time to come." Reina Veivers Department of Communities

"Bill has developed a reputation in Australia for his creativity, innovation, energy and commitment, patience and sense of humour in a range of complex and sometimes difficult assignments. I rate his communication, presentation, negotiation and facilitation skills highly. He relates well at all levels of an organisation and develops and sustains effective working relationships. He has very highly developed analytical and conceptual skills, combined with the capacity to help others understand ideas, notions and concepts. He is able to spontaneously problem solve, think on his feet and also facilitates others in resolving complex change management problems and issues. Bill has played a lead role in management, cultural and work practice reform in this country." Viv Read former National President, AHRI & President of Australian Society for Organisational Learning

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billc@thechangeforum.com    OR    +61-(0)7-4068 7591 or Mob: +61-(0)429-687 513

 

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