Facilitation has been a passion of mine for over 30 years. I believe that facilitation skills are essential skills in everything we do—they are truly people skills and leadership skills. In the seventies and eighties we thought that Facilitators provided added value so organizations needed to develop a cadre of facilitators housed in a facilitation department. This cadre would facilitate workshops throughout the organization. What we found was that facilitation grew to be a required skill set for many other jobs. Few companies have job descriptions for “Facilitators.” What they do have are many other jobs—project managers, business analysts, trainers, and leaders—that require facilitation skills. The original idea of creating cadres of facilitators is now viewed as giving all employees the skills to effectively facilitate, no matter what their roles are within an organization. Who knew that facilitation skills would turn out to be the skill set of the twenty-first century?

If you have not developed facilitation skills in your work, you need to do that now. Technology grows at a rapid rate but having People Skills ties it to your job and life—i.e., Facilitator Skills. More than half of all projects fail due to poor people skills of the project manager. Since every job requires working with people, you need to learn facilitation skills.

Artie Mahal has taken this very large topic and condensed it into a comprehensive overview of facilitation, its use, and its importance in any position or job. His book is easily read due to his use of graphics and clear language. He covers when and how facilitation helps as a group facilitator, learning facilitator, and as a facilitative leader. Artie provides practical advice for anyone who wants to delve further into the field and develop his or her abilities. He provides tools and templates that are clear and easy to use in developing your workshop and your career. His anecdotes are helpful in grasping concepts and seeing how facilitation has worked.

Chapters 6 (Tools) and 12 (Tools Library), describe a plethora of tools and their uses in easy to follow directions. Chapter 11 (Self-Development) provides sound advice regarding developing your career. Chapter 9 (Cross Cultural Facilitation) provides an effective understanding of the effect of cultures on workshops and work, and provides effective insights into how to understand culture and how to avoid common blunders.

If you are new to facilitation, wanting to understand how facilitation fits into your work life, or looking for guidance on how to grow your facilitation practice, this book will help you. If you want to enhance your career, this book will help you—I have never met anyone with effective facilitator skills who didn’t do better in his or her career than someone without facilitator skills, regardless of the career. Enjoy the reading.

Gary Rush, IAF CPF

Chicago, IL, USA