One of the main criteria of businesses is to arrange a flawless meeting or conference. To do so, many businesses - small and large are seen taking professional help of companies offering corporate facilitation services. Facilitator is a person who is responsible for planning and implementing a seamless, organized meeting with a set of agenda ready to be discussed.
The goal of a meeting is to come out with certain positive outcomes, and a corporate facilitator helps in doing exactly this. Forum retreat is arranged by different organizations on a periodic basis in a year to discuss crucial business issues in a place away from the office premises. Now, the CEOs and COOs doesn't always take out time nor have the expertise to host meetings successfully. Thus, to avoid any kind of mismanagement a company usually contacts a facilitator.
Facilitator is a trained person responsible for organizing meetings, conferences, seminars, and such similar business get-togethers in the best possible manner and within the deadline as set by the organization. The basic difference between a facilitator and the person chairing an event is that the former only organizes the event and doesn't participate in the discussions. A facilitator remains neutral throughout the meeting and doesn't take any group's side for that matter.
Importance of Corporate Facilitation
Since the ancient times, man used various signs and symbols to communicate with his fellow beings. Later with changing time, men started organizing seminars and conferences and online webinars to discuss significant issues with the co-employees. Thus, knowledge sharing has always been there and was constantly evolving.
Custom Forum Retreats
These retreats are customized to meet the learning needs of the CEOs and the management personnel to achieve ultimate business growth. It is done by accessing various planning resources and through open communication on most complicated management issues which comes up periodically because of political and cultural problems and domestic or international economic conditions, etc.
Types of Forum or Management Retreats
Corporate facilitation retreats can be of different types from a single day forum to multi-day sessions. The length of a meeting depends entirely on the complicacy of the issues to be discussed and how many of them need to be addressed. Again, businesses can organize 4-5 mini retreats in a year in between annual retreats.
Organizations often arrange forum retreat for the executives while sometimes higher management personnel also take part. The main intention behind organizing such an event is to sharpen the leadership and management skills in order to enhance productivity and sales.
Planning a Good Facilitation Process
A good facilitator will look at the following areas before setting the agenda of an event. For example, he looks into:
- Location.
- Logistics.
- Ground Rules.
Location: The facilitator pays a lot of attention on the place where the event will take place. He tries to figure out whether the place is convenient for people to reach there without any problem; is the location has adequate transport facility easily morning or late night; is it suitable for hosting a medium or large meeting.
Logistics: An event in order to be successful requires some equipment and necessary logistics including chairs and tables, microphone, speakers, video, video camera, and so on. Besides, one has to look for arrangements such as beverages and snacks counters, and so on.
Ground Rules: Majority of programs follow some ground rules such as - a person will raise his hand to speak, one person will speak at a time, will listen attentively to the speakers, ask questions during the Q&A session, not make noise when others are talking, etc.
Author's Bio
Mark Cohen has been an organizational head for the past twenty years and he well understands the essence of corporate facilitation and forum retreat to make companies grow and develop with maximum potential.
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