Group Facilitation (Leadership Essay Example)

Repetition makes a habit; over the course of a students’ life, their experience of a group had instilled upon them that a leader is someone that does the “whole” task. Instead of having each group members contribute, majority of members enjoys riding the boat than rowing along with their leader. However, we should challenge this perceived idea and give ourselves that push to contribute instead of riding. Looking at it, doing things through exerted efforts from each of the member results to an efficient and effective workflow process. 

“The whole is something else than the sum of its parts.” – Kurt Koffka (1886-1941)

This statement of Koffka had influenced the current philosophy when it comes to teaming (Cordray, 2019) and it surely is transforming the misled view of groups where the leader is responsible and does the whole task “alone”. However, for a leader who does not have experience, things can get quite difficult. At this moment, a group facilitator can be a guide that will help the whole group in completing the task and achieve their desired goal.

Group facilitators are individuals who are experts when it comes to pulling out the groups’ potential. Their goal is to foster responsibility, bring the best out of the team and create an amiable environment that encourages participation (MTa Learning, 2019). Therefore, certain qualities of a facilitator including being unbiased, flexible, active listener, connector, fearless, know how to create a good environment and have high social skills are necessary. Out of all the qualities, unbiased and social skills are of importance as they generally encompass the totality of the other qualities. Being unbiased helps the group to willingly express their opinions, criticism and other inputs freely without worrying of being ignored. Social skills of a facilitator allow the team to connect with them and to their members, meaning the facilitator can act as the bridge. By challenging the group, the facilitator encourages critical thinking and create novel solutions to their problem. This also helps the group to be more participative that in the end will help them achieve their goal. As such, at the end of the facilitating, the group can achieve their goal despite minor conflict that is essential and develop themselves on the process.

In summary, group facilitators help the group to be their best and achieve their goals; in order to do that, a facilitator must possess qualities that are essential on the process such as being unbiased and have high social skills to serve as a bridge of the group and foster effective communication. We should always just remember that doing things in group is more fruitful than when we do things alone.