Testimonial for work carried out facilitating workshops to determine an Information Systems strategy for Tasman District Council

Dave Rees, 3rd Eye Facilitation was contracted to facilitate a series of workshops as part of the updating of the Tasman District Council Information Services Strategy in October 2012. This involved the design, organisation and running of two rounds of workshops involving Council staff from all areas of the organisation, including the CEO and senior management team. The first round required staff to review the current environment at Council while the second round looked to develop a strategic vision for future service delivery.

Dave ensured the workshops were organised with a pre-arranged set of deliverables to ensure effective outcomes. He assisted the Information Services Manager to develop a series of activities to drive discussion and produce visual confirmation for trends, directions and priorities. Dave also ensured that workshops stayed on track, stayed on time, and that all groups got a chance to actively participate in the discussion.

Having Dave facilitating the workshops freed me up to participate and be solely devoted to the discussion and messages coming from the groups. Much positive feedback was received from the attendees and a great, positive outcome was attained.

Dave provided a cost-effective solution that allowed us to move forward quickly, I would happily use his services for similar review and strategy sessions requiring positive but focussed group discussion and outcomes in the future.

Peter Darlington

Information Services Manager

Tasman District Council

Facilitation vs Mediation

The skills are similar for both so what's the difference? I think that if there was more facilitation in the world there'd be less need for mediation. Facilitation is all about getting to a point of agreement whereas mediation is about building bridges when attempts at agreement have failed.

Assessing Certified Professional Facilitators in Shenzhen, China

I was recently one of five assessors who spent three days assessing professional facilitators from around the Asian region. The candidates were from China, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Malaysia. The assessors were from the UK, Australia, the USA, Malaysia and New Zealand. How international is that!

The candidates were a great cross section from the worlds of banking, insurance, technology, consultancy and information management and all presented their unique take on facilitation. This gave everyone, including the assessors, the chance to learn something new as well as playing their part in a rigorous peer assessment process.

The assessment was held under the auspices of the International Association of Facilitators - www.iaf-world.org.