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Facilitation services
Secretariat Australia Pty Ltd provides comprehensive facilitation services. In any one project, the facilitation process used by Secretariat Australia Pty Ltd involves a number of stages:
- Work with the client to establish the type of workshop required, number of participants, needs of participants, workshop goals and expected outputs and outcomes.
- Make venue, catering, transport and accommodation arrangements.
- Carry out background research on the topic and the client’s core work activities.
- Create, disseminate and synthesise a pre-workshop survey to establish baseline knowledge and expectations of participants.
- Present findings of pre-workshop survey to client and, if required, participants.
- Design workshop segments in consultation with client and in the light of survey results.
- Ensure venue is appropriate to workshop needs and that it will encourage active participation (with round tables, breakout rooms, caucusing areas, etc).
- Facilitate workshop using a range of process tools
- Prepare post-workshop client report
- Issue and receive facilitator performance evaluation report from client
Achieving the best workshop outcome
As facilitators, Secretariat Australia Pty Ltd will play an active role in achieving the best possible meeting outcomes. Using a range of facilitation process tools and high-participation techniques, Secretariat Australia Pty Ltd will assist groups bring forward contributions and achieve consensus on contentious issues, refine terms of reference, formulate action plans, define common goals and make decisions.
Secretariat Australia Pty Ltd makes a strong distinction between process and content. While its facilitators appreciate the need to have at least a fundamental understanding of the topic being discussed, they also appreciate their role as experts in process. This means that they will:
- constantly track time and keep the workshop’s agenda on time;
- track each participant’s contributions to ensure equity in participation and actively manage non-productive digressions;
- actively manage conflict and mediate opposing opinions, while remaining neutral to the arguments put forward;
- use a range of facilitation tools to elicit information from participants;
- actively listen, paraphrase and ask questions to stimulate participant thinking;
- be perceptive and flexible in order to suggest changes to the agenda that would result in more positive or consensus outcomes;
- summarise and give feedback.
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