Articles & White Papers
Client Success Story: State of Vermont Homeland Security
"Having just completed the Effective Facilitator 3-day course, I can honestly say that this was the one of the best training [courses] that I have ever participated in. More than one participant has spoken to me about the time that we spent this week, working on skills that each of us had, that none of us had identified as facilitator skills and each expressed the same sentiment." Jessica Stolz, Homeland Security Exercise Planner with the State of Vermont, shared recently on her experiences with Leadership Strategies, The Effective Facilitator course and its impact on their organization.
How did you hear about Leadership Strategies?
I found Leadership Strategies online when I was looking for a company to provide my Tabletop Exercise Facilitators some skills to better their performance.
Had your company taken any other facilitation courses?
There is a standard for exercise design and evaluation and the course only touches on the skills necessary for facilitation, but it does not teach you how to do it well, so I wanted to provide my facilitators with some specific training to build their skills and confidence in what they do.
What were your company's goals with this session?
The goal was to provide my facilitators with the skills to handle the tough personalities that accompany government officials trying to tackle the hard topics of emergency preparedness and to help guide those personalities to meet objectives developed by the exercise planning committee. The other goal was to teach some of my facilitators how to keep their own opinions and beliefs out of exercise discussions.
What stood out about this course, and how was it applied inside your organization?
A lot of preparation goes into each Tabletop Exercise, so it was nice to see that all the prep we do is where the effort really should be going. For us, we use PowerPoint presentations to deliver the scenario to the participants and we hadn't used to flip charts at all. We had forgotten the basics. This course introduced us to some different tools to help alleviate some of the issues we were facing. The Exercise Planning Committee develops objectives as a part of the planning process and we never got feedback during the conduct of the exercise from the participants as to what they wanted to get out of the day. Effective Facilitator reminded us that the participants are the reason we are there and that a way to engage them would be to draw out their objective to make sure we are not wasting their time by asking them to share their day with us.
We have now integrated this into the introduction portion of the exercise. We also had a real issue with the small groups reporting out to the larger group at the end of a Module. Each small group is given 5 minutes to give a synopsis of their discussions and the challenges they faced during that module. Inevitably one of the spokesperson would report every item they talked about, so the use of the flip charts has allowed us to reign in the report out portion of the exercise. The participants are now directed to write down the top three things that were discussed and the top three challenges, if they are different. The difference these two small changes have been brought to our exercises is invaluable.
Anything else?
The course showed us that many of the things we were doing were the correct things and this course allowed us to be better at what we do. This was one of the very best courses that I have taken and all of the participants echo the same sentiment.
How did the Leadership Strategies' Effective Facilitator course improve your company's overall work performance?
Our exercises now have more interaction at the start of the exercise where before the course there was a lot of presenting and not much engagement. The use of the "Action, Decisions and Issues" boards has allowed participants to walk away from the exercise with tasks in hand. I think we have become more efficient at our process because of the skills we have learned from this course.
back to top
