Team Retreats and Processes * When is a retreat useful? * When do you need an outside facilitator? * Facilitator and participant responsibilities * What is your approach to retreats? * Sample team projects Audio Clips Why an outside consultant? (30 secs.) AIFF Format Please note that this file may take some time to download. For help listening to the audio, please click here. About my work Mary Dingee Fillmore, Director Clients Projects	When should we use an outside facilitator? If you have a trained facilitator in-house, by all means use her or him if the issues are straightforward, and people are producing and participating well together. It is always a good idea to spread facilitation skills around, and develop internal capacity to run meetings as well as possible. The person should have a strong reputation as someone who is respected, and unaligned. No matter how capable they are, however, you may want to consider an outsider: When you want to make the most of an opportunity to reflect, plan, or move forward with a group of people, by involving someone whose expertise is exactly that art, or/and When you need someone neutral to look objectively at a situation and help you figure out how to make a working team a high performance team, or help a group of individuals become a team, or/and When feelings are running high, and you need an outside party to help everyone ventilate, get past their emotions and work effectively together, or/and When your group includes diverse people with widely disparate views, situations, and biases, who must somehow work together, or/and When your group is stalled and doesn't seem to get much done, so that people feel the same issues coming up again and again, or/and When people dread meetings and don't want to come because they know it will be deja vu all over again, or/and When you have a sinking feeling that something is keeping your organization from doing its best, and you're not sure what it is. If you think you can't afford an outside facilitator, remember that the cost of a single wasted meeting of even ten people almost always far exceeds the cost of facilitation. The cost is even higher if there is an ongoing problem situation, or if people simply aren't performing to capacity.
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