Facilitation

Facilitation Services

Strategic Planning Meetings | Staff and Team Building Retreats | Environmental and Public Policy Facilitation

Professional facilitation allows leaders to focus on the mission of the meeting or event, not its schedule. A facilitator designs, guides and manages the process so that all participants can contribute meaningfully.

If you’re looking for a professional and experienced facilitator in the DC metro area, call Alternative Resolutions today.

Our Approach to Facilitation

At Alternative Resolutions, our facilitators conduct a thorough convening process to determine client needs, project objectives and desired outcomes. We will work with the meeting sponsor to identify stakeholders, design an agenda, develop ground rules and meeting goals and purpose. If the outcome is a decision, our facilitator will work with the meeting sponsor to determine how decisions will be made. If a record of the meeting is necessary we will figure out the best method for establishing the group memory of the event. Our facilitators’ meetings are effective, efficient and get results. Our facilitation assignments have produced winning teams that exceed their business goals and staff retreats that produce collaborative solutions.

Facilitation for Strategic Planning Meetings

When there are large scale issues that a team or organization needs to discuss and debate or when the old strategic plan is no longer relevant you may want to have a meeting, perhaps off site, to discuss these critical issues. Alternatively, you may serve on a board of directors or a community council where a new roster of board members needs to be integrated with the seasoned members of the board. These meetings can present difficult challenges and often call for an experienced facilitator with patience and insight in human behavior as well as skill in managing group behavior.

We have facilitated strategic planning meetings for federal and county agencies which have produced consensus decisions. For another client there were multiple issues and conflicts caused by organizational change and leadership and budgetary challenges. Alternative Resolutions designed and facilitated a series of staff and management meetings using a structured problem solving process. Our facilitators achieved consensus decisions on priority issues including adoption of innovative staff recommendations.

Ready to learn more? If you’re looking for a seasoned strategic planning facilitator in the Maryland, N. Virginia, Washington, DC area, call Alternative Resolutions today to see how we can help.

Facilitation for Staff and Team Building Retreats

You may be a new manager with some exciting ideas to introduce to your team. Or your team may be having some issues with the change in management style from your predecessor. You may want to charter a new intra-departmental team in an organization that is accustomed to operating in silos. There may be conflict percolating just below the surface.

These situations call for careful planning and an experienced facilitator who is able to engender trust and encourage open and honest information exchange. And at Alternative Resolutions, we have over 30 years of experience facilitating these types of workplace, team building and planning meetings.

Some of our facilitators’ accomplishments include:

• Designing and facilitating a kick-off meeting for a new intra-departmental team, which resulted in a team charter including performance goals, accountability standards, work approach and measures of success.
• Conducting a needs assessment to determine issues relating to team effectiveness. We led the group through a structured process to identify team functions, responsibilities, strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, and goals, resulting in enhanced organizational effectiveness, increased teamwork, improved communication and customer service, and an agreed upon action plan.
• Facilitated team meeting to define the focus of the marketing and creative strategy for a small business and developed consensus in a half day meeting on desired changes to their brand, kicking off a culture shift for the firm, an unintended but positive by-product

Interested in learning more? If you’re looking for an experienced staff/team building and retreats facilitator in the Maryland, N. Virginia, Washington, DC area, call Alternative Resolutions today to see how we can help your organization.

Environmental and Public Policy Facilitation

When important large scale public policy decisions are at stake you need a facilitator who is experienced at designing an appropriate strategy and process as well as someone who understands the relevant laws, regulations, policies and organizational culture. Among Ms. Kandell’s many environmental and public policy facilitation accomplishments are the following:

• Managed environmental enforcement projects for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for nine years and developed expertise in numerous environmental programs.
• At EPA, Ms. Kandell developed an interest, expertise and hands-on experience with alternative dispute resolution, both the policy and the practice.
• Prosecuted and defended hazardous waste and air pollution cases as Chief Assistant City Solicitor in Philadelphia
• Worked in environmental compliance for a law firm. We designed and facilitated a national symposium to identify policy issues regarding biosecurity issues which resulted in agreement among academic, association, industry and government leaders on critical issues and common principles.
• Facilitated dozens of Agency-wide workgroup meetings at EPA resulting in consensus on an EPA hazardous waste policy.
• Conducted a case assessment and convened and facilitated meeting of multiple and diverse stakeholder groups regarding cost allocation for clean-up of contamination at hazardous waste landfill.
• Facilitated multiparty stakeholder meeting on iron and steel effluent guideline development which resulted in an open dialogue of divergent views.

At Alternative Resolutions, we have 10 years of experience facilitating large scale multiparty meetings in the environmental arena.