Facilitation: Enabling Team Communication & Driving Change

The quality of our products is decided by the quality of the communication between colleagues. You’ll likely recognize it: you have an elaborate discussion with your team, that truly touched on important things, but afterwards you realize you left with a different interpretation than your colleague.

Most issues and incidents can be traced back to assumptions, and miscommunications somewhere in the process. As scrum masters, quality coaches and testers, we are ideally placed to facilitate and promote conversations.

Yet: how do we facilitate effectively and what can we do to improve communication? In this workshop, Marianne introduces a 6-step model to facilitate conversations, team sessions and meetings. Adapted from a 1:1 coaching model, this facilitation model will enable you to create clarity on topic, encourage explicit buy-in and allows for a targeted deep-dive that creates better discussions and allows for all voices to be heard. Participants practice applying the model by facilitating a series of conversations in groups around their Quality Challenges, combining practicing their facilitation skills with participants' current work challenges. It allows participants to experience the ease and effectiveness of the model, increase focus in conversation, understand the importance of consent and psychological safety, and highlight accountability upon conclusion.

Additionally, participants are encouraged to share and learn from each other in sharing their own challenges and solutions with regards to quality. Participants leave with an understanding of the core principles in facilitation, knowledge on how to tackle common communication problems as well as a hands-on technique they can apply immediately upon returning to their teams.