Side by Side Leadership: Side by Side Coaching

To receive articles by email, click here
to subscribe to the on-line Leadership Community.

A message from Dr. Dennis Romig....

"I hope and expect that you will achieve great success when you learn and apply the principles of Side by Side Leadership. Please visit the on-line coaching section of our site frequently. We will continue to report the latest research and conclusions to show leaders how to facilitate improved productivity."

Side by Side Facilitation and the STAMP Model

Team Facilitation is the art of gaining total participation using structured processes, best thinking, creativity, and knowledge to achieve shared goals. A facilitator is one who employees the techniques of facilitation to achieve certain, predetermined shared goals or objectives. These learning objectives may be cognitive or behavioral. A facilitator is a catalyst who stimulates a group to work together effectively as a team. Facilitators use the skills of teaching, group dynamics, learning motivation, and questioning to assist the team members to form a Side by Side team. The different skills listed above require many behavioral patterns from the facilitator. These behaviors used by the facilitator result in different behaviors from the team members. It is the facilitator's task to identify a need, select the behaviors or results that are desired, and then select the facilitator behaviors that will elicit those results. In facilitating, both the team members and the facilitator are the basic resources from which the group learns. It is the collective experience, knowledge, ideas, insights and solutions of everyone from which they learn. The facilitator's role is to pull knowledge from the team members as much as possible, to arrange for circumstances and situations in which ideas can be processed by the team members, and where the team, as a group, practices and applies the skills and tools they learn in Side by Side Teamwork. Serving as a Side by Side Facilitator is probably the most important, most complex, and most time-consuming role that a leader assumes with teams. The STAMP Facilitation model includes five different styles or behavioral patterns that team facilitators can assume as they work side by side with teams to help them develop.
The STAMP Facilitation Model
Structurer: When the team is new and has no or few teamwork skills, the facilitator provides structures that help the team be successful while team members are learning the new teamwork skills they currently do not have. Examples of structures for new teams include the team charter, and leading team meetings using meeting objectives and an agenda. Trainer: In this style the facilitator provides the training that is needed by the team in order to function independently of an outside facilitator. Assistant: This style requires the most time and commitment from the facilitator. The team has been trained, but needs help, and lots of it, to apply the new skills in the real world. For example, the facilitator observes the team as it leads its own team meetings, and provides reinforcement, and corrects mistakes in a supportive manner. All assistance is offered in the context of helping the team meet it's team goals. Mentor: When the team demonstrates competency in the basic team skills in pressure situations. The facilitator provides support, observes for problems and mastery, listens, and asks questions to help the team solve problems. The relationship is collaborative and side by side, not directive. Partner: The facilitator uses the partner style when the team demonstrates competency in advanced applications of team skills. The facilitator may consult with the team to help solve very difficult problems related to teams and teamwork. He may ask the team or team members to teach other teams. The acronym STAMP comes from the first letters of the five styles of Side by Side Facilitation. Just as a post stamp allows the passage of mail from one place to another, the STAMP Facilitation model provides passage from one level of team development to higher levels. The STAMP model places a lasting imprint (stamp) on the team's performance. STAMP stands for these facilitator styles. Control group research provides the basis of this facilitation model. As individuals and teams move from little or no knowledge and skills about specific team components, to more and more competencies, the facilitator changes the way he or she works side by side with them. This simple STAMP model allows the facilitator to flexibly respond to the uneven and natural growth patterns of teams and team members. Side by Side Facilitators work themselves out of a job as quickly as possible. They take a group of people with many conflicting goals and ways of doing the work, and help form them into an empowered team with shared goals. Side by Side Team Facilitators stay linked to the teams they develop, and assistant them when they lose momentum and breakthrough functioning. Facilitating is not a one-time event, and the need for facilitators does not disappear. They are part of the organizational system that supports teams and empowerment.

Please contact Hillary Keith for permission to reproduce Side by Side Leadership® articles from the on-line Leadership Community site: E-mail: community@sidebyside.com Phone: 1-800-204-3118.

Previous Side by Side Articles

-Side by Side Facilitation and the STAMP Model

-How Leaders Jump Start A New Year of Great Achievements

-Side by Side Team Leadership® Creates 100% Commitment: Part 2

-Inspiration for Side by Side Leadership

-Side by Side Team Leadership to Achieve 100% Commitment

-Side by Side Knowledge Leadership to Achieve Personal and Organizational Goals

-Integrity and Personal Leadership

-Specific actions for the three remaining spheres: Interpersonal, Team, and Organizational Leadership

-The Five Spheres of Leadership, Part I

-Leader's Be Calm Out There

-How Focused is Your Organization's or Team's Vision?