Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making - 3rd Edition by Sam Kaner (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Unleash the transformative power of face to face groups

The third edition of this ground-breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well-facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole.

This fully updated edition of The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making guides readers through the struggle and the satisfaction of putting participatory values into practice, helping them to fulfill the promise of effective group decision-making. With previous editions already embraced by business and community leaders and consulting professionals around the world, this new book is even more insightful and easy to use.

New for this edition:

• 60 pages of brand new skills and tools
• Many new case examples
• Major expansion and reorganization of the advanced sections of the book.
• New chapter: Teaching A Group About Group Dynamics
• Doubled in size: Classic Facilitator Challenges.
• Substantially improved: Designing Realistic Agendas - now three chapters, with wise, insightful answers to the most vexing questions about meeting design.

From the Back Cover

"This book is an outstanding resource for tackling complex community and business challenges. We've used it both at the City of Denver and at the State of Colorado. I keep a copy on my desk for easy reference."
--Roxane White, chief of staff for Governor John Hickenlooper, State Capitol, Denver, Colorado

"Sam Kaner is one of the world's leading experts on collaboration. His grasp of the challenges and dilemmas of collaboration is superb, as are his models and methods for facilitating complex processes. Clearly written and wonderfully illustrated, this book makes difficult issues understandable and provides sound, practical guidance."
--Sandy Schuman, editor, Creating a Culture of Collaboration and founding editor, Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal

"It was a revelation to find the Facilitator's Guide and realize someone had written down the way our organization was already working organically. Using this book has allowed us to put a translatable and trainable framework around what we do. Kaner and Fisk are masters at their craft."
--Harley K. Dubois, founder, Burning Man Project

"NCDD has long listed the Facilitator's Guide as one of the best-of-the-best resources for practitioners. The field of public engagement has been deeply influenced by this seminal book."
--Sandy Heierbacher, director and co-founder, National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD)

"At Stanford University I convene an annual conference attended by hundreds of non-profit leaders. Sam Kaner's keynote presentations, based on material from this book, are consistently top-rated and likely to inspire significant organizational change."
--Regina Starr Ridley, publishing director, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Stanford University

"What a practical, sensible guide for helping groups work together in a realistic way!"
--Marvin Weisbord, consultant and author, Productive Workplaces and coauthor, Discovering Common Ground and Future Search

"In cross-functional environments where diverse perspectives are intentionally brought together to produce high-quality thinking, a highly skilled facilitator can add great value, and Sam Kaner is one of the best. The Facilitator's Guide provides a full set of models and tools to enable an organization to reap the benefits of a well facilitated, participatory decision-making process. Having seen Sam's methods in action, I can attest to their power and effectiveness."
--Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman, eBay and Omidyar Network

"Our organization employs a staff of several thousand who touch the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, in developing nations across the globe. As we build our capacity to convene and facilitate multi-stakeholder processes, we have found Sam Kaner's book and his teachings to be immensely beneficial."
--Jamie Watts, Institutional Learning and Change, CGIAR, Bioversity International, Rome, Italy

About the Author

Sam Kaner, Ph.D.?is the founder of the consulting firm Community At Work, and he has been its Executive Director since 1986.?He ?is regarded as one of the nation's leading experts on?facilitation. Over the past 20 years he has repeatedly been?a?featured speaker at the annual conferences of several professional associations, including the National Organization Development Network and the International Association of Facilitators. His corporate clients have included?Hewlett-Packard, Price Waterhouse, Visa International, Charles Schwab and Company, and many other Fortune 500 companies. His public sector clients have included the California Supreme Court, the March of Dimes, Special Olympics, Annie E Casey Foundation and many schools, community-based organizations and government agencies.

Lenny Lind?is president of CoVision, Inc. He is the co-developer of Council, a groupware system designed for facilitators.

Catherine Toldi, ?M.A. is a freelance collaboration specialist.

Sarah Fisk, PhD is a clinical psychologist, a seasoned facilitator, and a designer of participatory processes. She has been a featured speaker of the annual conferences of the National Organization Development Network and the International Association of Facilitators as well as an adjunct professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. Sarah's corporate clients have included Hewlett-Packard, Agilent, Visa International, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Inc. and many other Fortune 500 businesses. Her public sector clients have included the March of Dimes, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, EarthIsland Institute, City of Edmonton, Alberta, and numerous educational and government agencies and community based organizations. Sarah has been a senior consultant with Community At Work since 1996.

Duane Berger, M.A. is co-founder of the Resource Center for Consensus Decision-Making.