“This training is so skills-based, you leave feeling confident and able to use these techniques toward your goal.” – Eric Hessel, vice president of programs
As vice president of programs for the Hendricks County Community Foundation, Eric Hessel has been in his share of meetings. He can spot one that’s well run, and he knows the consequences of one that isn’t.
“When leaving a poorly facilitated meeting,” he says, “you’re thinking, ‘ugh, I never want to come back.’”
So when Hessel led a committee to rebuild his foundation’s scholarship program from scratch, he used tools and techniques that he learned in Purdue Extension’s three-day Facilitative Leadership workshop to draw out ideas, encourage discussion, and guide participants toward inclusive decisions and actionable plans.
Using green, yellow and red dots to “vote” on how to weigh different criteria for the scholarship, Hessel’s group got through its agenda quickly. Over five fast-paced meetings, he didn’t lose a single committee member.
“It was visual and active, and it got us to an end result faster than if we had just sat around a table talking about it. I know some people didn’t agree with some of the things we landed on, but they felt their voice was heard in the process,” he says.
“Those are the kind of things you pick up at the Facilitative Leadership workshop.”
The workshops have drawn more than 400 Indiana participants since 2015, including Extension educators and representatives from local and state governments, education, nonprofits and coalitions, and like Hessel, community foundations.
“As we work on big, complex community issues that have a lot of different stakeholders and challenges, we saw communities needing a more inclusive and robust process to make those decisions,” says Tamara Ogle, a community development regional educator who has led the course more than 20 times.
Like several alumni of the program, Hessel has refreshed his skills as a volunteer trainer at additional Facilitative Leadership workshops.