Greetings Fellow Facilitators!

It's been several months since I've last contacted you. I hope you all had a great summer. I spent a good deal of it in Colorado on both business and pleasure. I'm now getting back into the swing of building up FacilitatorU.com and associated efforts. These include the development of joint ventures with other authors and trainers who have relevant content they want to share on our sites. If any of you have ideas for collaborative marketing, I'd love to speak with you about them.

Volunteer Needed

The book of Facilitator Profiles I told you about in previous emails has stalled a bit. I've had a hard time getting enough quality profiles at this time and have been unable to pursue possible contributors. On that note, I'm seeking a volunteer to actively recruit well-known facilitators, trainers, and authors who do substantial work with groups to be included in this book.

Job Description

* Research, seek out, and make contact with leading facilitators and trainers in the field.
* Make inquiries for book profile information via email and perform periodic follow up.
* Make occasional telephone interviews, transcribing their inputs.
* Write up profiles for each contributing expert, seeking their validation of final material.
* You'll set your own hours, but we're thinking around 10 hours/week

Skills

* Excellent telephone communication skills.
* Excellent writing and editing skills.
* Great listening skills.
* Ability and desire to work independently, self-motivated.
* Innovative and creative.
* Desire to learn.
* Personable.
* Genuine interest in facilitators and trainers
* Basic computer, Internet and email experience

Benefits

* The opportunity and foundation to get to know high profile facilitators around the world.
* A listing on the title page as editor for the book
* Opportunity to be learn about process of writing, publishing, and marketing an ebook.
* Grow your personal network
* This position could look really good on a resume.

If this position interests you, please email me at contact@FacilitatorU.com.

New Book Idea

I'm currently working on a new book idea inspired by the Random Acts of Facilitation (RAF) concept I've been working on for the past couple of years. My initial concept for the RAF material was based on the premise that anyone in a group, leader or participant alike, could positively impact the direction, focus, and consciousness of the group at any time with a momentary act of facilitation, hence the name, Random Acts of Facilitation. As it turns out, not many pure participants were attracted to this class, probably because my audience is primarily composed of facilitators..duh! Not a big surprise in retrospect.

Still, I have this desire and compelling need to get something out to the world at large--group participants to be exact--to help them more more leader-like in groups that aren't working. Here's my thinking on that:

- First, there are on average 8 times more participants in any meeting or group than their are leaders. So by definition, this is an underserved audience given the hundreds of books out there telling you how to be a better group leader, meeting conductor, etc. Sure some books commit a few pages to being a more effective participant, but I've not seen a book out there totally devoted to the guys and gals around the table, so to speak.

- Second, I think that up until recently, most of us were happy to subjugate our power to our leaders, whether they are the national, state, and community leaders, the leaders of our companies, or the leaders of meetings we attend. I'm feeling that now, more people are ready to take responsibility for self-leadership in their lives and work. If that's correct, their may be a growing interest in ideas on how to more effectively assert oneself in a meeting scenario.

- Third, I don't know anyone alive who won't agree that most of the meetings they've attended in their lives absolutely sucked. My recent research confirms that there are at least 50 Million meetings held each year around the world, with at least 80% of them poorly conducted, providing only marginal if any positive outcome. This represents an enormous productivity hole that could be corrected without too much difficulty.

OK, I've probably said enough for you to get the idea. Knowing how important a title is, the following title inspired me to move forward on the book.

If This Meeting Sucks, I'm Taking Over...
With Conscious Acts of Leadership

I originally was going to use the tagline, "With Random Acts of Facilitation," but changed it for two reasons. One, the acts aren't really random, they are well thought out and consciously applied. Two, Facilitation simply isn't well understood by the public yet. Leadership is, and it's incumbent on all of us to begin more fully exercising this capacity in whatever we're doing in our lives and work.


Will You Help?

Please tell me what you think of this idea.

- Alternative Title ideas?
- What do you like about the idea?
- What don't you like about the idea?
- Any adjustments or additions to the concept you'd suggest?
- Other comments?

Please send your inputs to contact@FacilitatorU.com.

Thanks very much for your support!

Warmest regards,

Removal Instructions Below.

Steve Davis 1.760.375.7384 1.877.768.9016 (fax) contact@FacilitatorU.com; www.FacilitatorU.com Virtual Facilitation Training and Resources......Just in Time, situation-based tools, providing what you need, when you need it.