Book excerpt: Facilitation is the art of helping others to do things for themselves. It is fundamental to the engagement challenges within the current business environment. In this revolutionary book, the first to examine the link between business facilitation and employee engagement, Mike Parkes provides practical techniques to achieve success in leading a team through using this unique method. The facilitator is external to the team, independent and objective. Business facilitation is a line manager’s role in engaging the team to take greater responsibility for the problems, issues and solutions in the workplace. Although the manager may seek to be objective, they undoubtedly have a vested interest in the outcome. This is the route to encouraging more positive engagement and empowerment, and as a result far greater business results. Drawing on real work situations, Parkes offers practical frameworks, examples and exercises that enable the reader to readily apply the ideas back in the workplace. He combines this with a thorough understanding of business facilitation and the skill of employee engagement, resulting in original material that has not only been tried, tested and proven to work but is also recognised as cutting edge by practitioners in the field. Business Facilitation captures the author’s 25 years of experience in working through challenging situations with some of the UK’s most prestigious companies including Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Royal and Sun Alliance, Deloitte, Gap, B&Q and VW Group (Volkswagen). "I have run over 500 courses using these techniques, training thousands of line managers and this book supports that training with the model that I have developed." Parkes comments on the inspiration behind Business Facilitation