This is a hybrid position that requires 3 non-consecutive days on-site in Armonk, NY or Basking Ridge, NJ, and 2 days from home. A fully remote role is not possible for this position.

The Associate Director, Strategic Facilitation will objectively lead discussions or workshops ensuring business objectives are reached efficiently and effectively. The Associate Director, Strategic Facilitation will help individuals and groups identify their purpose and articulate key actions they must take to ensure they realize their purpose, designing each experience utilizing tools and methodology that suits the required challenge, issue, and outcome. The Associate Director, Strategic Facilitation will project manage workshop outcomes as needed. The Associate Director, Strategic Facilitation will support the Director in the creation and leadership of a facilitation center of excellence and Community of Practice.

In a typical day, you will:

• Design and manage complicated engagements that span multiple places, times, or technologies. Research, understand, and predict complicated group needs and lead experiences that satisfy them. Design interactions through combining tools, time, talking, and turbulence to help people do their best work in tough environments.
• Leverage individual contribution by combining knowledge, skills and personality to facilitate trust and draw out the best in the group or situation
• Iterate complex agendas in real time to adapt to emergent group and project needs. Paraphrase back individual ideas for purposes of getting better clarity and/or to validate the speaker’s intention.
• Cultivate and create a safe and exciting atmosphere for participants. Promote constructive feedback, encouraging participants to think more broadly, deeper and wider.
• Effectively facilitate groups working in complex or challenging problem spaces, or working with specialized approaches (e.g. Agile, SCRUM, design thinking, Kaizen, Lean, Six Sigma, etc.)
• Collaborate with Project Management team to ensure workshop outcomes and proposed solutions are implemented
• Collaborate with Knowledge Management to ensure outcomes of lessons learned are archived successfully and according to any available process
• Collaborate with Organizational Effectiveness as appropriate when facilitating sessions with human resource impacts
• Plan and execute experiences that make complex power dynamics constructive, and conversations in conflict productive
• Support the Development of a Facilitation Center of Excellence
• Support the creation of a Facilitation Community of Practice to share best practices, learn from each other, and pressure test approaches and processes.
• Create approaches to upskill the organization on key methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, etc.
• Support the innovation of facilitation activities and create new facilitation frameworks and methodologies
• Coach less experienced facilitators and project managers on how to effectively facilitate sessions, next steps, outcomes and follow-up activities
• Participate in professional facilitator communities, formally or informally
• Collaborate with Global Development Shared Services functions such as GD Training, Process Excellence, BusOps/ Metrics, Project Management

To be considered, you must possess:

• Bachelor’s Degree and 10+ years of relevant project management industry experience managing large, complex projects. 5+ years of relevant facilitation and meeting and events management experience utilizing the methodology of Sigma, Lean, etc.
• Six Sigma Black Belt, Kaizen Certification
• Project management. Strong knowledge of project management methodologies to help structure, standardize and organize methods for the execution of the project. Demonstrates commitment to continuity/ sustainability of project management discipline in the organization
• Detail Oriented. Ability to pay close attention to all small particulars when working on a task or project, ensuring high quality
• Communication. Phenomenal presentation and public speaking skills, along with social and interpersonal skills including influencing, listening, written and oral presentation
• Positivity. Ability focus on the good in a situation. Sees challenges as teachable moments
• Inspiration and Motivation. The ability to exhibit high energy and confidence and to motivate and inspire
• Unbiased objectivity. Uses facts and evidence to form opinions or make judgements. Removes personal bias and emotions to arrive at decisions.
• Persistence. Ability to work through obstacles to achieve success.
• Observation. Ability to notice, analyze, discern and process information gathered from events happening around you independently of your opinion.
• Active Listening. Provides full attention with the primary purpose of understanding. Ability to read body language, and tone of voice to understand potential emotional underpinning.
• Emotional Intelligence. Ability to understand, use and manage emotions, and understand and respond to the emotions of others.
• Authenticity. Able to create environments of trust
• Stakeholder Management. Work successfully with executives and other high-impact stakeholders in uncomfortable situations
• Problem Solving. Proactively identify, analyze and resolve complex problems
• Agility. Ability to quickly and appropriately respond to, or drive change while maintaining flexibility and focus
• Critical thinking. Ability to synthesize business needs