Dear friends,

This is a special day for the Master Facilitator Journal. This is our 200th issue of this ezine delivered weekly for nearly four years now as a resource for group workers worldwide! It's been quite a journey, and has brought me so many new friends, colleagues, and opportunities for which I'm truly grateful.

I wanted to make this 200th issue about something special. Something noteworthy that not only reflects and celebrates all that's came before, but that also presents something useful and positive that we can put to use today. What is that I asked? A theme or a metaphor usually presents itself when I ask this question, but today, nothing.

So back to basics I went for inspiration and I found a list of core values for facilitators I came up with some time ago. We spend so much time helping our groups clarify and act on their values, it seems that our values as group leaders ought to be important as well. Not as values to impose on our participants, but values that support us in being of the greatest service to the groups we work with.

As we prepare to launch FacilitatorU.com as a membership site this summer, we are getting clearer that facilitation is often best talked and taught about as a skill set within a larger context. For instance, people are more interested in improving the results groups accomplish in the context of business, teaching, training, consulting, coaching, etc., than they are in learning about group process skills in general. So leaders who embrace core values that inform a facilitative mind set are likely to see their groups achieve their best within whichever context they exist.

If you are using facilitation skills in a "non-facilitator" capacity, we'd love to hear about how you are using your skills and how they are being received in this arena. We'd also love to get your feedback on our membership concept and offering. Please click here to have a look at it.

Finally, we want give thank you, our devoted readers for your continued support. Your many emails, phone calls, thoughtful feedback, encouragement, ideas, and accolades, provided the much needed energy we need to forge ahead, without which we would not have made it this far. Thank you for your continued support!