Facilitating creativity: Shaping team processes

Facilitation is important to supporting teams in the creative process during innovation, yet our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of facilitation and its effects on team processes is still limited. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how group facilitation (both internal and external) shapes team processes with respect to teamwork, taskwork and affect. We use a case study approach coupled with protocol analysis to examine the effects of facilitator's actions on team processes as well as interactions between those processes. Our results reveal a distinct distribution of teamwork and taskwork between the facilitator and the team, such that the facilitator guides the teamwork while the team focuses on the taskwork, yet with dynamic shifting in responsibilities between facilitator and team across the duration of the process. Further, we show how a facilitator uses positive affect to mediate interactions between taskwork and teamwork during creative workshops. We contribute to theory on facilitation and team processes in innovation management by offering a novel description of how team processes are structured in a facilitated creativity setting and provide important practical implications for facilitators and managers.