“I just wanted to let you know, your role as a consultant is important to me as you often catch things I miss, which is the way it should work. Your active involvement on our conference calls has helped us a lot as you are more sensitive in many cases to personality issues, and you have good ideas.”

I write to thank you for your facilitation of our yearlong process, which was nothing short of amazing. Your facilitation of our diverse motivations and opinions and desired outcomes resulted in our coming together to develop a consensus. I did not think it was possible for all of us to arrive at a single vision. But somehow, you managed the distrust, the strong personalities, skepticism and passions and led us to a place where we could come up with a vision that respected each faction’s deeply held beliefs for what needed to be part of a final outcome.

 You achieved all this by helping us remain civil, respectful and even adjourning meetings relatively on time. When I look back on it, you were willing to absorb tons of the frustration and irritation we were casting around the room. You took it on yourself, and kept it from dividing us further. I never thought you could do it.  But you did.  And I give you all the credit that a consensus was reached.