Step 1

Understand the Role of a Facilitator

You’ve probably had some experience working in a group setting at one time or another. Groups, a basic work unit of organizations, are often tasked with providing a range of perspectives on an issue, solving problems, or coordinating complex work processes.

For many people, the experience is a mixed bag. At times, group members work well together—their thoughts, ideas, and approaches on how to get something done are similar, and the work flows. At other times the team flounders, struggling to identify basic goals and objectives, never coming to agreement, and eventually disbanding, feeling frustrated. What differentiates the successful groups from the inefficient ones? Facilitation.

What Is Facilitation?

Facilitation is the art of moving a group of people through meetings, planning sessions, or training, and successfully achieving a specific goal. Typically, the facilitator has no decision-making authority within a group but guides the group to work more efficiently together, create synergy, generate new ideas, and gain consensus. How do facilitators accomplish all of this? By helping to improve a group’s processes—how they talk to one another, identify and solve problems, make decisions, and handle conflict.

You don’t have to be a professional facilitator to be asked to facilitate a group. Facilitators come from many backgrounds and may hold various roles within or external to an organization, such as leaders, managers, consultants, coaches, trainers, and formal facilitators. Anyone can appoint or hire a facilitator, for any type of meeting. You may be asked by a senior manager to mediate an internal meeting of your peers; as an executive, you may be asked to facilitate a series of meetings with a group in another department; you may be asked to facilitate a virtual meeting for a team that is scattered around the world and have never met; you may be asked as a volunteer to facilitate a community meeting or a meeting for a nonprofit that is important to you. And, of course, there’s an entire industry of professional facilitators hired for meetings of all shapes and sizes.

Whatever the occasion, facilitation skills are essential for all professionals dealing with any kind of work group, including management, executive boards, senior leadership, task forces, committees, and project teams. The fact is, facilitation skills are assumed to be part of every professional’s business acumen in today’s work environment.

What Are the Differences Among Facilitators, Trainers, and Presenters?

Facilitators assist teams in their meetings to improve how the team works together and comes to decisions, ensuring every voice is heard and conflicts are successfully resolved. In comparison, a presenter provides information to the group, typically in a one-sided delivery to an audience; for example, a presenter may report annual sales numbers or new HR policies to a group of employees. Trainers are also responsible for imparting information to their audience, but their goal is for the group to comprehend and retain the material, so training sessions are usually more interactive than a presentation. Trainers and presenters are also typically considered authorities on their subjects, but facilitators don’t need to have any special knowledge about the subject of the meeting. Facilitators focus on the group dynamics and processes. Tool 1-1 overviews some differences in roles and responsibilities between trainers and presenters on the one hand and facilitators on the other.

Effective facilitators are accountable to the group; therefore, the facilitator must earn their trust. It’s a different role from that of a presenter or trainer, where there is a clear and obvious separation between the students and the instructor, and in which the presenter is positioned as an expert. In that situation, the learners are merely passive recipients of the knowledge. In contrast, facilitators operate as impartial peers to participants; they must earn trust not through subject matter expertise, but their ability to successfully guide discussion and consensus while getting down into things alongside participants.

TOOL 1-1

TRAINERS, PRESENTERS, AND FACILITATORS

Roles and Skills of a Facilitator

Facilitators wear many hats during a meeting—from managing the clock to making sure no one person dominates the meeting—all of which are critical to creating an effective experience. No matter which hats you wear, it is imperative that you remain objective when guiding the group. Skilled facilitators strive for excellence in three main areas: managing the facilitation process, acting as a resource, and remaining neutral.

Managing the facilitation process includes:

• following the agenda

• keeping members on task

• guiding the flow of contributions

• striving for consensus

• focusing on problem solving

• rewarding and motivating group members.

The facilitator acts as a resource to the group. This involves:

• advising on problem-solving techniques

• coaching for successful group behaviors and processes

• protecting group members from personal attacks.

It is essential that the facilitator remain neutral. This entails:

• staying emotionally uninvolved

• keeping out of the spotlight

• becoming invisible when the group is facilitating itself

• withholding personal opinions about the subject matter.

Facilitator Skills

Facilitators can come from any background and a variety of experience levels. The best facilitators, however, demonstrate the following skills.

Listening—a facilitator needs to listen actively and hear what every team member is saying.

Questioning—a facilitator should be skilled in asking questions. Good questions are open ended and stimulate discussion.

Problem solving—a facilitator should be skilled at applying group problem-solving techniques, including:

• defining the problem

• determining the cause

• considering a range of solutions

• weighing advantages and disadvantages of solutions

• selecting the best solution

• implementing the solution

• evaluating the results.

Resolving conflict—a facilitator should recognize that conflict among group members is natural and, as long as it’s expressed politely, should not suppress it. Indeed, it should be expected and dealt with constructively.

Using a participative style—a facilitator should be able to encourage all team members to actively engage and contribute in meetings. This includes creating an atmosphere in which group members are willing to share their feelings and opinions. This does not mean the facilitator should offer opinions on the content of the meeting, however.

Accepting others—a facilitator should maintain an open mind and not criticize the ideas and suggestions of group members.

Empathizing—a facilitator should be able to “walk a mile in another’s shoes” to understand the team members’ feelings.

Leading—a facilitator must be able to keep participants focused and the discussion on target.

Extra Considerations for Virtual Facilitators

Meetings are not always held in person; increasingly companies are taking advantage of the many virtual meeting platforms to conduct meetings via videoconferencing tools. The role of a facilitator of a virtual meeting (a meeting that uses technology to gather a group of people who cannot meet in person because of distance or schedules) remains the same but is perhaps even more difficult. As a virtual facilitator, there are two additional considerations:

Focus on clear, concise communication. The lack of in-person communication makes building team rapport more difficult. Take care to make sure every participant has a chance to comment; consider keeping a list of participants nearby and making tally marks each time one speaks. If someone hasn’t spoken in a while, ask for their comments by name. Also, do not let any one person dominate the discussion. During in-person meetings, participants can let someone know if they’ve been speaking too often or too long with body language, including shifting in their seats, rolling eyes, and beginning side conversations. In the absence of these gestures, it may fall to the facilitator to let a participant know when it’s time to let someone else make a comment. Finally, ask questions to ensure the group has a common understanding of the issues; for example, “To summarize the last several minutes, we believe an increased social media presence should be the top priority. Is that correct?”

Ensure the processes are working. Try to incorporate at least two check-in points with the group to make sure the meeting flow and the technology is working for everyone. Ask once, about 30 minutes after the meeting has started, if anyone is having problems with the technology, hearing any speaker, or feeling lost. Check in again halfway through the meeting to make sure everyone is engaged and that the meeting processes are working for all participants.

How Is a Facilitator Chosen?

Facilitators can be internal resources—from inside the company that’s holding the meeting—or external, hired or appointed from outside the company. There are pros and cons to each type.

Sometimes, senior executives are appointed to facilitate a meeting. In addition to their experience, they may bring deep knowledge about the company, the issue at hand, and the decisions that would most benefit the company. Ironically, however, they can be among the worst facilitators because many people may be afraid to speak up in their presence. Participants may refrain from sharing their own thoughts, especially if they conflict with the senior leader’s. Also, if a senior team member is expected to participate in the meeting, it’s not a good idea for them to automatically be given the role of facilitator; it’s too difficult to be both a fully functioning participant and a good facilitator.

If a senior leader isn’t appropriate, the facilitator could be someone else within the company; choosing someone internal means the facilitator may understand the issues more quickly, saving time and money. In fact, companies often already have several individuals who have natural facilitation skills or have had facilitation training, although that might not be their primary job. This works if the internal facilitator is not part of the team who is meeting. Someone who is involved with the content of the meeting may have a hard time remaining neutral and may allow team members to go down a rabbit hole rather than sticking to the agenda.

If the outcome of the meeting is critical, time is of the essence, an unbiased leader is needed, and the team’s full cooperation is necessary, a professional facilitator will bring the skills to get the job done. However, professional facilitators will require more time to learn about the company and the context for the meeting. Professional facilitators will also add an expense.

What Types of Meetings Require Facilitation?

There are a variety of meeting types, several of which produce better outcomes when a facilitator, either internal or external, is used.

• Standard weekly meetings—Typically, these meetings do not require a facilitator. Highly functional teams, however, may appoint rotating facilitators, where the role shifts from one team member to the next each week.

• Decision-making meetings—These are also known as “critical outcome meetings,” where the decisions or next steps affect the company in a major way. Use a facilitator, though preferably not someone who has a stake in the game, to keep the conversation productive and reach a decision with maximum buy-in from the group.

• A meeting where neutrality is important—As objective moderators, good facilitators can quickly earn the group’s trust. Their objectivity also increases participation from the group and buy-in for the final decision.

• Informational meetings—If the goal of the meeting is to present information to a group of people quickly, rather than to gather input or gain buy-in, a facilitator is typically not necessary.

• Creative meetings—Sometimes a group of people need to get creative to solve a problem that has no obvious solution. A good facilitator will assist with brainstorming, managing the range of ideas created, and keep processes on track to eventually reach a conclusion.

Facilitators can be used for one-time meetings, or they may be called on to lead a series of meetings. Sometimes it takes more than one meeting to achieve the goal; a facilitator could meet with the same group of people several times or could meet with different groups of people all involved in the same issue. Although a wide range of circumstances benefit from a facilitator, all require the same skills.

Now that you have an appreciation of what a facilitator does and the responsibilities that accompany the role, use Tool 1-2 to evaluate your effectiveness and identify areas in which you can enhance your skills.

TOOL 1-2

FACILITATOR SELF-ASSESSMENT

The Next Step

The next step in the process involves working with the client or primary contact to clarify the business objectives and the goals for the facilitation session, and to create an initial agenda.