Facilitating a strategy setting session, change management session or any other training session requires skill and expertise.
What is Facilitation?
Facilitation is a word that is often misused or confused with presentations. It is used in many different situations not necessarily relevant to the definition of facilitation. Typical phrases like “My manager facilitated our group today…..”, when it was merely a meeting; “the trainer facilitated our three day course” when he/she was merely instructing; “our HR consultant facilitated the problem we have in our team” when they merely played a consultation role.
What then is facilitation? In other words, what are the important things facilitators do? What should a facilitator of learning do?
I introduce clients to the concept of facilitation and more specifically train them in the competencies necessary to facilitate effective sessions by providing an understanding of the key concepts, tools and behaviours involved.
Definition of Facilitation
A facilitator is someone who skilfully helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without taking a particular position in the discussion. The facilitator will try to assist the group in achieving a consensus on any disagreements that pre-exist or emerge in the meeting so that it has a strong basis for future action. The role has been likened to that of a midwife who assists in the process of creation but is not the producer of the end result. Wikipedia
An individual who enables groups and organisations to work more effectively; to collaborate and achieve synergy. She or he is a ‘content neutral’ party who, by not taking sides or expressing or advocating a point of view during the meeting, can advocate for fair, open and inclusive procedures to accomplish the group’s work. Wikipedia
What is the job of the facilitator?
The job of the generic facilitator is to help the team to identify and resolve questions about roles, goals, norms, decision making and processes. It might include the following:
Roles:
- Will there be a facilitator of training during the meeting?
- What is the facilitator of training’s role?
- What is expected of each member?
- What are the roles of experts that join the training?
- Is the role of the more senior members different from that of the more junior ones?
Norms:
- When will the team meet, start and finish?
- Will the team start on time and end on time?
- Will it start without everyone being present?
Goals:
- What is the purpose of the team?
- What will it accomplish in the present meeting?
- What are the specific results that it is trying to achieve?
Processes:
- What steps will the team follow in answering a question, resolving an issue, or solving a problem?
- What rational problem-solving tool will a team use and how will it use it?
- Will the team evaluate its performance at the meeting?
- How and when will it evaluate its performance?
Decision Making:
- How will decisions be made? By voting? By consensus?
- Is the team ready to make a decision?
- Is everyone on the team prepared to support the decision?
Facilitation training includes supervised activities and practice sessions as well as preparing and using workshop materials and facilitator aids. Workshop plans are extremely useful for these as they can also be appropriate for lectures, to focus and give direction to the presentation. Together with facilitator’s notes they could also help a colleague deliver the session instead, should the need arise.
As a matter of good practice, a workshop plan ought to comprise at least of the following elements:
- Workshop Title
- Submitted By
- Program/Department/Responsible Person
- Level/Learner Group
- Subject/s
- Duration
- Description
- Purpose
- Workshop Specific Outcomes
- Materials
- Procedure
- Assessment
- Resources
- Developed
Facilitation is just that – facilitation. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that you cannot solve other people’s problems for them. No matter how sure you are of what the right thing to do is or how much insight you think you have into their problems, other people must come to their own decisions about what they should do and achieve their own insights into the situation and themselves.
So how do you respond to ensure that other people will make their own decisions and gain their own insights?
When other people want to discuss a problem or concern of theirs with you there are many ways in which you can respond:
- Giving information/instructions, advising and evaluating;
- Analysing and interpreting;
- Reassuring and supporting;
- Questioning and probing;
- Acknowledging;
- Summarising; and
- Clarifying and reflecting (understanding).
The trained facilitator needs to guide participants and learners towards learning and decision making and questioning provides an important role. Questions can stimulate participants at a session to discover something that was previously unknown to him or her.
The questions that the facilitator uses therefore should be a skilful combination of open-ended and specific questions, for example:
- “How do you feel about this situation?”
- “How could we approach this situation?”
- “Would you mind elaborating on that? I’m not sure it is clear to most of us.”
- “Is this what you mean?”
- “Could you give us an example of what you mean?”
There are three questioning skills to learn and use as a facilitator that is covered in the comprehensive training:
- Asking questions
- Handling the answers to your questions; and
- Responding to questions directed to the facilitator.
In summary, the facilitation training includes :
- Voice Quality
- Body Language
- Eye Contact
- Facial Expressions
- Posture, Movement and Gestures
- Personal Appearance
- Handling Potentially Problematic Situations and
- A Final Ten Facilitator Tips
Also:
- Exploring definitions and meanings of Facilitation
- Handing the Mechanics of Facilitation; and
- Dealing with the Dynamics of Facilitation