Facilitators are those who help each participant think in the best possible way, who lead the group conversation and act as a guide. The task is to make the conversation as effective as possible. To do this, you need to encourage participants fully, promote mutual understanding, and cultivate a sense of shared responsibility.
Facilitators structure the conversation and, if necessary, intervene in the discussion, helping to establish the basic rules of communication. For example, they decide how the members of the group will interact with each other, how much time is allowed to speak and how the final decision will be made. They also supervise the relations within the group: prevent conflicts and attacks, minimize the dominance of one or two participants and make sure that everyone can express his/her opinion.
Principles of Facilitation
- Neutrality in the work
The facilitator should not express their opinion, make value judgments or intervene in the meeting in any constructive way. The facilitator's expression of their point of view can damage the process and turn it in a direction that the group participants are not yet ready for.
- Respecting and maintaining an atmosphere of trust
Participants have to feel safe to speak freely, that they can be heard and listened to, and that their participation is important, in order for the meeting to be effective. Care needs to be taken to ensure that discussions do not turn personal, that jokes and remarks are not put off, that no one makes fun of other people's suggestions - only a productive, healthy working atmosphere that is focused on the task at hand.
- Equality of participants
Each person who participates in the facilitation process is equal to the other, regardless of his or her role in the group or the organization (e.g., a rank-and-file employee or a unit leader). Each participant has the right to speak on the given topic.
- Belief in the group
An orchestra can play music without a conductor, but a conductor without an orchestra cannot. The facilitator is the guide and helper, the group is the main resource, so belief in the group's expertise, their skills and ability to solve the problem at hand is an important part of a successful process.
Common Difficulties of Facilitation and How to Handle Them
Problem 1. Do we really need this meeting?
It's important to start by figuring out whether a meeting is needed at all or not.
When meetings are most likely not necessary
❌ Someone alone reads the report in front of everyone else — have them videotape the report or write the text.
❌ Need to decide on a minor thing on which nothing fundamentally depends. We discuss it in the chat room and get on with it.
❌ Everyone takes turns telling their part — have them write a slide each in the overall presentation and put it all together.
❌ Someone alone has to make one big difficult decision. Then they should load all the information into it in writing, and let them make the decision themselves.
❌ No one understands anything, the situation is uncertain. Then first gather all the information and decide, and then decide if a meeting is necessary.
The solution is to transfer the meeting into an asynchronous state.
When a meeting is exactly necessary
- to develop a joint plan of action,
- to make a decision that can be influenced by different people,
- sessions (usually creative) that benefint from the diversity and number of views
Problem 2: combinig two roles
A barrier that most teamleaders who act as facilitators at the same time may encounter is the need to somehow combine these roles during the meeting
Tip 1: Speak up last
This way, your opinion as the leader has less influence on the others. The team feels more relaxed in the discussion, it is easier to express thoughts and agree, because the discussion is more horizontal and therefore safer.
Tip 2: Try to keep your opinion to yourself
Your opinion during the discussion can narrow the flow of thoughts and become an emotional barrier. Have faith in your team - they can handle it, especially if you help them.
Tip 3: Change your hats! (Use the Belbin/De Bono role mechanic)
The six hats are six different ways of thinking or just six different roles that can be set depending on the goals of the meeting. Change hats, try on different roles to learn how to think in different ways depending on the situation. Hats can be changed not only by the participants, but also by the leader!
In De Bono's system: the red hat is emotion, black is criticism, yellow is optimism, green is creativity, blue is thought management, and white is facts and figures.
Tip 4: Use the silent brainstorming method
It helps you think without being guided by the opinions of opinion leaders. You can use it in two formats.
The simple version: the brainstorming process takes place individually, everyone writes down ideas on a piece of paper, and then voices them after a given period of time.
A more complicated version: participants independently write down as many ideas as possible to the question asked by the leader, and then, passing their ideas to the neighbor to their right and receiving a list of ideas from the neighbor to their left, get acquainted with them and develop their ideas. After a few steps, all the post-its with ideas are collected and they are discussed and sorted.
Tip 5: Delegate difficult facilitation
Sometimes this is a necessary measure to make the process run comfortably and as efficiently as possible, don't be afraid of it.
Tip 6: If the decision is yours, discuss the risks with the team
If a situation arises in which there are not many ideas and yours is in the spotlight, ask others to get its minuses, risks, and difficulties. So that later, when you are commiting to it, it will be clear for everyone. That way the decision will be more informed by the team.
Problem 3. Different Participants of the Meeting
Many companies have the practice of meetings in which some of the participants invited take a purely passive role. Usually they just listen, often don't even turn on their cameras, and work or go about their business at the same time.
Such participants are unlikely to get anything useful out of the meeting or add anything important to it. Multitasking in this way is most often a myth.
What to do and who to call for a meeting?
- Call people who can influence the decision.
- Who will face the consequences
- Who have sufficient competence
If the person is blatantly uninvolved or doesn't see the point of the meeting, don't worry, let him or her go if possible. You won't be helpful against your will in any case, if there is no interest.
If you as a team leader and facilitator realized during the meeting that you do not know the purpose and role of one of the participants, it's better to admit your mistake in time and let the person go, give him/her the opportunity to focus on the important tasks.
ESVP Exercise
The main task of the ESVP technique is to identify who is present at the meeting (and, if possible, to kick out the prisoners).
It will help you to:
- identify at an early stage the level of interest of the team and adjust your actions/tones
- set the mood for the session emotionally
- increase involvement by taking on additional responsibility for those who choose to take an active role at the start
Kind of participants:
Vacationers are members who came to a meeting to hang out. They want to socialize, have fun, and take a break from work. Sometimes they create a groovy atmosphere and actively joke around, sometimes they are more in a passive role. Not the most constructive participant, but pretty safe;
Prisoners do not want to be at the meeting. They come because the meeting is mandatory. They feel they have to, even though it's not really the case sometimes. Can distract everyone and sabotage, bad for the group dynamics.
Explorers are a participant who has come up with a request, problem, or ideas, and is willing to actively explore options for a solution;
Shoppers are less active, but still highly constructive participant. Usually these participants are not ready to take leadership positions, but they are actively willing to express opinions and develop others' ideas. They came with an empty cart, willing to "buy" others' ideas.
How to Use it
- Use our frame in the world to visually demonstrate the types of participants and take a vote
- Explain why you are doing this technique (e.g., to see if the meeting is relevant to everyone). Tell the group about the types of participants.
- Organize a vote
If there are no prisoners and you are happy with the balance of the participants, you can move on. If any group is over- or under-represented (e.g., few explorers or many campers), you can ask the group how to adapt the meeting so that they can be more active.
What to Do If There Are Prisoners?
In short, you need to make sure there are none. If the prisoners showed up on their own after the vote, you can ask them if there is any chance of doing something to make them become buyers, for example.
If not, you have to perform miracles of communication! Let them know that you are sorry that they perceive the meeting this way, and you would be glad if everyone seemed to find the meeting useful. But since it happened, you are in no position to hold the inmates to the detriment of the rest of the team, so if the inmates want to, they can quietly leave under your responsibility without any punishment. Suggest that they leave now, or a little later during the meeting or break, if they want to make it less conspicuous.
Sometimes in this case the prisoners leave. And sometimes they stay and become valuable participants in the discussion. Why? Because they feel that staying in the meeting is their own choice, not a necessity.
Problem 4. Timing
It is often difficult to understand:
- how much of the meeting should take,
- How to distribute time between activities,
- how not to go over the planned limits.
Tip 1. Plan the meeting!
Schedule the activities, prescribing what stage should take an average and worst case scenario. When you schedule the meeting this way, the likelihood of something important being left out of the discussion due to lack of time is greatly reduced.
Example of planning meeting timings:
Tip 2. Timing pessimism
Sounds like Murphy's Law, which says that what can go wrong will go wrong. It's the same with timings: what can go wrong is likely to go wrong. Don't assume the best case scenario when planning a meeting.
Tip 3. Don't be afraid to take responsibility for push the participants into timing
As a rule of thumb: tell participants when block time is up and they need to move on. Mark the timings in the process, so that the team is aware of the limits of the discussion - in this case the excess will be better filtered out by the participants themselves.
It happens that it is not possible to move on to the next stage until the previous one has been completed, and the time for it has already run out. In this case, it is necessary to act according to the situation: sometimes it is better to get the desired result and put an additional meeting.
But for this to happen as rarely as possible, it is important for the facilitator to focus people on the task at hand. Don't hesitate to articulate their ideas in terms of the issue at hand.
A practical tip for situations where the meeting drags on: Divide the responsibility between the participants in the discussion and you as the facilitator. Ask participants directly what to do in this situation. "Ladies and gentlemen, we've discussed this and that so much, our goal is this. We're not getting anywhere near it. What are we going to do?" So the group actively speaks out and shows its vision.
Although the facilitator focuses on getting the team to achieve the goals in the best way possible, he can't take on that responsibility completely, but always shares it with the team. And this is one of the ways to nurture autonomy and responsibility in the team. These are very important elements of the team culture without which development is impossible.
Problem 5. “Useless Meetings”
Often participants do not feel the meaning of meetings and say that meetings really do not lead to the expected changes.
This is mainly due to two reasons:
- The form of the meetings: they are boring, toxic, and monotonous
The goals may be great, and the people are right, but still no one wants to get involved and the process is sabotaged. In this case, it often means that the meeting form was chosen incorrectly, it doesn't fit the goal or the team, it creates barriers, and it doesn't motivate participants to get involved.
Change the mechanics. Involve people, be attentive to their reactions to formats. Analyze the task and the audience before planning a meeting.
- Meeting results don't solidify decisions, changes, or just don't reach the team
The outcome of the meeting should be agreements, and they should be specific. Sometimes even if the meeting is useful and everyone seems to be happy, but agreements are made for the sake of agreements, they are empty and do not move the team. Team resources are not taken into account, the person in charge is not chosen. It turns out something like "we do the same thing, but harder.
At the end of the meeting, it is desirable to have a plan of action. It can be anchored in the backlog of the team, in the place where it is convenient to lead the tasks. It's often handy to fill out a table: What? Who? When?
Template for you to work out tasks and steps to take after the meeting:
📚 Here you can find the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner — the book we rely on in this article and advise you to read it in its entirety.
