The Essence of Facilitation is Making It Easier. (Facilitation Friday #3)
Learn the three powerful questions that can inform all of your meeting and workshop design and facilitation efforts.
Mindsets and methods.
Principles and practices.
Tool and techniques.
Beliefs and behaviors.
This 2024 weekly series of Facilitation Friday essays explores all these topics, but let’s begin with something more fundamental: defining the essence of facilitation.
Let me suggest it is contained in the word itself: facile and action … actions that make it easier.
These three simple words—making it easier—can inform every choice we make in our advance design of a session and its materials, as well as our real-time responses to what unfolds in a group. By answering three questions, you greatly increase the likelihood of a successful session design and facilitation.
Let’s unpack each of these questions. To help you follow along, I suggest downloading this two-page PDF worksheet I use in most of my facilitation workshops. The first page includes some sample responses highlighted in this essay. The second page omits them so that you might use it for own efforts.
1. What do you want to make easier? In general? Specifically?
You likely will want to make some things easier in every meeting or workshop you facilitate. Possibilities include:
thoughtful discussions and deliberations
diverse perspectives and open-minded thinking
efficient and effective use of time
relevant content and meaningful application of it
respectful disagreement
active participation and ownership of the outcomes
Building your own inventory of these elements (and reviewing and revising it regularly) is a useful starting point. Augment it with specific responses that reflect an event’s purpose, outcomes, logistics, and convening format (in-person, virtual, or hybrid).
For example, what facilitators need to make easier will differ for a:
membership meeting or program versus a facilitated workshop at an association conference
meeting held in your office versus a retreat at an off-site locatio
strategic planning summit versus a board of directors orientation
new product development process versus a conflict mediation session
three-hour in-person workshop versus a series of three one-hour virtual workshops
Think about the conversations and gatherings you (will) facilitate. What are some of the specific things you may need or want to make easier?
2. For whom are you trying to make this easier? What do you know or need to know about them to determine what they might find easier?
You get a lot of mileage out of applying your answers to the first question alone. But adding responses to this additional question transforms an “off the rack” design to more of a custom-tailored fit, reflecting the unique composition of a specific event’s participants.
Imagine facilitating a group of nonprofit volunteers developing a strategic plan for an organization. What needs to be made easier will depend on the specific characteristics of the individuals in the group, their understanding of—and experience with—strategic planning, the session’s logistics, the nature of participants’ relationships and interactions with each other. Consider that a group:
with limited exposure to ideas and thinking outside their organization may need assistance imagining new possibilities or drawing on diverse sources for ideas and inspiration.
whose members have limited familiarity with each other may need assistance in accelerating a sense of community and trust among participants in order to speak freely and engage in creative debate.
with no experience doing strategic planning may need basic education in terminology, concepts, and processes.
with limited resources may need insights into how others in similar situations create the future while managing the present.
only convening virtually may need a longer session broken into smaller modules to maintain attention and focus.
No doubt you already have some ideas about what to make easier for the people and sessions you facilitate. I generally find it helpful to know participants’ demographics, extroverted and introverted tendencies, big picture and analytical orientation, knowledge level, role and seniority, interest or stake in the outcome, and their questions about the session.
Drawing on our own thinking is useful; drawing on participants’ perspectives is even more so. Facilitators can use simple surveys (and individual interviews in some instances) to identify what support participants think they (or others in the group) might find beneficial. Regardless of what information you gather, we can’t know for certain if our planned approaches will indeed make things easier for participants when they engage with them. Real-time adjustments often are necessary.
My surveys or interviews usually include a brief restatement of the desired outcomes for the session, the work required, and any or all of these questions:
When you’ve been a part of similar efforts, what helped make them successful?
When you think about the work and the intended outcomes, what challenges or barriers, if any, might we need to work around or address? How might we do so?
What would make it easier for you to fully contribute to this work? What information might you want in advance to help you prepare? What discussions or interactions with others during the session would you find most helpful?
What do you think other participants might need in order to contribute their best effort to this gathering?
Collecting participants insights can help build their ownership for the outcomes and the sense that their time and contributions are valued. They are more likely to respect the process when they feel their input and perspectives are respected.
3. How might you apply the answers to questions #1 and #2 in your design and facilitation choices? What options are available to you before, during, and after the event?
The answers to the first two questions provide you a wealth of insight and information to inform your choices about the session’s design, the related advance communications and pre-work, some of the real-time moments that may surface and require your intervention, and the potential follow-up efforts to consider.
Honestly? You likely have more to consider than is actionable. You’ll need prioritize the elements you think are most critical for the specific facilitation effort, the ones that will most influence your session design. Once done, you’re ready to draft you’re the agenda or content flow for the session, as well as the formats, tools, and techniques you’ll use.
For each format, activity, or process you select to include in your draft design, I encourage you to identify at least one alternative, a backup plan you can shift to seamlessly if what’s happening in real-time suggests it may be best to do so. We’ll dig deeper into session design, format choices, and these “adapt and adjust” moments in subsequent posts.
Bottom Line?
The essence of facilitation is making it easier. Three simple, but powerful words.
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras (Built to Last) might call them facilitation’s core purpose. Simon Sinek (Start With Why) might suggest they are the WHY at the center of his Golden Circle.
I consider them to be both for my work, as well as the essence of facilitation. I draw on them constantly throughout the design and facilitation of every event or conversation in which I am involved. Subsequent essays will call on them again to further our understanding of effective session design and facilitation.
Getting in Action
Use the blank planning worksheet in the Making It Easier PDF to help plan a future facilitation effort. Or, answer the questions for one you recently completed and see if your responses make you rethink how you approached that event.
Think of a common facilitation effort in your organization (i.e., staff meeting). Invite a few colleagues to answer the Making It Easier worksheet questions for that gathering. Then join together and discuss your respective responses.
Develop a short list of baseline questions you’ll ask of meeting or workshop participants in the future.
© Facilitate Better and Jeffrey Cufaude. All rights reserved.
To affordably license this content for reprint on your site or in electronic or print communications or to contact me regarding customized facilitation skills workshops or consultations, complete this form.