Two Master Keys that Help Participants Contribute More Value (Facilitation Friday #51)
These two questions make it easier for participants to offer more facilitative and more valuable contributions to discussions and decisions.
Remember, anyone can—and everyone should—make facilitative contributions. Effective facilitation helps equip meeting and workshop participants to do so by giving them conversational Master Keys.
Master keys unlock every door.
They are incredibly powerful.
How can facilitators unlock the potential that rests within a group of people to be more facilitative when participating in meeting and workshop discussions? You can offer them two questions for self-exploration, ones that when asked, answered, and acted upon often function as personal master keys to making more valuable contributions:
What facilitative contributions can I make to this conversation that will advance better discussions or decisions?
What factors do I need to consider to successfully make those contributions?
In my experience, individuals who thoughtfully consider these questions and then act on their answers are more vital contributors to group work regardless of the group composition, its purpose, or the individual's prescribed role in it. Like a Master Key, the questions are universal in value. Let's dig a bit deeper into each one.
What contribution can I make in this conversation to advance our collective work?
Answering this question requires participants to mentally step outside the group and assess its current reality without judgment, much as a facilitator might:
What is happening?
What is being said?
How are people interacting?
What is the mix of participation (both extroverted and introverted)?
Whose voices are not being heard?
What perspectives are not present among the actual participants?
Where does agreement or disagreement exist?
Where is there understanding and where might there be confusion?
What's absent from the discussions?
Answers to these questions (and others you might generate for—or with—them) will help participants identify what the group may need to make progress. They can then consider what contribution they might make to what they identified as needed. This transitions them to the second Master Key question.
What factors should I consider to successfully make my identified contribution(s)?
Individual contributions occur within a context and culture. Participants can use the following questions to think about the possible actions they identified and how they might engage successfully:
What is the culture in which this group operates, as well as the culture of the group itself?
What trust and social capital have I built with group members and which ones?
How alike or different is the contribution I want to make from how I normally act in this group? How might this affect how it will be perceived or received?
How might my default style help or inhibit me successfully making the contribution I've identified?
How might I modify my tone, expression, language, et al in order to have people truly hear the value of my contribution(s)?
What, if any, observable behavior and understood data can I link my contribution to and how might I build on what others have shared?
Whose voice(s) might I amplify and support in order to advance better discussions and decisions?
Working with these two Master Key questions and making more facilitative contributions may seem unnatural for some participants. You may find it helpful to first engage participants in a discussion that elicits their commitment to making facilitative contributions.
I often share the questions for each Master Key in this PDF that they can reference. At appropriate moments, you might stop a session and invite participants to reflect on the questions in order to jumpstart them making more facilitative contributions. The questions also are effective for self-assessment and group discussion during an end-of-session evaluation.
Master Keys: Not Just for Participants
These Master Key questions are among the many that we can ask ourselves when facilitating in order to identify how we might make it easier for better discussions and decisions.
Have a situation you can’t figure out how to unlock? When all else fails, consider consulting a "locksmith", someone whose personal qualities and/or facilitation experience might help you with a stubborn group process lock for which you seek a possible key.
Contact me if a one-hour customized consultation coaching call is of interest.
Bottom Line?
Equipping participants with conversational Master Keys increases the odds that they will make more facilitative and more valuable contributions to discussions and decisions. Effective facilitators use them to do the same with their own efforts.
Getting in Action
Draw on the conversational Master Keys to inform your own contributions as a participant in a meeting or workshop. Reflect on your efforts and identify any lessons learned that can inform your subsequent efforts, either as a participant or as a facilitator.
Identify additional self-assessment questions to add to those provided for each of the Master Keys, ones you think might help participants make more facilitative contributions.
Think about meetings and workshops you facilitate. Determine how you could incorporate the Master Keys concept and questions in those sessions and how you might elicit the strongest commitment from participants for their use.
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