Five Keys of Facilitation
tips for harnessing creative intelligence and collaboration
Facilitation is one of those skills that we don’t always fully appreciate until something goes wrong: the conversation in a strategy meeting goes off the rails, or a brainstorming ideation session goes nowhere.
But when done well, facilitation can unlock the collective intelligence of a team to reach clarity, harness new insights, and develop breakthrough thinking.
So how do we develop good facilitation skills?
I picked up my facilitation skills on the job as a consultant and educator. I learned by watching and doing. I observed colleagues and collaborators lead successful (and unsuccessful) meetings and workshops, which led me to internalize the do’s and don’ts of facilitation.
Because of my learning journey, much of my facilitation knowledge is tacit. It’s intuitive. I go by feel.
I have taught my colleagues and students in a similar way, by immersion, having them learn by doing. Or more like throwing them into the metaphorical pool and having them facilitate their way out of it.
But maybe there is a better way.
It’s great to learn something through experience over time, but it’s also helpful for anybody trying to improve their facilitation skills to have some theory, structure, or framework as a guide.
In response to colleagues, clients, and students asking me for tips and documentation on how to think about, teach, and learn facilitation, I have developed this five T framework:
- Target
- Timing
- Topic
- Transformation
- Tasks
A single Medium post won’t provide all of the answers we need to master facilitation, but hopefully it can start you off with the right questions.
Let’s begin with Target.
There are two meanings to the word. The first one is about organizational or team goals: Where are you trying to go? What is the purpose of this meeting or workshop?
The second meaning of target has to do with meeting people where they are: What is the professional or organizational culture of the group that you are facilitating, and where are the opportunity areas for them to grow or stretch?
Let’s start with the first meaning of target.
What are the goals for the convening? What is the purpose of getting together? This seems simple, but it can take time to refine and get agreement.
Once you have an understanding, paraphrase and communicate it back. Do your hosts or clients all agree? If not, rework and refine. Or document and discuss the tensions as your target.
Is the meeting about making a decision? Is it about working out some sort of disagreement? Or envisioning and exploring new ideas?
Be explicit with your target, whether it’s reaching a decision, resolving a conflict, or generating new ideas, so participants know how to engage.
The second meaning focuses on targeting your communications approach as a facilitator to the culture of the participants.
For example, some organizations have a need to set an agenda that is calculated to the minute. If we run behind, people could get uncomfortable. In other cultures, people are okay with a more fluid, organic approach to time management if the context and topic shifts in the moment.
Take some time understanding your audience before you get started and tailor your approach accordingly.
That takes us to number two, Timing.
Our job as facilitators is to keep things on schedule. But remember, an alarm clock can also do this.
Your value as a facilitator is more than just being a human timekeeper. Timing is really about being able to switch up the agenda, to tweak the schedule as needed in real-time as the situation unfolds and evolves.
Maybe energy levels are fading, so perhaps it’s time to call an early break to help people recharge and reset, or maybe new insights require extra time to go deep. You could get consensus within the group by asking, “Do we think it is worth taking some extra time to explore this interesting new topic?”
Timing is also about pacing and the balance of voices. Are there a small minority of people dominating the conversation?
Who hasn’t spoken yet? Your job as a facilitator is also to make sure you tap into the ideas and voices of the quieter people in the room. So maybe calling them out explicitly, but also helping people with different communication styles express themselves in different ways.
Not everyone is totally comfortable and at their best in a verbal meeting and debate context. You might want to do activities where you have everybody write down their ideas silently and then share back. Set an explicit time limit for each person to share back.
Number three is Topic, which is really maybe topics plural.
There could be multiple topics of discussion, themes for consideration within a given meeting or workshop that should support the target, purpose or goal of your session.
Your job as a facilitator is to keep people on the topic. But conversations have the tendency to veer off on tangents.
Tangents that distract participants from the main topic can be seem like a waste of time. But sometimes these tangents can be useful, especially if we are thinking more divergently in an ideation or brainstorm session.
We may want to allow some of these tangents because they humanize the conversation. When people share their personal experiences (even off-topic ones), they will feel more comfortable with each other and the situation in order to make sense of things.
Through experience and familiarity with group dynamics, you will learn how much space to give to off-topic tangents, which may end up actually boosting the group morale or moving the creative process forward through serendipity.
For an example of how serendipity can inspire solutions, check out the story of honeypots and helicopters.
The fourth T is Transformation.
Transformation really is about getting from the current state to the preferred future state.
Transformation can exist on an individual level. How is an individual participant transformed by participating in your session?
It may seem like it’s a big thing to ask for, but transformation could be something small.
Maybe you’re just changing the way that people think about something. Or maybe participants are leaving the meeting with a little bit more certainty around a creative or strategic direction.
There is a fundamental principle in facilitation, storytelling and experience design: You want to go from point A to point B.
So how do you create transformation?
There are various strategies that I may explore in future posts. But as a preview, think about a progressive reveal: What are some things that you deliberately keep secret or mysterious so that people want to be more engaged in a given gathering or workshop?
The principle of the progressive reveal in storytelling is the reason why we binge-watch shows on Netflix. We want to know what happens next. A little bit of this element of mystery and uncertainty can be help bring participants into our story world and spark transformation.
In addition to a progressive reveal of story or surprise content, you can also think about a progressive ratcheting up of risk-taking. And it could be just emotional risk-taking about being vulnerable, sharing personal experiences or social risk-taking. The more small risks participants take, the more likely they will take bigger creative risks. Perhaps that risk-taking will result in a crazy silly idea actually leads to a creative breakthrough.
As a concrete example of progressive risk-taking, maybe start participants off with some simple prompts for sketching ideas or playing with LEGOs, and then ratchet it up to full-on improv games and role-play. The risk is getting out of one’s comfort zone and potential social embarrassment.
Finally, number five is Tasks.
Tasks are about action items and next steps.
Our job as facilitators is to not just make sure that the conversation and ideas flow, that there’s a balance of participation, and that things stay (more or less) on time and on topic.
But talk is (relatively) cheap. We also want to make sure that something actually happens afterward. We need action.
So what are the action items? What are the specific tasks to be done? Who is going to do them? When are they going to do them? Who sets these deadlines?
As a facilitator, offer up a verbal (or even better, visual) representation of the key points that emerged in the session. Offer up opportunities for action, and make sure that each action item has an “owner.” We have helped with the talk, now participants will need to walk the walk.
That’s it for a whirlwind tour through the five T’s of facilitation.
I’d love to get your thoughts and comments on them. They are not meant to be exhaustive of all of the things that make an excellent facilitator, but it is a starting point, and I look forward to more discussion on these topics.
Illustrations and editing support by Pratiksha Rathi
