Tips & Tools for the New Facilitator

Lisa McGregor-Mirghani leads the sisters through facilitation.

At our June Sisterhood meeting, fellow sister Lisa McGregor-Mirghani led a most meta of meetings: she facilitated a discussion about facilitation.

To facilitate, Lisa explained, is “to ease a process.” Or more formally, facilitation is “the act of helping other people to deal with a process or reach an agreement or solution without getting directly involved in the process, discussion, etc. yourself” (Cambridge Dictionary). Over the course of two hours, Lisa shared a number of tips, techniques, and resources to help us help other with complex conversations. Here we share the highlights.

Facilitation Tips

• Get clear agreement/direction on the objective(s) from the organizers. What does success look like? What’s the end result? Perhaps agreement or an Action Plan?
• Stay objective and neutral. A facilitator should not be a participant.
• Key logistics include: 1) Have an agenda. 2) Assign a timekeeper. 3) Agree on ground rules at the beginning. 4) Have a cheat sheet available for yourself.
• When planning your agenda, take the following details and needs into account: overall amount of time you have available, number and length of breaks, number and type of activities, and also the number of participants. Also find common ground, and plan ahead!
• Arm yourself with a variety of tools: poster sheets, sticky notes, stickers, markers, scissors, tape, etc. Lisa recommends having a “facilitator bag” with all your possible supplies collected and ready to go.
• Start with an icebreaker to acquaint people and get them comfortable with one another.
• Encourage EVERYONE’S input — especially the quiet ones.
• Keep people engaged by speaking loudly and clearly and moving around.
• Likewise, get participants moving at various intervals to maintain their energy.
• Document the results in a simple and clear way.
• Deal effectively with difficult personalities — the chatty Kathys or pushy Pats of the world. Steer them toward meaningful contributions so they don’t dominate the discussion.

Facilitation Resources

• Private company with a surprising number of free resources and tips: https://www.mindtools.com/
• Facilitation guide with good ideas for different activities.: https://seedsforchange.org.uk/tools.pdf
• Detailed facilitator guide by the University of Wisconsin. Lots of good ideas for activities for ice breakers, discussion sessions, action planning, etc. https://oqi.wisc.edu/resourcelibrary/uploads/resources/Facilitator%20Tool%20Kit.pdf

Facilitation Approaches or Methods (to name a few)

• Appreciative Inquiry (an approach that starts with strengths, rather than from a problem or deficit): https://appreciativeinquiry.champlain.edu/
• World Café (where the group as a whole determines ideas or solutions for various topics): http://www.theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/world-cafe-method/
• Brainstorming (define the questions, encourage ideation, vote on ideas): https://sphhp.buffalo.edu/cat/kt4tt/best-practices/need-to-knowledge-ntk-model/ntk-commercial-devices/master-list-of-tools/business-tools/brainstorming.html
• Open Space (more elaborate form of World Cafe): http://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/

Want to learn more? Drop us a line at spcsisterhoodchronicles@gmail.com and we’ll put you in touch with Lisa!