Good Diversity Requires Good Facilitation for Successful Results

Focus on these key tips to avoid failure

Effective facilitation requires a leader to guide a group of participants through a structured process that results in a solution that is created and agreed upon (Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash)

It was painful. Two dozen well-paid, influential leaders in our company listening to a second boring PowerPoint presentation about things that had happened months ago. I knew the diversified assembly contained leaders, rather than managers, when one stood up and asked the facilitator whether this format was going to continue for the rest of the day.

The shocked facilitator quickly retreated to the agenda for her defense. After all, our collective boss had put her in charge of the session, it was a standard agenda, and she was good at getting a group to consensus — after all, isn’t that what all managers do?

Needless to say, things did not work out well for here that day. Facilitation is no more than a structured meeting where the meeting leader (the facilitator) brings a group of participants to a result that is understood and accepted by the group. Focusing on the basics separates the good facilitators from the average or poor facilitators.

Basic Facilitation Roles and Responsibilities

Good facilitators do a respectable job at both planning and executing their sessions, and normally excel at one or the other. Keeping the basic facilitation roles and responsibilities in mind allows the facilitator to focus during sessions and to improve in key areas between assignments. Focusing on three troubleshooting skills also helps separate the good from the average facilitator.

Facilitation has many definitions. The industry-leading definition, and the operable definition used throughout this paper, is “a facilitated session is a structured meeting in which the meeting leader (the facilitator) guides the participants through a series of predefined steps to arrive at a result that is created, understood, and accepted by all participants.

1. Prepare in advance — “who, what, when, why, where, and how.” Talk to executive sponsors, talk to specifics, do some internet research, and touch base with some subject matter experts in your network. This is more than simply preparing the agenda.

2. Plan and distribute the written agenda. There are three pieces here. Of course, putting it in writing is obvious. Planning requires talking and listening to others before you put the agenda. Distribute means transferring promptly and in an acceptable forum.

3. Define the objectives at the beginning of the event. These should be relevant and limited in number. When facilitating events that will have multiple sessions over a longer period, frame both the overall objectives and the objectives for each session.

4. Establish expectations. The ground rules. You need a few. Remember, too, that too many rules are stifling.

5. Guide the group in presenting and sharing information. Good facilitators are engaged. Avoid just sitting around when group exercises or group break-outs are occurring.

6. Provide closure and reiterate action items. Working back through the objectives from the start of the meeting is obvious. Blocking off the time and interactively doing this step is usually the hard part.

Basic Troubleshooting

There are three areas of troubleshooting skills that are common to all good facilitators. Good facilitators are respectable in all three areas. Great facilitators excel in all three subgroups.

Posting a clock or timer for each activity is often an effective technique (Photo by Sonja Langford on Unsplash)

Stay On-task and On-time. Staying on-task and on-time include:

· Remind the group of the keep-focused expectation

· Do not be afraid to directly re-focus the group on a particular agenda item

· Try to close each item or set it aside in a “parking lot” for consideration later

· Let the group decide on tradeoffs between staying on-task or on-time when issues arise

Don’t take it personally — some participants have outside agendas and/or simply like to cause disruption (Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash)

Dealing with Unproductive Behavior. Facilitators understand that some form of unproductive behavior during a session is the norm and not the exception. Some tips for dealing with unproductive behavior include:

· Use gentle and appropriate humor for redirection

· Restate the ground rules directly

· Direct questions to the individual for clarification

· Seek help from the group

· Address the issue at a break or offline

· For multi-session events, spend more one-on-one time with disruptive participants between sessions

Most people, including technical experts, do not like the risk of confrontation (Photo by James Pond on Unsplash)

Stimulating Productive Inquiry, especially related to subject matter experts (SMEs). Stimulating productive inquiry is truly both a function of planning and execution. It also requires practice and experience working in different situations. Finding the balance between SMEs that either dominate or retreat from engagement is important for discussion to be productive.

· Use probing questions

· Invite the experts to speak up

· Call on individuals in the group

· Invite debate

Moving Forward

The mistake many managers make is to believe that they are good at facilitation because they are required to manage groups of diverse people. There is much more to being a good facilitator than simply being a good manager. These tips will help move an average facilitator to a good one. Moving from good to great will be the subject of a subsequent article.