The Anatomy of a Good Facilitator
Q: What are the characteristics and practices of a great facilitator?
A: This is a question posed a few times to date and its possibilities never fail to paralyse me. It has had enough time to simmer into a coherent pattern, and using energy from an afternoon conversation about this, I have decided to organise my response in writing.
Until this time, I had what were principles of facilitation I practice, but this invites a participants' perspective and its relationship to the facilitator's behind-the-scenes take on why that is.
But first, I will reduce the scope and ambition of this question to this:
Q: What makes a good facilitator?
A: Parking practice aside, which deserves a curriculum in itself, I decided to subsume characteristics into sort-of pillars describing a good facilitator.
Part of my mid-year review involves a scan of feedback from sponsors over the past six months, and what I remember of specific positive feedback. The other part of my review is feedback from my mentors and those who see how it runs under the hood. I trust their intuition and their expertise, and I believe this will make a well-rounded observation on what I believe makes a good facilitator.
All this to say, this summary is work-in-progress and something to build on as different experiences elapse. Before I launch into an X-steps listicle, I'll start from the very outset to give context to the deep tissue.
On the Surface
Participants who have gone through a positive experience tend to describe the description as unexpectedly "collaborative" describing both the process and other participants, "aligning" when surprised by how much in common a diverse group can share, "fun" as far as professionals can go.
Specific anecdotes from sponsors include some tough characters, usually senior executives, who walk in the day with scepticism, and during the course of the workshop, begin to display behaviours which surprise them: they are engaged, cooperative, laughing, and look like they are enjoying themselves. My delight is hearing accounts of participants who are shocked by the more pleasant side of difficult characters they have not yet seen. I can sense the nervous laughter during the sessions, but take care that bureaucracy stays at the door.
The other descriptors include "open" and "honesty", again, describing both the process, participants and sponsors. "Challenging", "complex" describe the problem they are learning to solve, and "thinking outside the box" expresses their mind space.
All of these, and more, are the how participants leave the workshop they felt on the whole went great. Now to address the other side of the coin.
Under the Hood
I hear this from practitioners I respect, which is: to participants, we do not seem to do very much. The only apparent work I do, apart from graphically facilitating group debriefs, is room set up, reset work stations in between exercises, sometimes serve lunch if we're working through the hour, and pack up.
It is not apparent that deliberate preparation goes into every physical, material, place, emotional and intellectual thought process. Wires are not meant to be seen or understood when they pull away from the experience.
This moves me on to the listicle. To caveat, these are values and characteristics I will work hard for and aspire to what makes a good facilitator:
1. A good facilitator is precise.
Workshops, or any problem-seeking/finding expression for that matter, require intuitive investigation. This serves to get under the skin of the very matter; to nail the exact brief requires a relentless and unapologetic pursuit for it, normally by asking questions which abstract and stretch, play with the data given. I'd say 70% of a good workshop is finding clarity in the problem, and the precise landing.
This precision guides the design process. The facilitator's design holds the workshop, by holding, I mean more like a hug which loosely wrangles the chaos, more than a strongman's deadlift. Every input serves the purpose. Nothing is there by accident; including the thoughts which run through participants' minds. Exercises will adapt to the group during the day, but as long as the landing is clear, your design will bring you there with precision. This applies to programmes that extend beyond workshops.
2. A good facilitator listens.
A good facilitator listens deeply to navigate complexity with intuition. From the very beginning, and coupled with deep listening and curiosity, a good facilitator is able to take in volumes of new, complex information, and cut through to the problem. Often the problem is not explicitly stated, even after several dispensations of why's, what you often hear is not what the sponsor truly needs to solve. Listening deeply is hearing what people are really saying but not speaking out loud.
This applies in-session as well; a good facilitator listens generatively to synthesise the group's voice on-the-spot. Kelvy Bird summarises this well from the angle of scribing:
...we sense into and help surface the highest potentiality for the systems we serve...
3. A good facilitator believes...
...in people. One of the mantras I bring to my workshops is the belief that every person is a whole, creative and resource individual who has the solution. This is one of the hardest truth for sponsors to grasp: I have seen some try to take control out of ego, anxiety, not understanding that the more they exert control, the poorer the results will be. In a way, it lives up to classical management theory that people become what you entrust them with. I see this over and over again; when you trust they are able, they can, and they will outperform. Your role is to give them the conditions and tools to get there.
...in the process. Otherwise known as the principles of design. Facilitators are not locked into their straws (detailed plans) but they have a development arc which if they believe is a good design will guide the group to its precise outcome. This is because a lot of thinking, preparation, absorbing contingencies and unknowns are part of the design, and the direction is clear.
...in beauty. Call it UX, experience design, or whatever, but it is creating an elegant solution which might look like a palace of spaghetti (in this case, pages of a straw with a long paper trail of sketch notes) on the underside, which participants will never feel or be aware about in the least. The engineering of an ah-ha moment coupled with the spontaneity life breathes into it. Effortless, marvellous, and somewhat mysterious.
4. A good facilitator is independent...
...of content. A good facilitator does not have to stay out of content as far as it informs design and helps the group towards its outcome. Content is there to serve the group's, not their own outcomes. If the facilitator is not a content expert, they are less likely to plug their views into the session. However, a facilitator conversant in content allows them to navigate discussions better through pivoting questions and synthesis.
...of people. Group curation is important for optimal outcomes. A good facilitator is aware of the levels of knowledge and power in the room, though they are set aside during the session: no one is better or more influential than anyone else if we wish for every participant to make an equal contribution.
...of outcome. A good facilitator surrenders their desire to the group's outcome. Content experts who double hat as a facilitator in their own field struggle with this. The ability to hold back and trust the group to arrive at their learnings is not for most people. One case turned into a demanding teacher, mostly talking at, rather than educating the session.
Equally, if a sponsor is not able to let go of his preconceived solutions from the outset, they either the workshop has little meaning for a collective outcome or the facilitator becomes a tool for manipulation. We draw an ethical line on this. A facilitated session is deeply affecting and will not be used to push a sole agenda without the group's alignment.
6. A good facilitator is insatiably curious.
Curiosity about people and their thought processes is paramount. Facilitation life is over when you stop being curious. Curiosity is an intrinsic value to openness, and like improvising, it requires you to be hyper-attentive to the elements in your environment.
Csikszentmihalyi calls this state being in flow: in practice, that closing voice of defensiveness has no space to operate because your mind is trained constantly on why and how others interact with content, the space and each other. When you genuinely listen, you have no inner dialogue that interferes with the intensity you give to the room. Your mind is constantly looking for what improvisers call 'offers', the energy, themes, ideas, which accelerate the group to their outcome which override your tactical processes.
5. A good facilitator is creative.
Another way to think about this is in terms of adaptability. A good facilitator is highly adaptive to their environment while influencing it. Looking at this like tight feedback loops, the facilitator feeds back to the group in real time so the group is able to learn quickly and adapt towards their goals in an accelerated way: whether it is learning to work with a new group for the first time, or even learning about the problem they are trying to solve, and sometimes both at the same time.
When working with people towards a precise outcome, a good facilitator is able to sculpt both content and process so that her design will bring them there; it sounds simple but complexities are found in
i) missing information, i.e. who's showing up
ii) unapparent information, i.e. who knows what and
iii) unpredictability, i.e. collective dynamic and synergies.
Borrowing from architecture, a good facilitator is able to sandbox their blueprint to explore several contingencies and purpose parameters, then work out the design details of wiring, interior, furniture, and where people will move about or gather. Likewise, designing for a facilitated session requires creatively abstract information at a meta level, and exercising creativity at every level of detail that cascades down, like workshop exercises, group settings, room layout, walls, and type of pens, feel, colour.
Working across subjects, there is a call for intellectual flexibility and sometimes contortion. The fact is there is only so much to know in so little time, so creativity is applied under constraints - how does one curate the knowledge required for the group given to produce a meaningful outcome, accommodating what we do not know about their levels of knowledge.
7. A good facilitator is improvises well.
Prefacing this statement, a good facilitator has access to several tools to improvise from. Equally, she is also able to create from constraints. These are symbiotic: the more she has available, the more she has to play with even when she has less freedom.
In context of precision, a good facilitator also knows how to source, abstract, and redesign content that will move the group's thinking tracks, and relational tracks. They are willing to be present to the moment, and when they moment calls for it, release their own preconceived designs, and take up what the group offers in line with the higher purpose.
Worth mentioning is embodiment, and other visual, audio facilities. The body and other tools are also sensors, receiving and emitting information; improv work is a good way to become connected to your body language which does more than you can say to move the room.
The Ultimate Quest
So all that said, what do I think makes a good facilitator: it is their store of creativity and curiosity to design precise human experiences, and outcomes for a group of people. At the very heart, it is about individuals who are a collective as capable of more.
Not unique to facilitation, but a good facilitator also inspires others to develop their styles because it is joyfully productive, and give the news like gospel to their professional and personal communities.
This can't be all and there is so much more to say about group curation, collaboration, how to practice the craft, in-session flying, and design spokes. One of my greatest fascinations with facilitation is the way it will continue to evolve with the needs of the world; after all, the greatest catalyst for human advancement are the questions which shape them, and what better way to do this than through human (dare I say human-machine?) collaboration.
Let's see what the future holds. I will revisit this when more clarity blossoms.
