What is Facilitation?

Facilitation comes from the latin facile, which mean easy. In fact, the role of a facilitator in a group setting is to “make things easy”. It involves planning, organizing, and setting or supporting rules and goals within such groups. It is my goal here to collect and share many of the tricks, techniques and practices that facilitators use in their work.

Facilitation Patterns

Safety

• [Make Mistakes]
• [Lower My Status] – When there isn’t enough trust, people feel the need to guard their status, instead of working toward common goals. Lowering your status makes it okay for everyone else to lower theirs…
• [Present A Problem]
• [Temperature] – To get a quick feeling of where a group is individually or as a whole, take their temperature. Use [“On a scale of …”] to quantify this temperature.
• [Play A Game]

Discussion

• [Talking Stick] – Keep people from talking over each other by only allowing the person holding the stick to talk.
• [Break Into Groups] – Sometimes there are too many opinions or too much to say or go through as a large group. In these cases and others, breaking into smaller groups may allow the group…
• [Direct Group Authority] – As a facilitator, you often need to change what’s going on. Get authority from the group to do so.
• [Use Cards]
• [Fishbowl] – Only people sitting in the “fishbowl” can talk. Everyone else gets to listen, but it’s easy to step into the fishbowl because there’s always a free chair. Fishbowls can allow huge…
• [Ice Breaker]
• [Define Your Role] – By defining your role up front, you set people’s expectations.
• [Ground Rules] – Certain rules and patterns of activity can be hugely beneficial to group dynamics. Guide the group to agreeing on some [Ground Rules] to guide their discussion.
• [Invite Others To Talk] – Conversations are often dominated by the few most outgoing people in a group. It is your job as a facilitator to make sure that everyone in a group feels heard.
• [Parking Lot] – Write down off topic ideas so that they don’t derail the conversation.

Organizational

• [Participants Write] – Sometimes you want to collect a lot of information from your participants quickly. In these cases, the last thing you want to be is a bottleneck. Allow your participants to write,…
• [Facilitator Writes] – By being the person that writes things down, you effectively funnel information through yourself. You slow down the conversation to the rate that you can write it down.
• [Big Visible Chart]
• [Action Items]
• [Secretary]
• [Visible Agenda] – Meetings tend to wander unless there is an agenda. Putting it on the wall allows everyone to take ownership of it and of keeping the meeting on track.
• [Retrospective]
• [3 Things] – People can only handle 3 things at a time. So structure everything in 3’s.

State Of Mind

• [No Attachments] – Every situation is different, keep no foolish consistencies, if it doesn’t work, throw it out!
• [People Hear What They Need To] – When you don’t get the response you were expecting, you can can trust that they heard exactly what they needed to hear. Furthermore, you can use their reaction as a clue…
• [I Trust You] – Trust is a choice. As a facilitator you can model that choice for your team. Choose to trust them and you’ll be amazed at what happens.
• [No Personal Agenda]
• [Put Your Distractions On The Shelf] – Ask the group to each write down any distractions and put them in an envelope with their name on it. Put it on a shelf for the rest of the meeting…

Language

• [“What are you going to do about that?”] – A great question to ask.
• [“The purpose of the meeting is…”] – Start every meeting with the phrase “The purpose of the meeting is X”. This forces you to begin with the end in mind
• [I Language] – The word “you” is confrontational, don’t use it. As an added benefit, the word “I” forces me to put things in my own context.
• [“On a scale of …”] – Asking for answers on a discrete scale allows you to quantify, measure and even graph things that we often think of as intangible and hard to pin down.
• [Use Declarative Language]
• [“I see…, I feel…, I imagine…”] – When it’s hard to put something into [I Language], this pattern gives you a skeleton on which to do it. e.g. "I see you coming late to meetings, and I feel hurt,…
• [We Language] – Build team cohesion by using “We” instead of “I”. This is especially effective when talking about positive things like accomplishments.
• [Ask Questions With Answers] – Only ask questions that you actually want answers for. Instead of leading questions, ask open ended questions. Instead of “Did X happen?”, ask “What happened?”

Cards

• [Stack]
• [Moving Parts Architecture] – talk to Michael Feathers about this…it was his.
• [Business Process Modeling]
• [Mind Map]

Ground Rules

• [No Stories] – Meetings are slowed down when participants tell stories about their points instead of just relating their points directly. To keep this from happening, add “No Stories” to your [Ground Rules].
• [Use Gestures] – People need to feel heard. But often trying to meet this need comes in direct conflict with moving forward in a discussion. By using gestures to express agreement and readiness to…
• [One Conversation] – When more than one person is talking at a time, the group is splintered, and your ability to direct the group as a faciliator is compromised. Suggest “One Conversation” as one…

Understanding

• [Rephrase] – When you don’t get the response you were expecting, try rephrasing your statement.
• [Say Little]
• [1 Thing] – In any system, there is always a single constraint that limits it. Before making a suggestion, find the one thing that will be most helpful, and then say that, and no…

Time Keeping

• [Time Stickies]
• [Time Box]
• [Ask To Extend] – When meetings are running late, ask people what they want to do. If you choose to continue, be sure to [Time Box] the rest of the meeting. People will feel respected and…
• [Time Keeper]

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what about games? modeling?