The capability to facilitate...

... it's increasingly becoming one of this decade's critical skills for managers and people leaders in business.

Any time you're with a group and need to achieve an outcome, you'll need facilitation skills, tools and techniques to help and guide that group.

These elegant, collaborative and engaging capabilities are no longer just for professional facilitators.

Business owners, executives, leaders and managers, as well as those who lead or work with groups in any situation are seeing and experiencing the benefits of being able to simply do group stuff better.

That is:
Coaches who need to work with a group.
Speakers who are speaking to a group.
Government officers who are meeting with a group.
Project managers who are consulting with a group.
Leaders who are leading a group, a team.

Most of us can do better at this.

That means:
🟡 better engage with a group or team,
🟡 draw information from that group, and then
🟡 help them collaborate to achieve an agreed outcome.

I've always got training programs running on my facilitation skills methodology - either public programs, online or for businesses and teams. 

The next public program, live and online is:

January 16, 2025
9am - 4pm AEDT
Recordings available if you can't attend or want to rewatch/review.

Read more here

A past participant said: "This was one of the most valuable courses I have attended. Full of great tools, advice, ideas and thoughtful information. Facilitation skills delivered as learning experience in a new way - facilitation + experiential".

Too much ‘listen only’ mode

Whether the online meeting software automatically tells you or not, too often we are put in ‘listen only mode’ in online meetings and workshops. 

And some of the reasons (excuses?) why there isn’t greater interaction : 
* too many people
* not enough time
* too much content
* the pressure of a deadline 

... and other explanations for why we’re keeping people quiet while meeting online. 

While many face-to-face meetings were poorly run, our online meetings are now just as bad. 

Better facilitation skills are needed by most leaders today, and more-so in this online environment. 

Better facilitation skills are about 
- The preparation 
- The design
- The delivery 
of the meeting or workshop. 

We have to do things a little differently and we must allow more time and space for people to contribute.

Listen only mode? 
That’s not how better work gets done these days. 

You can facilitate yourself

A facilitator doesn’t just have to work with a group or team. 

They can work with themselves. 

We can all adopt some facilitation skills to facilitate ourselves. That is, to make things easier for ourselves. Facilitation means ‘ease’.

The ‘get out of your own way’ concept is often about how we make things harder for ourselves. We set higher standards, expect perfection, berate ourselves when we mess up and at other times, don’t do anything at all ... procrastinating for fear of not getting it right. 

Are you setting unreasonable standards? Unachievable deadlines? Or holding unspoken expectations?

None of this makes things easier. It makes it all harder. 

Making things easier for ourselves is a good thing - even though we may secretly believe you have to struggle for everything. 

But that’s an old point of view. It’s not true. 

Starting now ...
How can you make things easier for yourself ... and on yourself? 

Build engagement slowly

Starting with a bang in a meeting may seem like the way to get people’s attention - but the reverse can also be true. As we join the next meeting in our diary, we bring with us a hangover from the previous one.

The previous meeting could have been overwhelming with too much information, or frustrating in how decisions weren’t made. It could have been time wasting or unclear or .... highly entertaining, interactive and uplifting!

Every meeting leaves us with a kind of hangover that we need to unload or process. The guide then for facilitating or leading better meetings is to build engagement s-l-o-w-l-y. Slow and steady style.

That means:

> Not putting people on the spot at the start, or ever

> Not making them look foolish, and

> Not making them wrong.

It’s easy to put people off or get them offside in meetings - online or otherwise Ramp or build engagement with participants slowly, steadily ... even if you’re in a hurry to make things happen. There is plenty going on for people. Lead meeting speed safely.

Leaders need to keep changing

If you've been a leader for a few years, you'd have noticed how leadership and the expectations of leaders keep changing.

The world of work changes and leaders need to adapt, flex, change with it too.

From when leaders were controllers and commanders, to an era where leaders were all about coaching their team members via 1:1 conversations, and now to today...

Today we see leaders better leveraging everyone's time and strengths by using the skills of facilitation.

My concept of the 'Leader as Facilitator' doesn't mean you become a full-time facilitator. It means you draw on the subtle, engaging and nuanced skills of facilitation to help people work together well - when needed. I wrote 'Leader as Facilitator' in 2016 to help people run better meetings, drop corny clichés (like 'I hear what you're saying' or 'Let's take it offline') and work in more collaborative, productive and creative ways.

Work still needs to get done. No matter the apps, software or systems you use, you'd do well to have the complex and impactful suite of skills that are facilitation.

Facilitation. It means 'ease' after all.

Q: How could you better build your facilitation skills?