Why be a leader who facilitates?

Facilitation has probably been around as a competency for thousands of years.

But in recent decades it’s been the realm of the expert: you bring in an expert facilitator to lead your strategic planning session or run your team workshop.

But I see that things are changing.

In this increasingly collaborative world, teams are working together like never before. When you bring people together, you bring diversity and difference. And it’s wonderful! And it’s challenging when you are tasked with leading a team. It’s not easy knowing what to do when something happens with all that diversity and difference bubbling around in the room!

Perhaps the topic has gone off track or maybe you’re struggling to get decisions made. Maybe there are some louder voices in the team and some quieter people who don’t contribute as much. Perhaps you have someone playing politics or pushing their agenda a little too much. Maybe there’s conflict or aggression, or maybe everyone’s being so nice to each other and so agreeable that you’re not uncovering what’s really going on!

Whatever the human challenges you have in front of you, facilitation has come of age. Its time is now. And yes, you could outsource it to an external facilitator, but aren't you wanting to build stronger relationships with your team, your organisation and your industry? Using facilitation skills to be the facilitator in the room is a key way you can do this.

There’s never been a better time to get people together, get work done and do it in a way that’s:

• Respectful
• Collaborative
• Productive and
• Engaging.

In the hundreds of workshops I’ve facilitated and training people in the Leader as Facilitator capability, I often ask ‘Why are you here?’ or ‘Why do you think you need to learn this now?’

One of the biggest reasons is because of something broadly called:

Challenging situations

As organisations grow and more and more people find themselves attached to more projects and other people across the organisation, things start to get more complex. There are more people to consult with, the gain input from, to collaborate with. The bigger the organisation, the more facilitative you need to be. You can try to tell people what to do and go all hierarchical on them so… yep, good luck with that!

As you’re bringing all of these people together, there are always tricky situations that need to be handled or addressed. When people are passionate, get emotional and outspoken, when some people contribute a little too much and when others don’t contribute at all.

When there are quieter members of the team, when you have introverts, extroverts, ambiverts, loud mouths, power people, disenfranchised, disengaged, disinterested… whatever you want to label people (but please don’t label people), they are people and they’re doing the best they can.

Still, these challenging situations arise and stepping into a role of facilitation can help. It can help:

• When you need to get disparate views combined into one.
• When you need to get agreement.
• When people are frustrated or have different expectations.
• When you need to brainstorm ideas and solutions.
• When people won’t stop talking.
• When you don’t have much time.
• When you’re running against the clock or the calendar.

These are all situations that can be resolved and managed by a leader adopting a practice of facilitation. You don’t need to be a teacher, parent or boss; just be a leader who can facilitate… and all will be well.

Influence and change

Workplaces the world over are going through constant change. Leaders need to influence their teams to get on board with the changes they’re driving and leading.

Leaders can wait and wait for people to get on board and buy-in when they are ready and many leaders don’t ‘do’ anything but wait. Some leaders feel as if they are pushing people or it is counter to good leadership.

But between doing nothing and pushing is this thing called ‘facilitation’. There’s nothing like a big change or transformation in an organisation to create the perfect conditions for facilitation. And change is everywhere.

Compliance requirements

For many leaders facilitation is now ‘required’ of them; they must use facilitation as a tool and approach to engage with other parts of the business and stakeholders (internal and external to the business) to get work done. There’s no other accepted way. You must consult, you must encourage people to participate, you must find out what others think and involve them in the process.

Dictation is done

Yes the role of leaders is changing. Dictation is done. Engagement is here. And we’re not doing it well enough. This sweet phrase of ‘bringing people into the process’ was added in a facilitation training program by a participant from a local government council recently. She explained that Council officers needed to be better at engaging their communities, at bringing them into the project or program of work. It applies to so many fields and industries; it’s time to bring people into the work, bring them into the process. Facilitation will help you do that.

Virtual teams

The rise of remote and distributed workers all over the world means that workplaces have a rich multicultural and multigenerational mix. The likelihood of some of your team being out of physical reach of you is a given. There WILL be people in other locations, cities, time zones. And that’s not changing or stopping soon. Engaging with them is vital. Working with them is expected, but it’s how you go about it that makes the difference. Facilitation capabilities can absolutely make the biggest difference; little else will like facilitation.

More with less

As we try to do more with less or quicker with fewer, lean organisations are rising to the top. Those businesses that can identify waste and work with leaner processes are proving their mettle in changing times. They’re able to learn and adapt and respond.

Using facilitation capabilities to engage with people, get them on board and participating and making changes to become more lean is a fruitful and productive use of facilitation.

Silos, sections, teams and departments

Many businesses complain of silos across the organisation. Those disparate groups and teams who stick to their own company, who don’t much care to crossover to another part of the business lest they be foreign and unusual and difficult to work with.

But in this difference is opportunity.

Approaching the challenge of silos with a facilitation mindset makes progress easier. You might not rid the organisation of silos, but you’ll be able to approach other parts of the business, engage in conversations, work and dialogue - and get better outcomes than without facilitation. 

Customer centric

Businesses of all sorts need to connect, communicate and engage better than ever. Customers want to have input into the design, development and testing of products and services. User experience and customer facing teams need to connect with customers to gain true insights, learnings and lessons. It’s only through these truthful interactions can products and services be designed to suit customer needs.

Facilitation is a powerful technique to use to elicit information from users and customers; you can connect with them better, ask better questions and then go deeper, finding out what’s really happening and how best to fix, respond or solve it.

And when things don’t go so well in the customer interaction department, facilitation skills help customer-facing staff handle complaints and ensure customer interactions are enhanced.

Amorphous collaboration

Many teams in business are being thrown together and expected to collaborate, now! They have little ‘get to know you time’ and are expected to get up to speed or be up and running within a short time.

This includes remote and distributed teams; with some members never getting to meet each other face-to-face. In this situation, facilitation practices by the leader are crucial. They need to help this team form, gel and glue. They need to help create the conditions where this team can feel comfortable and start working together. The leader plays the role of facilitator – not parent or teacher or boss or police officer. Facilitator…making things easier.

Meeting dysfunction 

When we get our team together, we meet. Endlessly. And we often repeat our bad meeting behaviours. Endlessly. It’s like an infinity loop with no end. A facilitator is needed to guide, coach, elicit, set the environment and make it okay for everyone to contribute and participate.

The Leader as Facilitator is a leader who helps get sh*t done. They make the situation suitable for great, productive work.

When people bring or push their own agenda or when the meeting goes off track, the leader can step in and help guide things to safety. When people have different objectives, cross-purposes or different visions – when they’re not on the same page – the Leader as a Facilitator can assist. Not solve, but make things easier. When a meeting has little or no focus, or loses its way, the Leader as a Facilitator can help.

And.... Cultural change

Above all, a Leader as Facilitator approach helps build a more positive, inclusive and collaborative culture both within teams and across the wider organisation. The practices of facilitation help influence, shift and change culture – for the better. When people listen better, participate more, contribute their best and play with a collaborative spirit, good things happen.

Handling the sh*t that goes down in teams

Whether it's in a meeting, a conversation, a workshop or general day-to-day stuff, when you get people together, it's natural that some sh*t is gonna go down. 

People being humans, that's all. Trying to get something done to the best of their ability, trying to work with others, work with constraints of time, budgets, environments and .... other people!

You've likely seen it today... stuff going down like: 

• someone interrupting someone else
• another person who's all-talk and waffle
• some blame going on 
• not getting to a decision (in a meeting that was meant to come up with a decision!)
• people who have views but aren't expressing them at the all-important meeting
• some people not seeming to listen because you just explained it, again
• ... and some dude going on and on and not making much sense. 

These are all human behaviours and they can be handled, clarified, refocused and made sweet so you can get on and do the great work you've got to do.

You don't need to 'slap down' people or to bark out "order" in a meeting or workshop session. Neither do you need to be the soft-as person who just lets it all go wildly off-track. (Urgh, don't you just wish the meeting leader would DO something to bring it back on track!)


I see there are four things you need to do to handle the sh*t that goes down:


1. Get your own sh*t together
Yes, you be a leader. You need to get ready to lead a meeting or brief a team, or elicit information or be prepped for that thing you're about to do. Think mindset, get ready and be in the right 'space' to do this thing.

2. You make the environment 
Some people brighten up a room just by leaving it. Don't be that person. Don't. Be the person that people go 'Oh thank goodness you're here; now we'll get great stuff done'. You impact the vibe in a room by what you say, do, how you look, how you handle every little thing. Eye-rolls, sighs and other verbal nasties leak out of us all. Keep the environment positive, productive, focused, creative. You influence the environment and you can change it if it's not working. 

3. Follow some type of process 
Don't wing it or make it up as you go along. There are many tools, models and processes you can apply and follow to make for a good interaction in a team. I love my Facilitator 4-Step process (the visual is about to be translated into Spanish) to help people move from giving their opinions, to coming up with ideas, to finally committing to action. Otherwise, you'll be lost in an infinity loop of 'OMG when is this thing gonna end'. Even if your process is a series of three or four questions, it's a process nonetheless. 

4. Respond. Handle what happens. 
When you're ready, the environment is good and you've got a process you're running... then all you have to do is handle what crops up in the session. You'll have your attention on the people and the work to be done, rather than your agenda or the timing or how you're feeling.

 

Avoid the cliched advice on how to shut up a non-stop talker or the corny questions on how to get input from the quieter people in your team. They are just that - corny cliches. 

Too often we're killing collaboration and diversity - without even knowing it.  "Gulp, what me? No, surely not."

So look out leader, there's this contemporary capability I call Leader as Facilitator. You've got to achieve an outcome, get people on board and keep engagement high. It really is a balancing act. And it doesn't happen by accident or by 'winging it'. 

Think about it. Be ready. Do these four things so you're ready to handle what happens in the moment. No sh*t. 

10 cliches that kill collaboration, smash diversity and slow-up progress.

So much advice available out there on meetings…  yet still so many sad behaviours and cliches that stop progress in its tracks.

I've had the pleasure to work with some teams lately to help them get more done in their projects by helping develop their leader as facilitator skills. 

This capability is needed in workplaces to

• boost collaboration
• get alignment
• get work done and
• meet deadlines...

all the while working with diverse teams who have different backgrounds, cultures, generational views and opinions. 

The days of leaders ‘telling’ are done… or at least, leaders need to be doing less of it. The technique of facilitation when you’re a leader is secretly genius. It’s artful, engaging, collaborative and impactful. 

Plus we don’t have time to traipse through the levels of Tuckman’s 1965 tired team dynamics model to wait weeks and months for people to be storming and norming before they start performing. Oh yawning! We’ve got to get people together quickly - people who may not have worked together before -  and get things done swiftly,  all the while respecting them, treating them well and acknowledging their views. They're human after all!

This is what diversity is about and the inclusion of differing views.  

So yes, there are still some deeply ingrained habits hanging around meetings, workshops and breakout areas in workplaces.

Here are the top 10 meeting and workshop cliches I see that kill collaboration, smash diversity and slow-up progress. 

1.    Would you take the notes please (...insert woman’s name)

Still seeing this way too much. A woman in the room is the designated note taker; is it a hangover from the days of the typing pool or the ever-obliging secretary or worse, ‘because you have such neat writing’? Urgh! Yes, a meeting facilitator can also do note taking. You may argue or not believe you can both facilitate AND capture content, but it can be done, and it’s called Visual Facilitation. Anyway, make people take their own notes or ask ‘who will be our note taker today?’

Plus the role is so not secretary-ish anymore. It’s a powerful sense making tool - the person who makes sense from complexity and detail is the present day workplace genie!

2.     I hear what you’re saying but…(we’re going to do this anyway)

You may have heard advice about the use of ‘but’ in this situation and how that part is the problem... but I think it’s really about the ‘I hear what you’re saying’part.

Actually you haven’t proven that you’ve heard what they're saying. Plus it’s so habitual and cliched; you must spend a few moments (less that a minute even - relax!) to deal with that person’s comment. Saying you’ve heard it but… is not good enough. 

And don’t even THINK of saying ‘we’ll take it on board’! Urgh!

These are verbal slaps in the face. You’ve smacked down collaboration with your impatience for an outcome.

3.    Lets car park it

If you have a flip chart or whiteboard with ‘Parking Lot’ written on it I will develop car park rage! It’s another slap in the face. It’s saying ‘we can’t handle this right now…’.

Actually, no, it's you saying ‘I can’t handle this right now so I’m going to deflect it off over there and then we can speed on to the outcomes.'

That's another smack down!

It's another way of saying 'Be quiet. We’re not doing it now.'  That’s effectively what you’re saying. 

Go ahead and try and get collaboration and engagement going at full speed again after that. It will be hard work.  

Rather, you need to take that point for a 'drive'. Do not park it. Take it for a test drive and see what happens and where it goes. You might get some other stuff done because of that tiny side track or scenic journey.  And you don't need to spend too long, just a minute, tops. 

4.    Let’s take it offline 

Here's another slap in the face. Another version of ‘not here, not now’. You’re saying this meeting now is not the place for it.

Rather ask ’should we set up another session where we can talk about this - we can cover x, y and z?, or 'what piece of that can we do today, now?'

Taking it offline is lazy shorthand and workplace waffle and again, if you spent even one minute facilitating an interaction, you might actually get something done on this point and you’d keep collaboration going. At least make this thing into an action and when it will be worked on in at another session. 

5.    What do others think?

I call these big blind overhead questions. Shot out there into the group like a cannonball for anyone to catch. It's too big, too fast and too dangerous. Often the louder voices will speak first with a question like this. They've been waiting to let you know what they think for so long now!

This question is too broad for my liking. Leader as Facilitator capabilities look at how you can narrow the focus in situations like this.

What are you asking people’s thoughts on: What they think about global warming? About Tom’s new haircut? About the bicycle storage racks in the basement?

Too broad. Narrow it down. Get focus and facilitate to that. 

6.    We need to move on

Someone has done the wonderful duty of contributing and you may feel like things are a little out of control and so you bring this cliche out. You’re not saying ‘we’ you’re saying "YOU need to move on. You have spoken about this for ages. Can’t you just get over it!! Didn’t you hear me??!! MOVE ON."

Aaah no; people will move on when they are ready.

This is about you - you need to handle it better; it's not about them needing to 'move on'. 

Spend a little more time finding out what their concerns truly are or what they want to happen. When they’re really listened to, they’ll move right along.

It may seem like a paradox or you may fear you'll open a can of worms that will never be closed again, but that's a fear of yours. It works a treat when you actually listen to someone and what their concern is. 

  
7.    Are well all in agreement then

This is often about premature decision making or a leader trying desperately to get to a decision. Perhaps you haven’t even decided HOW you’ll make a decision and yet you’re trying to make that decision.

So you might bring out this CLOSED question that the group can answer ‘yes' or ‘no' or ‘maybe' to. You can’t ask a group a closed question. The group then has to respond. You could go around and ask them 'yes, no, no, no, yes'… to find out what they think, but it’s a lazy cliche for trying to get closure on a topic or a decision on a topic.

Set up a clear decision making process and use that. 

... Oh sorry, I know I promised 10 cliches but there are only 8, because...

8.    We've run out of time

That means two of the cliches haven’t been covered. They could have been the most important pieces of this whole thing! But we didn’t do them upfront in the meeting.

Too much important work gets rushed, or worse, not done at all. So get your important pieces done first. Not in the order it arrived in your inbox or the order you thought of it, or the order you did it last time. 

Get the tough stuff done. Yes, you can go for quick wins if you want to build the group’s momentum, but with some capable facilitation you will be able to get through the tough stuff and get even more done than you thought possible. 

The leader - whether that's a leadership position, title, role or responsibility, or the leader of a meeting - has incredible opportunities to build engagement, gather diverse views and opinions and get important work done. 

Avoid these cliches; go for more productive responses that keep a conversation going, build engagement and don't slap down. Then you’ll build a stronger environment of collaboration and collective output that will be reflected in the results that team can create. 

Leader as Facilitator

We know the days of barking instructions to people in teams and telling them what to do are fading. 

Yes sometimes you still need to give instructions or directions but overall, people need to be engaged. Global engagement scores are not good. Must try harder. 

Additionally, there are countless untapped capabilities in teams the world over, with people just itching to put their experience to work - if only they were asked.

And plenty of teams aren't quite working at their peak levels of performance because the environment, situation or processes they're working with are slowing them down, stifling them or hindering their opportunities to collaborate and deliver.

Leader as Coach : too slow and inefficient?

The Leader as Coach approach has been in play in many industries and organisations for years, decades perhaps. I remember running a Coach the Coach program for a big bank who were helping their leaders be better at those one-on-one conversations. 

And while coaching is still a highly valued and valid leadership tool, many leaders find the drain, drag and pace of one-to-ones less efficient than they'd like... and need. 

As one leader said in the bank's coaching program:

"It take sooooo long to get that person to realise what needs to be done, to go through that GROW model and get them on-board with it. I just don't have the time or patience". 

And while that may run counter to what leadership or leaders should be like, the realities of pressured schedules, busy teams and project deadlines mean leaders need to leverage more than the one-to-one... at least some of the time. Granted, the one-on-one coaching conversation is a must for performance, development and other discussions. It will always be needed. No argument there. 

Leverage for impact

So how else can leaders leverage their time and the interactions with their teams, to inspire the tribe, get them engaged and aligned to the work that needs to be done... and then go ahead and get it done?

The shift from 'Leader as Coach' to 'Leader as Facilitator' is well underway. 

Leaders are noticing that leverage is possible when they're adopting the role of a facilitator of their team. Group harmony and cohesion is strengthened and the sheer energy or 'vibe' of the team, tribe or group coming together seems to lift people to build higher levels of team performance. 

Facilitators make progress easy... or easier. They run a process, respond to what happens and draw on communication tools to make this progress. 

As a participant in a recent Leader as Facilitator program said:

"Now I'm able to get stuff done; we talk as a team, I can help remove barriers across the team, we can make decisions and I'm better able to handle the general sh*t that goes down daily in our team." 

(Note, this leader wasn't naming his people as sh*t; it was more about the finicky, challenging issues and hiccups that happen throughout a typical day when leading a diverse team).

So leader as facilitator, hey?

Ah don't be mistaken, facilitation is not ‘soft’ work. Be assured, there are many effective and well-structured approaches and techniques that professional and full-time facilitators use to achieve swift, creative and relevant outcomes with a group.

And though the 'Shit facilitators say' meme is a good laugh, it's time those cliched phrases and lip service statements were sent to the trash file; they're dated and a poor first response for a present day leader using facilitation approaches with their team. 

There are many more contemporary, authentic, empathic and realistic ways to get stuff done in teams and keep the team connected to the piece of work via facilitation skills. 

Diversity demands it

A leader adopting the capabilities or behaviours of a facilitator is able to achieve outcomes that have a direct connection to business goals, and importantly, get genuine input and contribution from teams and units across the business.  

It's not enough for a team to meet to just to talk or discuss. In the volatile, uncertain and complex world that businesses operate in, decisions, input and diverse contributions are paramount. 

In trying to facilitate and drive these types of meetings, many leaders head into steamrolling territory, shutting down contributions or closing down creativity without even knowing it. You might have just caused what you were trying to avoid!

Then when the room is silent, you might not know what to do. Was it something you said or did?  Possibly. And there's also something else you can do to change that again. 

It's not soft

Business facilitation is not about looking at a candle and taking three deep breaths, holding hands or singing 'Kumbaya'. Some industries and fields use this to good effect. I'm not a proponent of it. 

It's a balance of people participating and contributing AND achieving business outcomes.

The leader as facilitator needs to balance the business imperatives of:

• Achieving outcomes
• Boosting engagement
• Driving productivity
• Encouraging contribution.

Leader as Facilitator is all about using approaches that achieve the things that need to be done. 

Understanding how to be a Leader as Facilitator puts all of these imperatives to work in contemporary workplaces and makes great things happen.

Overall, this is about a culture of leadership, a style of leadership in your organisation that you create. It supports teams and leaders with the capability they need to influence, drive and deliver. And that's not 'soft'.