Facilitation

by Max Hardy and Vivien Twyford

So what is facilitation?
Facilitation is a process to enable groups to resolve issues and plan more effectively together. Facilitators encourage principles of inclusion, shared understanding, full participation and shared responsibility at community meetings, strategic planning sessions or staff team building sessions.

Effective facilitation enables large and small groups of people to work together efficiently to complete a task and to get the best outcomes in the time available. The word facilitation comes from the Latin ‘to make easy, to remove obstacles from the process of doing something’.

So who needs a facilitator?
A facilitator can be useful when all members of a group need to fully engage in the discussion without having responsibility for guiding the process. A facilitator can also help when groups get ‘stuck’ and can’t find a way forward.

Possible contexts for facilitation are:

• Strategic, business and action planning
  
• Team building
  
• Issues requiring consensus to be reached (eg, workplace agreements)
  
• Community groups negotiating with decision-makers in a contentious project (eg, major road being built)
  
• Prior to a-mediation - in complex cases where a number of issues need to be examined in order to ‘de-clutter’ the mediation day
  
• Part of an evaluation process
  

What are the advantages of using an independent facilitator?
Facilitators do not have to be external to be effective. Virtually all organisations have some personnel who take on the role of a facilitator at times. However, it is critical for facilitators to be independent of the outcome. Engaging people in a facilitated session requires trust in the process itself. Once trust is achieved, and the purpose of the session clarified, participants can more freely contribute, learn and move toward some conclusion.

Sometimes, and increasingly, organisations prefer to use external facilitators.

• The benefits of an external facilitator are:
  
• They are independent
  
• They focus on the issues
  
• They have previous facilitation experience
  
• They are respected by both parties
  
• They progress on issues quickly
  
• They have skills in:
  – identifying sticking points early
  – allowing emotions to be expressed appropriately
  – managing disputes
  – encouraging a wide range of views and opinions
  – supporting appropriate solutions
  – ensuring that participants leave the session feeling that they have been genuinely heard, and have contributed to the session’s outcomes
  

Tips for getting the most out of an external facilitator

1. Be clear about your objectives
   
2. Clarify objectives and approach with facilitator
   
3. Brief facilitator about background information
   
4. Understand facilitator’s approach to the situation
   
5. Confirm the design for the facilitation session or process
   
6. Maintain communication with facilitator during process
   
7. Request a report describing meetings and actions carried out
   
8. Reflect on both process and outcomes.
   

Twyford Consulting Newsletter May 2001