Guiding a group of people toward a common goal isn't always easy. Especially not when those people work for different teams or have different interests at heart.
Team leaders, managers, (assisting) professors, and workshop leaders all need to be good facilitators to guide staff and students into collaboration and effective group decision-making.
Event management also often requires facilitation between different stakeholders and providers.
Great facilitators know how to design, guide, and wrap up gatherings in such a way that participants feel their input has been heard, taken into account, and contributed to the meeting's objective.
Doing this is no easy feat. It requires a set of honed facilitation skills.
What Are Facilitation Skills?
Facilitation skills are the skills required to successfully guide a group in resolving conflict, solving a problem, or making decisions around common goals and next steps.
Skilled facilitators know how to engage and guide a group in a way that keeps the discussion moving forward and redirects any conflict that may arise.
12 Essential Facilitation Skills for Hospitality Facilitators
While each facilitator has their own style, there are a few facilitation skills that are indispensable when you want to successfully guide a group to a desired outcome.
Agenda Setting and Meeting Design
Prepare for each meeting or workshop by defining
- what you want the result to be: resolution of a conflict, a decision around an important project, a road map for implementing a company service culture, …
- the timing: duration of each exercise, of breaks, etc.
- the room setup
- exercises you want to do and questions you want to ask
- supportive material you might need: slides, worksheets, background on the participants, …
Also, think about what you'll do if you go over time with one of the exercises, you have a troublemaker in the group, or you get much less engagement than you'd hoped for.
"Hoped for" is crucial here. It's best to go into a facilitation hoping for the best and prepared for the worst. That way, you won't easily be caught off guard.
Time Management
Time management is an important aspect of facilitation. Your neat timeline on paper is only worth as much as your ability to move group members through the process at the necessary pace.
That means
- asking more questions if people don't bring forward enough ideas
- summarizing and coming to collective conclusions before moving on to the next step
Let participants know what's on the agenda at the start of a meeting or workshop so they know what to expect. You can even share timeframes with them. Mini deadlines can keep people focused and motivated to get something done.
Sticking to Your Role
As the facilitator, you're there to facilitate and to facilitate only. You're not there to solve problems or reach the objective yourself, but to help the participants do so. That may seem obvious, but you'll notice how easy it is to slip into a participant role if you have stakes in the discussion.
When that happens, and it's important for you and the process to also share your thoughts in the meeting, make it very clear to the group when you're speaking as the facilitator, and when as a participant.
Doing this is hard, though, and usually not recommended.
Clear Communication
As facilitation is in essence a guiding role, your instructions need to be clear. Let participants know what to expect from the meeting, formulate questions clearly, and thoroughly explain any tasks you want them to perform.
Don't project your familiarity with a task or knowledge of how group discussions "are supposed to go" onto the group, as it will leave both you and them frustrated.
Whenever you move onto the next part of the process, tell them:
- what you're going to do
- why you're doing it
- how you'll do it
It's also important to adapt your language to the context and avoid jargon that not all participants may understand.
Including Everyone
A large part of good facilitation is fostering an environment where people feel like they can share their own ideas and want to do so. The way you interact with participants can go a long way towards promoting engagement.
Don't:
- speak down on participants
- shut down suggestions
- cut anyone off
Do:
- validate what every participant has to say
- make eye contact with everyone in the room
- direct questions to more timid or quiet participants to involve them
- tactfully address when someone is trying to dominate the conversation
- introduce rotating sharing moments so everyone gets a chance to speak
Active listening skills play a huge role in making people feel included. When you're an active listener, it shows individual group members that their opinions matter and are worth as much as those of someone else.
Another benefit of active listening is that it allows the facilitator to pick up on changes in tone of voice or body language that indicate how a participant feels about something, or that they didn't voice all of their thoughts.
Lastly, some people learn and process things better visually, while others need to hear things, and still others benefit from gesturing. Including different behavioral and sensory elements in your facilitation and the activities you prepare for participants allows as many of them as possible to show up at their best.
Guiding Discussion
Once people are engaged and start sharing ideas, it's your job to guide the discussion in a constructive way. A few techniques you can use for that include:
- probing to get more detailed or deeper insights
- paraphrasing to make sure everyone has understood a contribution correctly
- redirecting off-topic comments to bring the person back on topic
- shifting perspective
- summarizing before moving on to the next phase
- encouraging participation by validating and positively reinforcing contributions
- asking what others think of something that was brought forward
- asking open-ended questions to get more information
- breaking issues down into smaller parts to then discuss those individually
Inviting Collaboration
Getting people to discuss a topic does not necessarily mean they want to collaborate. Collaboration only happens when participants understand that they have a common objective and that everyone's participation is required to achieve that objective.
It's the facilitator's job to communicate this and ensure everyone feels that their presence matters.
At a more practical level, facilitators can invite collaboration by letting staff members from different teams or students who usually don't group together work together on an activity.
Knowing When to Intervene
Some groups might be quieter while others will easily burst into discussion. One of the most important facilitation skills is knowing when people need to be spurred on and when things need to be reeled in.
You also have to keep an eye out for any type of team politics, company hierarchy that influences who speaks, groupthink that might pop up, or unproductive conflict that needs to be nipped in the bud.
Circular discussions are some of the hardest dynamics to interrupt gracefully. When participants keep going round and round about the same thing, it's stopping you from moving forward. At the same time, these discussions often occur because of how passionate people are about a topic, so redirect them gently.
At each point in the facilitation process, you want participants to feel heard. Cutting them off just so you can proceed will likely make them feel dismissed and work counterproductively.
Motivating and Energizing
Keeping people energized is crucial for getting good results and essential during longer meetings and workshops. You want participants to leave the room motivated to get started, not drained and overwhelmed.
Introduce physical group activities like jumping up and down, dancing to a song, or a guided embodiment practice at the start of the meeting and as mini breaks. Not only do these increase focus, but moving synchronously also improves collaboration (Source: The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul).
Conflict Resolution and Management
Conflict management goes beyond dealing with outspoken arguments. It also includes spotting and handling pre-existing tensions between participants and noticing conflicting interests.
One way of managing and even preventing conflict is by setting clear rules around respectful communication at the start of the meeting and enforcing those rules during the meeting process.
Another benefit of facilitating meetings well is that it can help people who've never collaborated before find common ground.
Cultural Intelligence
People from different backgrounds often interact differently in group discussions. Some cultures don't approve of speaking up to superiors, for example, while others might find it difficult to respect a female facilitator.
It's important to cultivate your cultural intelligence and be aware of how their cultural background may influence participants so you can better navigate and direct group dynamics.
Facilitating Decision-Making
This involved anything from deciding on a decision-making framework for each specific group you're working with to making sure everyone feels involved in the decision, and helping participants accept a decision when full consensus can't be reached.
Traits to Cultivate
Aside from the skills facilitators need to learn and practice, there are a few traits that are harder to cultivate but crucial for being an effective facilitator.
Flexibility
You can plan a meeting or workshop as well as you want, but you can't predict how people will show up. Even if everyone is collaborative, engaged, considerate, and in control of their emotions, things can go wrong.
You might
- need to deal with technical issues
- face resistance from participants
- not get the engagement you'd hoped for
- have a troublemaker in the group
- find that an activity you'd planned needs to be adjusted
- learn last-minute that the group is bigger or smaller than previously communicated
This is why it's so important to master the key facilitation skills listed above: they will help you make in-the-moment decisions and guide group processes no matter the hiccups along the way.
Curiosity
It's easy to feel superior in the role of skilled facilitator, but that would be a mistake. You are there to help participants bring out their knowledge, not to impose your own.
You might have an idea of what you think the outcome will be but if you hold onto that, you're likely to miss a lot of interesting input. Each of the participants has their own unique perspective, and you're there to bring it out.
Trust
Trusting that the group has what it takes to achieve the goal of the meeting is crucial in creating an engaged and open environment. People can feel it when you think you know better, and it'll make them retreat.
Trust them, and they might share things that will surprise you.
Humility
"Be the guide, not the hero," as Donald Miller wrote in his book Building a StoryBrand. Without some humility, it's much harder to take a flexible stance when things don't go according to your plan, to be curious about what everyone has to say, and to show trust in their capabilities.
On top of that, few people will happily collaborate, let alone listen to, someone who comes across as arrogant.
Neutrality
This one may seem obvious, but in practice, it can be hard to maintain a neutral stance. You might like some of the participants better than others or resonate more with some ideas than others.
Remaining neutral allows you to tease out the pros, cons, and viability of all ideas on the table.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is a crucial trait for those who step into a facilitator role. We all have biases and preferences. Some participants will trigger us while others we'll find highly likable. Being aware of what each participant and each meeting topic brings up in you is the only way to acknowledge those thoughts and feelings and set them aside as well as possible during your facilitation.
Improve Your Facilitation Skills
Becoming a better facilitator is a lifelong process. Here are some of the things you can do to keep learning and improving.
Assess Your Strengths and Weaknesses
If you're already facilitating, conduct a post-meeting analysis of what went well and what could have gone better. Don't shy away from asking participants for feedback, as it's the best way to learn how you come across.
Attend Facilitated Meetings
Seeing experienced facilitators at work opens you up to various group dynamics and gives you examples of how to deal with them. It also shows you how different facilitators work towards specific objectives and what types of facilitation exist.
You'll have a natural preference for one facilitator's style over the other, and this is something you can use to develop your own style further.
Get Facilitation Skills Training
A great way to enter the world of facilitation is to take a dedicated training or facilitation skills course. This'll also put you in touch with other facilitators with whom you can exchange tips and even practice.
Practice
The only way to get better at something is by practicing. If there's not a frequent need for facilitation in your job, you can volunteer to guide meetings at your sports or hobby club. And while it takes more effort, especially logistically, you can also consider organizing workshops for your team, students, or local community.
Facilitation Is About Them, Not You
Being a good facilitator means being a good communicator, a people reader, and a leader. The facilitation skills in this article give you an overview of what you need to master, but the real work lies in continued practice, honest (self-)assessment, and the cultivation of traits that will benefit you far beyond the meeting or workshop room.
