Skip to content

Facilitation

What is it?

Facilitation is the practice of bringing a group of people from a "Point A" to a "Point B." A facilitator takes the responsibility to design a session to bring a group together to achieve a desired outcome.

If you have a decision to make as a group, you should consider deploying facilitation techniques to help the group reach their desired goal in a session. This can be useful for decisions such as prioritization, vision-setting, solution brainstorming, and driving alignment.

A facilitator must know the "Point A" - where the group is starting and where they are trying to get to, "Point B." These should be identified prior to the session to allow for the facilitator to design the session in a way they can break down the journey from Points A -> B into smaller decision points and activities.

Facilitation will look different depending on what you're trying to achieve. Typically, there are a few key components facilitators draw from:

  • Externalize: Make sure to get the right people in the room and use prompts to extract all ideas to "lay everything on the table." Facilitators typically leverage silent generation on Post-It notes to help ensure an environment where the best ideas win, not the loudest voice in the room.
  • Organize: Leverage structured sorting frameworks to allow for quick decision-making. Facilitators typically leverage tools such as stack ranking, 2x2s (two-by-twos), or affinity-mapping to organize ideas and allow for batch decision-making.
  • Focus: Get the group to eliminate ideas so the group can focus on options that have the greatest chance of being successful. Facilitators may leverage discussions, dot voting, and drawing a "cut-line" to help groups hone in on the best ideas.

Why is it Important?

Facilitation adds structure to group meetings and ensures they become productive sessions that moves the group forward to a desired outcome. Facilitators drive alignment in groups and ensure that sessions stay on track.

Facilitated workshops are some of the easiest ways for you to demonstrate real value to a customer - great facilitation can help break the monotony of meetings that go in circles and help a group actually be productive and make meaningful progress.