What is facilitation? An In-depth Guide

Reams of reports and comments have been written about the value of meetings and how they seem to absorb a huge amount of time and effort with often very little benefit and fail to achieve the desired outcomes.

How do people share ideas, think about the next innovation, problem solve or indeed simply learn from peers to avoid repeating mistakes that can easily be avoided.  Better collaboration, active listening and having more effective meetings becomes even more important now that people are doing much more online.

The simple answer is for a more facilitative approach in group settings.  In the past there has been lots of advice on how to structure meetings but without seeing much improvement. One idea, that has become a benchmark for greater success is to use a skilled facilitator.

A facilitator is impartial and their sole role is to maximise the value of the group, not to impose their own views. They focus on the group dynamics, manage conflict and empower people to solve problems and generate new ideas. It can even help that they are not a subject matter expert because:-

• They could become distracted by the topic and start to contribute to the group’s thinking.
• The group may doubt the facilitator’s independence and think they are trying to sway the decision.

• Ensuring the group establish ground rules so there is physiological safety and a shared understanding during the session to enable them to co create an effective solution.
• Efficient use of time and money can be achieved by avoiding unproductive meetings and progressing towards a common goal.
• Ensuring full participation of all members by managing the dominant voice and encouraging the quiet ones or people with alternative views to get involved, for better outcomes.
• Getting participants to identify areas of agreement and disagreement for future review.
• Encouraging members to check understanding especially when there could be confusion.
• Overcoming the challenges of problem solving and decision making by introducing an appropriate process, guidance, motivation and support for the meeting.
• Assisting the team in achieving a successful meeting outcome by suggesting the most appropriate 'tools' to identify issues, explore options, and devise effective solutions. This approach also fosters the added benefit of shared ownership of the decisions.

One of these key benefits alone would significantly increase the value of the group session and if all could be achieved, then meetings could become ‘workshops’ to generate creative ideas and solutions and a superpower; rather than something of derision.

There is no group situation that would not benefit from a trained facilitator helping colleagues reach a decision and a large number of sessions where the involvement of a trained Facilitator can make the difference between success and abject failure.

APMG’s Facilitation Training and Certification is developed from the work by Tony Mann.

At the heart of the approach is the Process Iceberg® Model. The model is very clear that the facilitator’s role is to use a well-designed set of methods within a facilitation ‘Process’ to enable the group to achieve the Objectives and Tasks to deliver success. The facilitator pays attention to EVERY level of the Iceberg.

The Model also operates at a strategic or business level. A well-designed Structure and Processes, supported by effective Systems helps people fulfil their potential and deliver the Strategy. Problems in the business become obvious at the lower levels and will need to be tackled at EVERY level to achieve the business goals.

Some organisations have full time professional facilitators, and these can be found in HR, Project environments, Cultural Change, BPR, IT analytics and in consultancy organisations.

The nature of the role is such, that it is very rarely full time and most often people develop their facilitation skills as an organisational function, management competence or personal skill that they can use in addition to their main role.

The trained facilitator does not need to be a subject matter expert, they guard the process and empower the group, allowing them to focus on solving the challenge before them.

• When the group is uncertain about the objective of what they are trying to achieve.
• When the group is dysfunctional – certain people dominate, or the use of process is absent.
• When physiological safety is missing and inhibiting the group dynamic.
• When the group is under pressure to deliver to a tight timescale.

The value of facilitation has been proven and can be seen on various recruitment websites.

People with significant facilitation experience consider it to be a flexible and rewarding career. It does require an ability to understand situations, manage conflict, analyse what the group is trying to achieve, crucially to be an expert in determining the right process in any situation, excellent interpersonal and communication skills, and the ability to remain independent.

This translates into the ability to think on one’s feet while working alongside the client. An effective facilitator will establish and agree on a process, owning it while not controlling the discussions and decisions that emerge from the session. They will need to encourage discussion and in particular, help the team arrive at a position where they can consider or make a decision. They will often need to help participants clarify and define the question or challenge that they are trying to answer.

During the process, a team may get stuck but the facilitator needs to remain independent, stick to the facilitation processes and introduce the participants to any tools or techniques they know that will help them overcome the issue and find a way forward.

If the team is stuck one of the key process tools the trained Facilitator has at their disposal is Summarise, Proposal, Outcome/Output (SPO) to get buy-in from the group to adopt or change the process:-

• Summarise - the background/context of the task in hand for the specific session.
• Proposal - allows the facilitator to suggest a model, tool or technique to use.
• Outcome/output - gets the team to see how this will get them back on track.

An APMG Facilitation Practitioner has the skills to design a series of events and run any workshop. They understand the importance of remaining independent, not getting directly involved and remaining flexible with their approach, empowering people to overcome any roadblocks and stay on track.

In particular, they will be able to:-

• Apply the Process Iceberg thinking to help the group achieve its specific goal and recognise when facilitation methods are or are not an appropriate response to an organisation’s needs and work effectively with strategic information to apply facilitation in the appropriate settings.
• Plan meetings with the client to understand the key Objective(s) and identify the task needs and set up the logistics for the event.
• Contribute helpfully to establish a contract with a task leader and a group so they can work in psychological safety.
• Design the Process for the workshop /meeting.
• Respond to situations which arise during an event helping participants make good process decisions to secure the desired outcome.
• Deploy effective interaction and decision making with the group members by using appropriate communication tools.
• Conduct a Process Review to help the group learn what worked and what didn’t to help them mature in terms of Process.

There is no doubt that facilitating a meeting / workshop is hard work, and by following the Iceberg Process and having a suite of tools able to help the team overcome any roadblocks, it can be truly satisfying.

An APMG facilitator understands and can help the team apply a range of models, tools and techniques to the task in hand while monitoring progress and intervening to resolve an issue using a process intervention tool called SCA.

Symptoms would relate to the group:-

• A lack of interaction, low energy levels, lack of involvement by a few people or the group is struggling with the model, tool or technique.

Causes could be identified as:-

• Unbalanced team roles; breakdown in interpersonal skills leading to misunderstandings, the model tool or technique is inappropriate or the group is even unclear about the objectives.

Actions could include:-

• Dealing with the interpersonal interactions; identifying a different tool or technique or asking the group to review and clarify the objectives. 

Facilitation is dealing with group dynamics in a meeting or event. Using the Process Iceberg meeting model the basic structure involves the Task (team activities) and the Process (the Facilitator’s role).

Below are some common facilitation tools that can be utilised at each step of a workshop.

Step One:  Identify the issues using

• Brainstorming
• Fishbone diagram
• Five questions.

Step two: Identify the key issues

• Vote with dots
• Relative importance grid.

Step 3: Define the problem and establish the Objective

• Each group member should write the description in full. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until 2 or more people use similar terms.

Step 4:  Identify the most appropriate criteria against which options can be judged

• Expert witness or “what will I see happening” to develop criteria
• Voting with dots, MoSCoW, or relative importance grid to rank them.

Step 5: Identify potential solutions

• Brainstorming
• Expert witness
• Cause and effect (the solution mode).

Step 6: Identify the most appropriate solution

• Relative importance grid
• Voting with dots.

Step 7: Explore adverse consequences

• External expert witness
• Brainstorming

Step 8: Plan the implementation

• Action planning
• Force Field analysis.

More information and a thorough explanation of these tools are available in the Facilitation Guidebook: Develop Your Expertise.

• Facilitating a group to develop a strategy, someone suggested an alternative approach to that being discussed by the whole room. No one shot down the idea, in fact the proposer was asked to present the idea to the whole group in a few minutes and invited people to collaborate with him to develop it further. When the idea had been fully developed it was endorsed by the whole group. The moral is to allow conflicting ideas to bubble up and be explored.
• Facilitating a group of senior managers became challenging when the Managing Director dismissed any suggestion he disagreed with, resulting in a wasted event. Little could have been done to salvage the situation, as he had agreed before the workshop not to behave in this way. Normally, preplanning can prevent such issues. Setting a clear contract with the Task Leader and thorough briefing are essential.
• Facilitating a large group of senior managers to develop a pan European strategy. They were producing a huge matrix on the wall and populating it. They work had been going on for two hours by an active group working on developing the detail, but many managers had sat back to watch the data emerge. It felt like the group was grinding to a halt when someone from the back rushed forward and started to make connections and explain the patten he had seen. With this breakthrough the group unravelled the problem and contributed to the overall strategy. The moral is to allocate time for reflection, accommodating the diverse skills within teams. 
• Observing a project manager conduct his 'morning meeting,' it became apparent that he was addressing both straightforward issues that could be quickly resolved and more complex issues requiring further investigation and consideration. By dealing with these issues in different ways, he was able to shorten the meeting length and make faster progress on all fronts. The moral is to distinguish between certainty, complexity and uncertainty and to manage them differently.
• A small number of a group expressed the view that any ideas coming from the workshop would never see the light of day. When pressed they thought that there was no way to gain traction for innovation. A small group of ‘dissidents’ was formed and given permission by the Task Leader to go (into a corner) and design a Process of Innovation. At the end of the workshop, they presented their process to the senior sponsor who applauded them for demonstrating a way that the organisation could implement innovation. A Facilitator must acknowledge dissent and see it as an opportunity.
• In a strategic Project Review workshop an ‘old hand’ expressed a view that if the project was to be successful then the national organisation would need to ‘poach’ hundreds of engineers who were scheduled to work on other strategic projects, and he didn’t think that was likely. He we dismissed by the young Project Director (PD) as being pedantic and negative (a Monitor Evaluator in Belbin terms!). The Facilitator intervened and used the Feedback Model to amplify the person’s viewpoint and got others to express what he was saying in their own words. The PD finally took note and changed the timeline - and saved the Project from disaster. The motto, listen to the outlier.
• A workshop comprising senior NHS professionals from various disciplines was established to determine the parameters for outsourcing a key element of healthcare. People became fractious as the Objective seemed to be becoming less and less clear. The Facilitator broke them into cross-functional sub-groups and each group set about identifying the elements of what would constitute the breadth and depth of what would be outsourced. It took all day and nothing else was achieved. Despite this everyone regarded the workshop as a success! They reckoned it had saved months of wasted and fruitless effort. Helping groups identify the ‘real’ Objective is a critical part of the Facilitator’s purpose.

"There are always some difficult individuals in a group. However, over many years of working with a large number of groups across a wide range of contexts, I have encountered only a handful of extremely difficult or impossible people determined to sabotage the group's work. The key takeaway is that the vast majority of people are keen to collaborate and find solutions, provided they are assisted in identifying the Objective and given the appropriate process."

Tony Mann. 

As we've explored in this comprehensive guide, facilitation is not just a skill, but an essential component in transforming meetings and collaborative efforts into productive, outcome-focused sessions. The role of the facilitator is to guide groups impartially, focusing on dynamics, conflict resolution, and empowerment, without imposing their own views. This becomes even more pertinent in the current climate of increased virtual interactions.

The benefits of skilled facilitation are numerous and varied. From ensuring psychological safety and efficient use of time, to promoting full participation and embracing diverse opinions, facilitators play a key role in driving effective decision-making and fostering shared ownership of outcomes.

After all, the majority of individuals in any group setting are usually eager to collaborate and find solutions. They may just need a facilitator's guidance to help them reach these solutions.