Basic skills of a facilitator

Facilitation is one of the methods to make communication with the group purposeful, engaging and productive.

At the same time, the facilitator does not have to be well versed in the topic of the conversation. His main task is to set up communication, and the main skill is to adapt communication tools to specific cases. For example, to make sure that despite the difference in characters and worldviews, each of the participants in the conversation could speak out and be heard. To one degree or another, everyone can learn how to facilitate meetings.

Here are some tips for learning the skills of a facilitator.

Start the meeting with a quick setup. This will help the participants to concentrate on what is happening, get to know each other better and prepare for the conversation. To do this, you can ask the following questions: before we move on to the discussion, what are your thoughts about the meeting? What do you expect from this meeting, what would you like to get in the end? Etc. The setup itself takes a little time, but brings great results.

Determine the desired outcome and the agenda of the meeting. This will help to better outline the framework in which the group will work to achieve the goal.

Define the roles. There is nothing wrong if the facilitator asks the participants to distribute some functions among themselves during the meeting: keep track of time, record important moments, and so on. Thus, you give people the opportunity to help and share responsibility for the success of the meeting.

Listen actively. Active listening includes contact, information gathering, and feedback. You listen to each participant, while giving him verbal and non-verbal signs that he is heard. Then you accept people’s words without evaluation and discussion, while keeping an eye on body language to observe the correspondence of gestures to words. Then briefly summarize what was said to the speaker himself, make sure that you understood him correctly.

Arrange the order. Try not to let the meeting take place like an ordinary debate on state channels, where everyone is constantly interrupting each other, and someone is not allowed to say anything at all.

Follow the conversation. Sometimes several different topics appear during the conversation. And if you don’t switch the participants’ attention to the main topic in time, if you don’t combine these subtopics into one stream, if you don’t focus people on the same thing, then it will be like a football match with several balls — it will be very difficult to understand what is happening at all.

Take pauses. Silence is a time for reflection. Therefore, a pause after the designation of the topic and the main question is necessary to give people time to reflect on it.

Keep track of the participation balance. All people are different. Someone speaks often and almost without interruptions, someone speaks rarely, but his words do not become less significant from this. The task of the facilitator is to involve everyone.

Take breaks. This is especially true for long meetings. Maintain the energy level of the participants, give them the opportunity to switch, move, relax.

Finish meetings correctly. At the end of the conversation, briefly summarize the results, give participants the opportunity to ask questions, speak out, make sure that people understand everything, end the meeting.