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Facilitate Your Way to Fame
Anjali Aroul, Instructional Designer, The Business Workshop

Imagine this. Just a few months into your first job and you are asked to facilitate a meeting of about 25 people. Sweaty palms, butterflies in your stomach and oodles of queries in your head? Is that how you feel? Chances are that the answer is yes!

Don't worry, help is at hand. Here are some time-tested guidelines to breeze through that meeting and impress everyone at work.

Be a good listener!! It's a basic requirement that any good communicator needs. After all, facilitation is all about bringing about effective communication.

Avoid providing direct answers to questions. Why? For the simple reason that you are there to act as an aid to their thinking and not to give out all the answers yourself. However, if you find that the group is going off the track or going around in circles, you may want to consider throwing a few casual suggestions to bring them back on track.

Be flexible. You may need to modify your method of addressing the group before and during the small-group activity (like a role-play) in accordance with the needs of the group you are facilitating. For instance, if you find that a particular group has two aggressive individuals who are not giving anyone else a chance to speak, you need to tactfully stop them. This will allow others an equal chance to participate.

Manage the group dynamics. Don't let an individual dominate the session. If you find yourself in such a situation, turn the question over to a person who isn't so vocal. This can be tricky, especially while handling fragile egos! Another important point to remember is to attempt to encourage everyone to participate. A well tested way of cutting off an aggressive person is saying "Great! but let's also listen to what he/she has to contribute". This solves the twin purpose of cutting him off without putting him down.

Stay impartial. Last but not the least, facilitation is done best when you do not get too involved with the discussion. Facilitation is all about directing the flow of the conversation and getting the audience to come up with the answers themselves. If the facilitator gets into a debate about the issue on hand, he/she increases the chances of losing focus from the discussion.

To be sure, there are no shortcuts or magic mantras that can be learned by simply snapping your fingers (or clicking the mouse!). Like any other skill, facilitation needs to be constantly nurtured and practised. In fact, it would be right to safely assume that in this case, practice really makes one perfect! So, what's stopping you? Get ready to sharpen your facilitation skills. Who knows? You might just surprise yourself!

-Graphic Done By Himani