How can you ensure impartiality and neutrality while facilitating large groups?

As a facilitator, I don't own the objectives or the outcomes, I am usually not a content expert, nor should I show partiality to some participants over others. If that's what is meant by neutrality, I'm all in. But I also recognize that I am never "neutral" - the work I select, my intersectional identities, the way I word questions, the activities I choose, whose perspectives I centre in a room, the energy I bring, the power I hold - these all influence the outcome in ways that I need to be cognizant of and I want the group to know that I get that.

Remaining neutral is a mind-set. The easiest way is to ensure that you have the right process with the right people. Once you have that, remaining neutral is easy because the right people and the right process produces the best results.

When you kick off a facilitated session, explain the role of facilitator versus that of a consultant. I’ve found with groups that have experience with both, they don’t always know the distinction. Content knowledge is a consultant and process knowledge is a facilitator. If you ever have to go between the roles, let the group know you are doing so.

There are many tools for facilitators. Use tools to challenge the thinking of the participants and to engage them. That puts the content into their hands so that you focus on the process, remaining neutral.

My go-to-source for large-group facilitation is Liberating Structures (the book, the app or the website). Most of the exercises listed there are easy to scale and work for groups from 8 people to... well, as many as the room can comfortably hold (even a hundred). Sometimes all is needed is to give the participants enough space to move around; for other exercises, it's important for every group to have a table and/or a flipchart available, so that they can capture the outcomes of their discussions.

Breakout groups are a great way to engage higher number of participants. You can: 1?? Create the breakout groups organically (random mix of participants, whoever is sitting next to whom etc.) or 2?? Design the breakout groups by assigning participants in advance. One perspective on how to do this is based on the diversity of their experience / background. You can either aim for creating diverse breakout groups (every breakout group has various perspectives represented), or you can create homogenous breakout groups to have more diversity in the outcomes the breakout groups come up with.

Find ways to keep the participants engaged by varying the activities. That helps them focus and develop well thought-out solutions. Also remember, the more you try to 'correct' their results, the worse it becomes because the results then become yours.

Conflicts are necessary. Be sure to keep conflicts idealogical and never personal. Conflict about an idea is what enables change and progress. Conflict that is personal is destructive.

At the end of every workshop, I send a simple feedback form to the participants. Two tips to make it work (I learned over the years): 1?? Dedicate time for this within the time of the workshop. For example - if the workshop was scheduled till 4 pm, I would make sure we finish at 3:50 pm, so that there is 10 minutes for the participants to complete the feedback form. 2?? Include the "Net Promoter Score" question - "How likely you are to recommend this workshop to your colleagues?" I use Microsoft Forms, and it has a specific question type for this. The advantage is that it makes results from different workshops comparable.

I find impartiality and neutrality have to be established from the very beginning otherwise it can’t be recovered later. By sharing as clearly as possible what you are gathered to achieve, and then discussing how you’re going to achieve it both in process and culture, you can build a greater trust within the cohort, and as their facilitator. There also is a great deal of self-awareness needed as a facilitator Remaining impartial to a certain outcome is one effort and remaining impartial to a host of personalities in a cohort is another. If you play favorites in either realm, you diminish the potential for impact that you bring as a facilitator.