At the start of my facilitation career more than a decade ago, I had my share of skeptics. As a new facilitator, it was disheartening when I didn’t feel I had led the session effectively. But instead of giving up, I committed to relentless practice and effort. I spent countless hours honing my skills, learning how to build rapport, and earning the trust of participants. There’s no shortcut to mastering facilitation—it requires dedication and persistence. For those new to facilitation, my advice is simple: stay the course. With time, practice, and resilience, confidence and expertise will come. Keep pushing forward, and don’t give up.

Acknowledge the participant's concerns respectfully and ask for specific feedback. Demonstrate openness to improvement by adjusting your approach based on their input. However, only work with constructive feedback that you can use to improve and disregard any feedback that is just malicious and or prejudiced. Keep in mind that sometimes the doubts people have can stem from their own biases and insecurities and is not grounded in any objective assessment of your competence. E.g. a participant who feels like a younger person has no lived experience to be facilitating their group, or a woman should not be leading the discussion. So always take criticism and doubt of your abilities with a grain of salt.

I would invite the participant to share their concerns or thoughts openly and honestly. By listening and taking on feedback demonstrates a level of maturity, experience and shows that I value their perspective and viewpoint. I would use this discussion as an opportunity to clarify my approach to facilitation and the rationale behind it. This will help the individual understand that I'm not just winging it, but that there is a method, objective and structure to my approach, all that are intentional. Being a facilitator means that we often have to be flexible so I would be open to ideas and encourage the participant to suggest ways to improve the experience, making a conscious effort to adapt if/when necessary.

Me pasa hasta ahora en ambientes llenos de "seniors". Comienzo reafirmando mi compromiso con el éxito del taller. Luego, me enfoco en generar peque?os logros rápidos para demostrar el valor de las dinámicas aplicadas, creando un ambiente de confianza progresiva. También refuerzo incentivando la participación activa del equipo, lo que valida mi rol sin necesidad de confrontación directa.

If someone is sharing with you their doubts about your facilitation, accept this feedback as a gift. Purely by sharing their feedback with you they have a desire to help you improve, otherwise they might simply keep their thoughts to themselves. Aim to dig below what appears to be expressed on the surface. It may be that what you're being told is not actually the issue, but rather something beneath the surface. Welcome the feedback and seek to understand, after all seeking to understand is a core skill for any facilitator.