How can you improve your communication style when facilitating a group?

Effective group facilitation hinges on several key principles, and here are the top 5 you should prioritize 1. Understand Your Audience: Tailor your communication to meet the needs and expectations of your audience. 2. Active Listening: Demonstrate that you value participants' input through active listening, 3. Empathy and Rapport-building: Foster trust and open communication by showing empathy and building rapport with participants. 4. Clarity and Simplicity: Ensure that everyone in the group comprehends your message by using clear and concise communication. 5. Encourage Participation: Actively involve all participants and create opportunities for them to contribute.

Firstly, you need to know who the participants are and understand that they are "no others" than people who want to be there probably as much as you do. Secondly, setting rules goes for all, including you, maybe most of all you! Finally, don't underestimate people's knowledge, expertise and skills and admit you are not perfect but just there to help get the work done. And try to have some fun doing it!

Communication is fluid and the primary key to success is understanding yourself. We must be honest with ourself as to how was are perceived by others. Our honesty in our strengths and weaknesses allow us to begin to understand others. Our perception, discernment, acceptance of the message and efforts to accept the message is critical to strong communication. Accepting our blind spots and implicit biases are critical when we listen. We must also make it a primary expectation to hold all accountable to respect and calm behaviors.

Understanding your audience is always crucial. Who is present in the room and what is their preferred communication style? Using DISC and MBTI profiling tools presents challenges, such as the length of the assessment or having to guess their profile. This approach is impractical when running events. Instead, we employ the B.A.N.K. methodology, where participants can quickly uncover their code online in less than 90 seconds. As a facilitator, I have access to the BANKCODE of the room for today, eliminating the need for any guesswork.

For me, understanding diverse communication styles goes beyond recognising auditory or visual preferences; it is also about cultural sensitivity. Culture significantly shapes how you might interpret & respond to communication. For instance, growing up in Germany, I'm used to direct, straightforward feedback. However, in other cultures, a more nuanced approach might be preferred. Acknowledging these variations is crucial in fostering effective communication, in particular in a group. By being culturally attuned, we ensure our messages are not only tailored to the preferred information intake senses but also resonate within a cultural context, fostering a more inclusive and respectful dialogue - a must in today's often multicultural society.

We must strive to focus on the message and encourage others to as well. We must always be accountable to respect and dignity whether a direct or indirect style is applied. Aggressive or passive aggressive behaviors must be addressed immediately as we all work toward a common goal. I did however, disagree with the original statement in this feed. Direct does not mean assertive and indirect does not equal cooperate. In my opinion that is a great example of an implicit bias. Nonetheless, the goal is cooperative no matter which style(s) are used in a communication.

Part of utilizing the B.A.N.K. methodology entails not only being mindful of our own communication style, but perhaps more crucially, understanding the communication style of others as mentioned earlier. For instance, let's say my values revolve around responsibility and integrity, while I collaborate with individuals who value support and freedom. Already, we find ourselves speaking different languages. Therefore, it becomes vital to learn how to communicate using their "code." To draw a metaphor, it's like being in a room where everyone speaks Cantonese, but I only speak English. In such a scenario, I must either learn Cantonese or have someone in the room who can serve as a translator.

A dynamic approach to all conversations certainly reflects the strength of all involved. In my opinion, the more flexible we are, and being able to use a variety of styles, the stronger and more successful we are leaders and team members.

Flexibility plays a significant role in communication. In the B.A.N.K. methodology, each personality style represents a unique language. If I solely communicate in the Blueprint Personality style and fail to adapt to the Action, Nurturing, and Knowledge styles, I won't effectively connect with others. The beauty of this approach is that instead of having 6,600 languages worldwide, there are just four languages spoken by everyone on the planet - B.A.N.K.!

Usually, feedback is collected at the end of a meeting, team building session, or executive retreat. This is a misstep. Feedback at the end of a session is of no use to improve the engagement. I recommend collecting feedback at the end of the first morning and the first day and then once a day after that. You can review the feedback with the group and engage in course correction to ensure that the rest of the session hits the mark

After completing each session, I rely on my team of advisors for valuable feedback. They are driven by both compassion and a relentless pursuit of my success. While I also value input from participants, the cultural context often leads to diplomatically vague remarks. Rarely do they provide truly substantial positive feedback, usually limited to a mere "good job" or "well done". Fortunately, my team of advisors excels at offering constructive criticism, which I greatly appreciate. They help me discern between mere criticism and genuinely constructive feedback. Hence, I find myself leaning towards their guidance and assistance.

1. Facilitate the session with a compassionate mind. 2. Use yourself as an instrument for influencing the people in the session. Consider this:- Premise #1. As a facilitator we are an agent within a human system (the people in the session) trying to impact them in some way. Premise #2. The human system is changing with every interaction and dialogical exchange happening in the moment. Hence since we can only control ourselves and not the system, I advocate to use ourselves as an agent to influence the system / session. How? Start by being aware of the suffering in the individuals in the system and ourselves AND to act to minimise or alleviate the suffering. E.g. Conflict causes suffering. How is that impacting the individual and us?

I would say the key to being a good facilitator is the ability to be neutral and stay neutral. Your role is to help people be better at working together to achieve a common objective. I was in a group where a facilitator was invited outside of our company to help with conflicts that were making the work environment very toxic. This facilitator had a bias against middle management. Needless to say, the outcome of the facilitator's meeting with staff led to a mass exodus of talented staff from the company. Their are many human components to consider, if one is to have a successful facilitation. Nobody in the group should be made to feel left out. Also, you must be knowledgeable and willing to answer questions put across to you.