What are the best techniques for keeping a facilitation on track and on time?

When facilitating a mediation process always remember that the parties drive the process. Much of what happens, depends on their commitment and cooperation. Having said that, a facilitator's, role is to design and manage the process. Therefore planning and process design in consultation with the parties is key. At the beginning of the process, you may want to establish how much time parties are willing to dedicate to the process. Then working backward, outline the activities needed to reach a conclusion. For example, is there a need for information exchange, coaching the parties, and/or bilateral meetings? Using a tool, design a work plan, to keep the process on track while leaving room to adapt to changes when needed.

Things that may help will be - plan beforehand some buffer activities for covering extra time - plan for 80% of the time and keep the remaining - plan more than one way to diverge and converge

Have a clear agenda along with the time box. Have cushion time as we expect the unexpected. Check the participants (who are going to present something) whether they are planned. Always send the agenda in advance so that the participants can come well prepared with their questions.

One tip that works for me: > Include timeframes on the agenda > If you've used the time allotted, ask the group if they want to keep discussing or move to the next item

Share your outline and objectives in full ahead of the meeting, review it at the start, and ask for a non facilitator volunteer to help keep time for each part of the conversation.

Uma boa prática também é compartilhar a agenda com as atividades previstas através das notas adesivas, deixando exposta para todas as pessoas quais as atividades s?o previstas. Assim, todas as pessoas conseguem participar do planejamento e acompanhar a execu??o.

Keep it simple and straightforward for everyone involved—timebox everything! To ensure a smooth facilitation session, planning is key. A common pitfall for many facilitators is running out of time, so it's crucial to have a clear idea of the duration for each exercise when designing the session. This includes time for instructions, the actual exercise, and any necessary arrangements or voting. Precision in your time-space allocation ensures a seamless facilitation. Additionally, a handy tip is to subtly extend the duration if participants are deeply engaged in an exercise, enhancing the overall facilitation without anyone noticing. Keeping the session on track, ensures a productive and valuable experience for all participants.

? Uno de mis mayores trucos consiste en utilizar un temporizador visible para todos los asistentes. Esto facilita la percepción del tiempo a los participantes durante la facilitación. No es raro verme con un reloj de cocina en sesiones presenciales. Aunque pueda resultar llamativo, este método da buenos resultados al materializar el tiempo de la sesión en un elemento tangible

One of the most common mistake many facilitators make is not having enough time to exhaustively address issues in the parking lot. One technique I use as a facilitator is to give the parked issues to participants as group work. This ensures participation and a guarantee that we do not overlook the parking lot. But ensure the parking lot is tackled. And if the workshop is for more than a day, try to address the parking lot on a daily basis. Unless you know that issues will be tackled in subsequent sessions. Track your parking lot.

When facilitating, instead of seeing ‘divergent or conflicting opinions, emotions, or perspectives’ as a challenge to deal with, I see them as an opportunity to foster deeper shared understanding. This perspective aligns well with the mutual learning approach, where every viewpoint contributes to the group’s collective wisdom. That said, I agree that active listening and paraphrasing (confirming with the speaker that they agree with your restatement) can support keeping facilitation on track and on time, as consistently clarifying individual perspectives helps to build the shared pool of information in a way that is more likely to be collectively understood. What do others think?

Say a participant expresses a strong opinion on a topic, and there's potential for disagreement, instead of immediately responding, you can use active listening and paraphrasing such as: Active Listening: "I hear that you feel strongly about [specific point raised]." Paraphrasing: "So, if I understand correctly, your main concern is [rephrase the point]." I find this very useful to demonstrate I acknowledge the participants viewpoint, In my experience that helps ease conversations if someone is upset.

It's so important to active listen when it comes to conflicting opinions. Some participants would get so passionate on their opinion and will start to side track and talk out of topic. Able to catch the timing to wrap up the conversation and not seeing as rude or offensive is so crucial.

In my experience I agree that active listening and paraphrasing are key elements when facilitating conversations! It is also a key for the facilitator to instil these attributes in the contributors. To ensure that the conversation stays on track it is a tricky thing to get all contributors to, as Jim L states, see all differing opinions as opportunity to broaden and explore views rather than as a divergence and conflict and to achieve an acceptable outcome. A facilitators ability to step in at the appropriate times during the conversation to provide prompts to get the contributors to explore how the differing views could contribute or enhance their own viewpoints is critical and an art form!

Here's a weird but effective hack: if someone is verbally going around and around, paraphrase as a question back to them, but get it wrong. This makes them quickly clarify their position. If you do this, please make sure to thank them for helping you understand. ;)

I find it useful to pace the group with the way I solicit feedback. For example, asking, "Is there a final point we want to make before moving on?" signals that a transition is coming and helps people pace themselves. You can (and should) do this throughout to help people understand exactly where you stand in relation to the agenda.

For me, my job as a facilitator is not to have all the answers. It is to ask the best questions. Those valuable questions push people to think and to challenge assumptions about what is possible. During breaks I spend a bit of time trying to think of what questions I can ask that will be provocative and constructively challenge the participants.

Questions can be used to help clarify, examine, and even challenge past ideas or "common knowledge". Ask for definitions of terms or acronyms being used. This ensures everyone is aligned in their understanding. And document answers.

Treat every participant/group you are facilitating like it is your first. Understanding "what works best with them" and not "what works best for you" when you facilitate will enable you to speak their language and way of communication, in this way, you break down walls, and resistance and connect with them making communication flexible. With enough time, the group will also get interested in your facilitation language and the two of you will be able to meet halfway. I call this "facilitation tango"

Make sure everyone feels listened to and is contributing. Capture the key elements of what is being said and ideas on a flip chart so participants can see their comments are noted even if they are just put in the parking lot. Recap all that has been achieved at the end of the day. Also use energisers and dividing the group up in different ways and numbers to keep the energy up. Have fun!!! Especially in an ideas workshop - we relax and open our minds up when having fun.

To keep as close to time as possible during a facilitation workshop with a large group of participants, another suggestion is to get 'popcorn style' feedback during some of the panel discussions - this means asking only those who have a point of feedback they want to share to raise their hands as opposed to getting every single participant to respond during the discussion (you can also state a number limit of feedback responses that will be received at the start of the session so participants can manage their expectations appropriately).

To get the audience warmed up in a facilitation session, I start of with a simple question to build a word cloud response. Audience usually enjoy seeing the development of the word cloud. Consider how you might use different facilitation tools for live vs virtual facilitation. Get the audience fully involved during live facilitation by placing different question boards around the room. If space is constraint, you can use a pair-and-share method with those seated side-by-side. Virtual whiteboards are great in seeing how ideas take shape among contributors. This keeps the team focused and reinforces teamwork.

I agree with this but then one has to be deliberate in how to use the feedback. Is it to tick a box or it is to be used. For tools, they always come in handy and draw a lot from the participants. Some of these tools can also help in getting many ideas in a short while like brainstorming. I have however realized that many facilitators mistake brainstorming for example and imagine it is a tool that helps us argue out and discuss issues. It is important to know that brainstorming is a tool that helps us generate as many ideas as possible then we can use voting or ranking to come to a consensus. Voting and ranking can also help us address divergent views.

Take the time to develop a facilitators’ guide that allows for good timing, variables that pop up and a bit of slack. Being too rigid in your timing locks you in. Having freedom and wiggle room (along with some alternative activities) will be your best friend.

Some techniques that helps in facilitation: - Explain clearly the importance of a training or workshop; - Use clear and simple language; - Use participatory approach to avoid that the participants are bored; - Time management is also important.

Here's something else to consider when you're in an online virtual environment. Sometimes online we may run into the problem of either “too much participation” or “too little” and people won't come off mute to participate at all! I find that an excellent approach is the concept of “concurrent collaboration,” where we use the features of the online platform to first ask everyone to respond at once. Here's how this works. I ask a question of the group. And then I'll direct them to either respond in chat or via whiteboard. I'm quiet while they're responding. Once they have, I’ll then ask them to review what’s been shared and decide if they want to add more. We conduct a conversation from here, including everyone and managing time!

We often over estimate what can be accomplished. When working with the leads, it is important to teach the amount of time collaboration and connection take. Build spaciousness into the agenda. For truly transformative experiences, prepare for an emergent process and allow for some flexibility on the agenda and outcomes as you keep track of the dynamics and group process. Emergent process is where the magic happens.

Something helpful to consider is including an element of mindful practice. Facilitation usually involves a great deal of knowledge exchange and sharing that may lead to information overload and mental fatigue. One way of helping participants to not "tune out" is by incorporating meditation exercises that help people feel grounded and calm while emptying their minds of stressors and distractions to be fully present and engaged.

I often use ELMO (I love having a real puppet in the room if I have one) ELMO stands for “enough, let’s move on” and is a fun and sensible way to ask people to wrap up to be able to stick to the subject and schedule

Don’t forget to be flexible! Flexibility in facilitation is key to responding to a group’s needs in real-time. If a team is deeply engaged in an activity, especially during an “aha moment,” it’s beneficial to extend the activity in order to capitalize on this learning opportunity. Such flexibility ensures that the facilitation process is tailored to the participants’ engagement and needs, leading to more effective and insightful outcomes. Meet the learners where they are, and remember that their learning is what is driving the session, not the schedule.