You’re a facilitator who wants to be the best. What are the common mistakes you need to avoid?

The common traps as a facilitator that I can easily fall into are believing I need to be the wise one with the answers, when of course, I am there to purely guide the group in the agreed upon direction. This often leads to the second biggest mistake I can make which is to fill the space with chatter, when time and silence is way more powerful! Facilitation is nearly as humbling work as parenting!

As a facilitator striving for excellence, it's crucial to avoid common pitfalls such as: 1. Over-talking: Let participants engage actively. 2. Lack of preparation: Be well-prepared to guide discussions effectively. 3. Ignoring diverse perspectives: Ensure all voices are heard and respected. 4. Failure to manage time: Stick to the agenda and allow for flexibility when necessary. 5. Being too passive or aggressive: Strike the right balance in your facilitation style. 6. Not adapting to group dynamics: Adjust your approach based on participant needs. 7. Neglecting feedback: Continuously seek and integrate feedback for improvement. Remember, facilitation is about empowering others, so stay adaptable and attentive.

While planning ahead, running demos, and learning to detail your sessions are all essential for any facilitator, it is the unexpected issues or surprises that truly make you an outstanding professional. You should plan for the unexpected, including technical issues or questions raised by participants. Additionally, when you're not sure what to do, keep calm. If you stay relaxed and confident, your audience will be supportive. This will give you the necessary time to tackle the unexpected and find the right solution, instead of panicking. Lastly, remember that most of the time, what feels like a major setback doesn't even matter to the other people in the situation. Bottom line, get prepared but embrace the unexpected!

People want to learn from someone who understands what they're talking about. In order to know what you're talking about you need to prepare by going over the material, finding the natural flow of the session with activities, discussion parts, breakout groups and recapping. While the session and learning objectives should take centre stage, and it's important for the attendees to contribute and interact with each other, you still need to be effective and engaging, which for the most part can only come from knowing what you're teaching through preparation.

Being an effective facilitator requires a combination of skills, awareness, and continuous improvement. To be the best facilitator possible, it's crucial to avoid common mistakes that can hinder the facilitation process. Here are some pitfalls to steer clear of: Overlooking Preparations: Mistake: Failing to adequately prepare for a facilitation session. Solution: Thoroughly prepare by understanding the goals, audience, and potential challenges. Plan activities, materials, and logistics in advance. Lack of Clear Objectives: Mistake: not clearly defining the objectives of the facilitation session. s.

When I was a fledgling facilitator learning to use protocols and structures, I facilitated at a conference. When it was said, and done my co-facilitator, a veteran, jokingly called it “bulldog facilitation.“ Technically, it was fine. I covered the agenda, followed the protocol, hit all the right time marks. What I failed to do, however, was remember that there were people involved. I put agenda and structure over discourse, engagement, relationship, perspectives. I was very much like a new teacher who almost doesn’t even need students in the room to teach his lesson. We learn humility and awareness over time and with much practice. I’ve gotten a little better since then.

As a facilitator, you are not the hero of the story so you have to keep this in mind. You are there to make sure the objective gets achieved, within the appropriate time and that everyone is included. It's easy to forget this fact and let your ego or emotion take over. Great facilitators are remembered but not the star of the show

Don't confuse being a facilitator with being a public speaker! A facilitator's goal is to get a group of individuals to work better together to reach some objectives - as much as that will involve a lot of speaking on your end, the show is not about you, it's about them. That means knowing how to engage an audience, asking questions, stir reflections; and overall asking yourself "How good are they doing in that space with regards to their goals"... rather than "How good am I doing on that stage" ;D

It's a balance, and knowing when to dial up and when to dial down in order to achieve the desired outcome. At the end of the day, it's about humility to know your place and purpose in helping others achieve their desired outcome. However, sometimes you do need to dominate the space for the sake of the participants (not you), and other times you need to ensure that the participants dominate the space, while you facilitate their journey through.

As the facilitator, it's not about you. Well, it's a little bit about you, but not nearly as much as you think. True learning comes from engagement and participation, both things need space and intention to succeed. Think of it as a first amongst equals, you're still the one providing the insight and the information, but the people who need the empowerment are the learners.

So important to be with your own inner responses as you read the room. It is the facilitator’s ability to hold space, to host whatever arises in the room that creates an expansive field and allows the healing impulse to be felt by the group.

You have to be able to read the power dynamics and make sure the people are divided into groups accordingly, so all voices are heard and no body is being overrun. Also even if you have a goal and agenda, there has to be a sensor ”on” if a subject comes up that has particular significance and put more time on that. It might be a severe road block or a golden idea. So not just following the agenda religously, make room for extended conversations as well. I have a A and B plan for each workshop I run.

In my facilitation experience, emphasizing awareness of the room dynamics is crucial. It allows me to gauge participant engagement, interpret body language for comprehension, and recognize the right moments for energizers to maintain participant activity.

Ignoring the dynamics isn't only about avoiding problems around conflicts, misunderstandings, boredom etc. To ignore dynamics is to ignore one of the best sources of learning for the group. It can be extremely productive to gently and without judgement ask the group what they're noticing about how they are working together. Their reflections help build self-awareness, awareness of impact, group dynamics, appreciation of difference, and much more.

Always, always read the room and flex as required. Your participants will be oozing signals as to how they are feeling and reacting to what is going on. Only a fool would ignore these (or someone untrained to read them)

A few things which help me are : - Self feeling check in and noticing what's happening in the body; being aware of my feelings - Not get carried away by too much happiness or content because we tend to overpromise or lose track of our objectives - Discussing with a co facilitator, wherever possible - Asking myself 'is this activity/discussion aligned to the intentions set?' - I keep asking participants 'do you resonate with this/why do you think we are discussing it/what's in it for you/do you think this is making sense & why' - Playing devil's advocate to bring in different view points around the topic so that we stay focused on the given topic

1 Vouloir être le meilleur 2 Vouloir être le meilleur 3 Vouloir être le meilleur 4 Vouloir être le meilleur …restez au service inconditionnel du groupe.

Keep coming back to the objective, have it ingrained in your head. If what you are doing does not flow back to this then what exactly are you doing? A common mistake is overloading a session with too many objectives; don't! One objective per session is the best, if you have more than one objective then be ruthless or set up separate sessions [you may find you need different participants and a different format for each]

Make yourself a run sheet and practice running th session before you need to do it for real. Really knuckle down on those learning objectives and try and time as well as you can how long each section/activity will take, then stick to it. Have the run sheet in sight and have a quick glance over every now and then to make sure you're on track, try to have the headers in bold to help trigger your memory and the main points you need to talk to. While learners are doing an activity, use the time to take stock of where you're at and where you need to be. You can then work out how to navigate there. If you do end up going off on tangents, know what the most parts of your session are, you may need to cut something unimportant to stick the landing

It is worthwhile to check in with the group about their individual goal in the session, which may or may not connect to the main goal. In my experience, this helps the group engaged as their goals and needs are also seen and heard. To guide them, I could ask for instance a quick round of "What would you like to see / hear / experience / feel ... in this session?". I'm inspired by the Whole Person Process Facilitation by Genuine Contact for this more holistic approach.

The word facilitation means to make things possible or easier. Overloading makes things harder. In almost all circumstances, 'less is more', so once you've done a first pass of your session plan, review it and strip out some content chunks, put any extended information into the pre-reading, and lengthen the exercise and discussion times. You, and your delegates, will be grateful for the space to think and explore. Far better that they really understand and can work with one or two things than have a vague and instantly forgettable knowledge of ten things.

While you don't always have a choice about what you need to facilitate, you do have control about HOW you deliver the information. Switch up learning styles (visual/video, recording, reading, discussing etc) and try to develop the skill of finding the easiest way to explain without losing the necessary complexities. If you have access to practical application, use them in tandem (eg. If you need to show how to do something on a system, actually demonstrate and have them follow along themselves). If you do see that you've overwhelmed everyone with information, think of a plan to provide that extra information or recaps, whether it's a follow up session or sending information after the session.

How we frame things is important, especially for ourselves. A mistake can be thinking your job here is to present/speak, great facilitation is LISTENING - and improving at that is a lifelong journey. A big part of my personal preparation is de-valuing my place as an 'expert' or 'leader' and opening up to truly listening as my goal/outcome of the time together.

If you are facilitating a more public session - say a panel with an audience - it can also be helpful to consider how you can do an immediate follow-up at the end of the session to provide the audience with a sense of closure as well. For instance, can you invite 3-4 audience members to briefly reflect on their key insights from the panel out loud?

Follow-up, including debrief, evaluation and establishing the next steps, is as important as the delivery of the facilitation itself. For me, it has become a habit to invite the client to reflect on how it went and how they want to go from there. It gives a sense of good closure, and potentially opens up possibilities to continue the work together.

Any time you will be acting as a facilitator, be sure you are clear what type of facilitation is required. Are you going to be facilitating brainstorming, a decision session, a more general large meeting, or training to name a few big buckets? Each of these requires you to come to the table with a different set of tools and mindset. Be clear what types of facilitation you will be doing. Confirm you're comfortable with that type & have the tools to be successful. Also confirm what success looks like to the group you will be facilitating - not just at the initial stages of planning but day of. This is a great touch point to return to if/when things go astray in terms of time, egos, etc. It also provides support for the summary and follow-up.

Lots of good things said already. Two things help me to be clear, open, and focused as a servant and medium for whatever group I am facilitating: Staying in tune with my intuitive capacity, this can be nurtured through very concrete training. When I facilitate, I am guided much more by the collective mind in the room than by some fixed agenda (not that they don't matter, it's just not the end goal). Placing the value of any being in the room above my own preconceptions and prejudice. The less I judge, the more I become able to serve what Agamben once beautifully called "The Coming Community". Both of these points require training, dialogue, play hence, I do this as often as possible, going deep with whoever I work with.

As a facilitator, remember that it's not all your responsibility. Being prepared, and guiding the process is of course our task. We can only do our best. And yet we acknowledge that it's a space that is co-created and co-navigated with the group.

Remembering that you are there to serve the needs of the group and not your personal agenda. For that it’s important to keep in mind the desired outcome set out by the group and setting up frameworks to help them reach where they need to go, and not where you want them to go.

Not knowing the purpose Purpose of the facilitation Purpose of the sponsors/clients Purpose of the facilitator Not knowing these, it's easy for facilitators to get lost and move away from being effective, let alone best