You're a new facilitator. How can you avoid common mistakes?

I always think what would I want if I was in the audience. Obviously, participants want to be informed but also entertained. Plan how you will deliver the information that you need to, and add something to engage the audience. Ultimately, your objective is to make a session run smoothly, so remember, it's not all about you!

I have made so many mistakes over the years but still learn from them. Be your authentic self and believe in what you are doing has purpose and value. Then and only then you will settle in and this will become more natural over time. Mistakes help us learn and I still make them.

Training sessions should be interactive to keep participants engaged and facilitate learning. Avoid delivering monotonous lectures without involving your audience. Incorporate discussions, group activities, and hands-on exercises to promote active participation. As a facilitator, your role is to guide the learning process, not dominate the conversation. Avoid talking excessively and give participants ample opportunity to contribute and ask questions.

In order to build into strong facilitator you need to learn to read the audience and grasp what is said and not said. As a facilitator you are there to bring people together and give them the sense of purpose. Remember, not to step into mines... like become a mentor or consultant or advisor. Do your job with full energy and observe, listen, absorb. Stay curious and understand what drives people and do they have that little animal in the room. Ask for feedback and learn from it. The more you get a feedback the more you get an upgrade. Version 10 of upgrade means you are getting there. Build the trust and let the people shine from rust ! Stay human too... it's all about people.

é bem importante preparar a apresenta??o e entender o objetivo e contexto a qual estamos inseridos. Sempre penso em dinamicas e dados que v?o ajudar a consolida??o do trabalho. Assim, a sess?o será objetiva e todos poder?o sair sabendo que fizeram algo de valor que gerará ganhos.

To echo Guy's points, it's really great to get out there and facilitate, and learn from others.....one place you can do this is come to the IAF London Lab on March 20th 2-5pm. Get in touch for more info ??

We need the followings Credibility- research , explore, compare, revise Effectiveness- formats, rehearsals, manage expectations, backup plans Expertise: updates, tool usages etc.

Rehearse several times by doing “dry runs.” Have your boss or colleagues listen to you rehearse to offer feedback on the slides, and how you plan to present them. Prepare questions in advance, what will you ask? When will you ask them? What are some follow up questions you may need to ask? Practice waiting 10 seconds or longer for people to raise their hand and volunteer an answer, Think about what responses you might get, and how you will respond to a person who gets the wrong answer versus the right answer. Rehearse multiple times until you feel very confident with the slides and content you will be presenting.

I think it's really important to get out there and facilitate, Facilitate as much as you can and find as many opportunities as you can to facilitate and build up your experience. From this, will come the insights that will enable you to not only become a capable facilitator, but also to better understand your facilitation style. See how others facilitate, what tips and tricks do they have for you, how do they do things at different points of the session, when do they slow down or speed up, when do they stop the conversation and when do they let it flow etc. Observe and learn, and then try to make what you see yours. Don't copy, but translate what they do into something that you understand and works for you.

The biggest piece of preparation is developing questions. Questions that frame the discussion and questions that will create tension. Like a movie tension is important to facilitated session.

Understanding the dynamics of the group in front of you is paramount to facilitating a successful session. I like to start by asking how people are arriving to the session: 'hostages' (e.g. those who really don't want to be there) who are hesitant to engage with the content. ‘vacationers’ who are happy not to be doing their day job for a few hours but mentally are checked-out ‘learners’ who are ready to find out something new and take on a challenge. Being flexible with your approach looks like finding a way to involve each participant.

Very important to know your audience and how you can engage them actively in contributing to the discussion. It’s very important to keep the session interactive rather methodological.

Facilitation is like art in that once you know the objectives and techniques, you can apply them to meet the needs of each unique group. Flexible pivots can create emphasis, compassion, energy and address needs the facilitator can’t always anticipate in the planning phase. Plan to be flexible and you won’t stress as much when it occurs.

Ce qui peut aider, est de demander un feedback au groupe, sur comment ca va. Cela est pour mésurer l'énergie du groupe, et pour s'assurer que vous répondez aux attentes. Par exemple avec un vote à la romaine. Si la plus part du group fait un retour négatif, il vaut mieux s'assoir avec eux pour interroger les besoins et réajuster votre plan en fonction. Au fur et à mesure, avec la pratique et l'esxpérience, cette sensibilité s'automatise, ainsi que la capacité à changer votre plan et improviser d'autres activités plus pertinentes avec les besoins 'ici et maintenant' du groupe.

I believe that there are some ways you can put into practice in order to reduce the risks of common mistakes. First of all, you should not forget that continuous learning allows you to keep an open mind. Do not improvise. Prepare each step in order to feel comfortable and have a Plan B ready. Make sure that participants know what to expect and motivate them with different techniques. You can also ask for feedback from participants and from experienced facilitators. Adapt your facilitation style. Do not view feedback as a collection of opinions but as a highly valuable tool to improve your facilitation. Be aware of active listening because you'll receive different opinions and points of view

Show vulnerability. A facilitator is the vulnerability leader. If you are vulnerable others will feel that it is okay to say what they really think.

Create a safe learning environment that welcomes inexperience and questions. Be an example of someone who possesses a wealth of knowledge but credits that vast depth of information to always learning and realizing I don’t know as much as I think i do. Give recognition when deserved. Gift patience when needed. Always provide the ‘why’ behind a process! Practice! Practice! Practice! And the content will become an extension of you and within the delivery you exude trust, a solid reputation, and a resource.

Building rapport means to connect means making things relatable to your audience. If you need to do that, you need to know your audience well. So if the due diligence is done right, building rapport will be a slice of cake rather than a walk on burning coal.

La seguridad psicológica (Amy Edmondson) es imprescindible dentro de un espacio de facilitación, ya que nos permite asumir riesgos interpersonales, sentirnos capaces de expresar ideas, preguntas y/o preocupaciones. Puedo haber preparado una excelente técnica para el grupo, pero sino genero un espacio basado en la seguridad psicológica, existen grandes probabilidades de que fracase la intervención.

Having a well prepared presentation, accompanied by opportunities for engagement among participants will create an environment of open dialogue, discussion, and engagement among the audience. Create workshop activities, discussion oriented questions, and provide ample opportunities for participants to exchange ideas and learn from one another. As a facilitator, make sure you know what the key takeaway messages are. As participants engage, pull out and highlight the key messages as you hear them being generated by the audience. At the end of the session, reinforce the learning by summarizing important content and reviewing key takeaways.

Being a facilitator is like a referee in a match and not a player on the field. Just as the referee ensures fair play and maintains neutrality, a facilitator must guide discussions impartially, ensuring all participants have an equal opportunity to express their stories. Like a biased referee can disrupt the flow of a game, a dominating and biased facilitator can derail a workshop by intimidating participants and stifling diverse perspectives, hindering collaboration. A facilitator's job is to create a safe and inclusive environment conducive to open dialogue and collaboration—prepare relevant and engaging activities based on the objective of the workshop, which would lead to actionable insights.

It is easy to get caught up in facilitating and end up giving a lecture. Facilitators are there to guide, not to teach. Helping learners figure out the answers on their own allows them to retain the information better, rather than spoon feeding them new knowledge.

You can avoid dominating by listening, really listening and reflecting back what people said and looking to integrate different perspectives. Everyone else in the room is looking to defend their perspective. You might be the only one looking to combine perspectives.

I think self reflection is a great tool for continuous improvement and growth. A go to tool for me as a facilitator has been - Rose-Bud-Thorn technique. What went well, what was appreciated, what created most value for the group - I count those ??(highlights/ most loved elements). Then I reflect on what didn't work out, what was incomplete, what was perhaps leading than facilitating - i count them as thorns (mistakes/setbacks/challenges)and then I shift my reflection to what would I do differently next time and what experiences from today can work as catalyst for tomorrow - the buds (opportunities). Always always helps...

Just like any trade, you need to continuously become better. What better way to do that then evaluating each experience? See what worked and what didn't and how you can improve.

Let’s rethink the title of this article. If we agree that making mistakes is the best (and perhaps only) way to learn why would we go out of our way to avoid them? Just be yourself, have fun with it and if you make a mistake remember that in the long run it’s making you a better facilitator :)

My piece of advice would be to remember that you don’t have to know all the answers! Good facilitation is about creating the conditions for and fostering the discussion and learning. Facilitation is not about demonstrating you’re a subject matter expert. Remember to leverage the knowledge of the group and to encourage them to answer each other’s questions. This practice can make facilitating much more engaging for participants and far less intimidating for the facilitator.

1. Cannot emphasise enough the importance of setting ground rules with your participants and involving them in arriving at the rules of engagement. When they make the ground rules, they own them enough to follow them. 2. Being inclusive is an absolute necessity as a facilitator. Encourage all voices to be heard, all viewpoints to be known, not just the most verbal or popular ones. The ability to create space and respect for different realities and opinions and be able to move the conversation forward with meaningful insights for all sides is a needed skill. 3. Don’t be afraid to admit if you don’t know something rather than bluffing or losing your poise. It’s not possible to know everything about any subject. Open the question to the group.

To explain the facilitation tools, I will use the metaphor of any big DIY shop. It is full of various tools and: - some of them are easy to use, and for others, you have to be sure you can implement them safely; - choose the proper tools to get the expected results; - don't use the tool if you are not sure you can use it; - Any tool can create or destroy, choose wisely.

The word facilitate comes from the Latin facilis - 'easy', so the idea is to make something easy, less challenging. So as a facilitator, your role in a sense is to make things easy. Perhaps, it's that you help to remove the blockers, challenges, barriers between the participants and the outcome they are after.