Facilitating — The art of shutting people up so they can be heard

Facilitating a Design Sprint, meeting, or workshop is a difficult task. You need to be able to control the room and accomplish your goals. You need to be able to keep the energy high and maintain focus throughout the entire process. In order to achieve this balance between positive energy and intense focus, one needs to exercise their authority, confidence, and command, while seeming comfortable and trustworthy.

A facilitator is like a gardener. A gardener must maintain healthy soil in order to allow its produce to flourish. The gardener must guide his produce by infusing the soil with the nutrients it needs to grow. A gardener plants the seeds, but then the seeds do the sprouting. A facilitator is equivalent to a gardener, needing to permeate the environment with the aforementioned qualities to receive the team’s best responses.

How to start the meeting:

The first step in acting as a successful facilitator is gaining your team’s trust. In order to do this, you should begin each task by setting the expectations for what is ahead. You want to be as upfront as possible. Therefore, they will not be caught off guard by anything to come. You want to over exaggerate what they should expect. If something is uncomfortable or stressful, your team will not worry too much because they were already made aware of this. Then, after the exercise, you can remind them that you mentioned they may experience those feelings, which reinforces your authority on the matter.

You can also always explain that many companies take part in these exercises, and if it has worked for many others, there is no reason that it won’t work for us. Another way to gain your team’s trust is to show them examples of previous exercises you have facilitated. Also, you can give them examples of what you would write or say for the specific exercise they are working on. By giving examples, you are gaining their trust by demonstrating your credibility, seeing that you have clearly run efficient and successful workshops in the past.

During the meeting:

Another important factor in being a good facilitator is keeping the energy high. As the facilitator, your goal is to maintain positive energy throughout the entire workshopping process. To do this, you want to remind your team, regardless of the reality, that they are doing great. You want them believing, based on the trust you have established, that everything is going well and moving on track. Another way to accomplish this is to never turn your back to the team. When you turn your back to them, it makes it more difficult to hear you and they will immediately disengage. This creates a challenge for you to regain their attention and return their energy to the high level. Energy is also a direct result of protein levels. Therefore, you should have healthy snacks, drinks, and coffee readily available. You should try and serve a light, healthy lunch that will keep the team alert, rather than a heavy lunch that will result in a sluggish feeling.

Time for a break:

Keeping energy high goes hand in hand with planning a good flow for the day. You want to ensure that you end each big period on a high or with an achievement. If you end on an achievement, your team will remember the feeling and be more excited and motivated to start up again. In line with remembering the positive feelings, at the end of the sections, you should run quick reflection sessions, so the team can review and bask in their achievements. Lastly, it is imperative that you are a vigilant facilitator, watching and interpreting the team’s energy, so you can notice when they can use an extra break. The main objective is to continuously promote positivity in order to keep hopes high. For example, encourage excitement by offering high fives.

Handling Troubles:

Establishing a sense of authority is also very useful when facilitating. You must be able to command the room, being able to cut people off when they are going on a tangent. To do this, you want to be firm but fair. When giving instructions, make sure they are clear and concise. We suggest simply explaining what they are going to do, why they are going to do this, and how they should do it. By doing this, they clearly understand their task and see that you clearly know what you are talking about, demonstrating you are the authority. Another helpful technique is to use a checklist, plan your day in advance, and use a timer. By doing these three things, you not only seem more prepared, but you can also rely and point to these things for support. You have a built in backing by being able to blame the checklist and timer for needing to proceed.

Another tip for establishing authority is to say the important things three times. When you say things once, only fifty percent of the team hear. When you say things twice, only seventy five percent of the team hear. But, when you say things three times, ninety-five percent of your team hear! By being concise, repeating the important things, and relying on your materials, you will be seen as the authority.

Pearls of Wisdom

Orit Zeitoun-Sade, our UX Strategist, who has years of facilitating experience, summarizes these three attributes needed to be a successful facilitator. She highlights that, “You need really good organizational skills. You need good executive functions. You need to have a good sense of when to interrupt to keep things going and when not to. Bring a comfortable vibe and make everyone feel comfortable. Be a host. You need to come prepared. Do research on the users and the market. Jake Knapp suggests going in cold turkey, but I disagree. You need to know when to give people breaks and when to lift spirits up again. Know how to close sessions and give closure. You need tactics to make people feel free to say what they want, and alleviate the anxiety of being afraid to say the wrong thing. Be able to make a decision and move on”.

In the next meeting…:

According to Ram Almog, our CEO, you should carry the following tips into your next meeting. First, “one of the most important tools of a facilitator is a good sense of humour. This is difficult to master but is probably the most effective tool you can have in facilitating… and in life.” Second, “The most difficult skill of a facilitator is the ability to listen and navigate the meeting. That’s one of the pitfalls of not coming cold. If you have established an opinion you may also be biased…”. Lastly, “you need to be able to move the discussion forward beyond ego. To do that, you have to have an established ego of your own and remember that this is not your show.” You are merely the gardener planting the seeds and letting the produce grow and thrive on its own.