The Journey Of Facilitation – Where To Start
When I think back to the time my business card included the abbreviation HR, the busy days flew by in what later felt like a revolving door of transactional people issues (of varying complexities). After a couple of years of hitting my career hard, I’d kind of mastered the generalist HR space and, almost subconsciously, started looking for the next ‘challenge’. In that search, I started to notice things that weren’t obvious to me before. Those ‘things’ I now know were about human behavior. And team dynamics, human connection and corporate culture.
The start of something
As this new world opened up, I could see opportunities. More importantly, I could see individuals, and teams and leaders, caught up in unproductive, ineffective and even toxic cycles, sometimes as a result of their own mindset or behaviors but more often as a result of culture aspects of the organization – leadership, processes, policies, technology, norms, management practices. I would see global change programs rolled out, without much consideration for the local culture fit, that were destined to fail.
But where to begin?
I knew what I wanted to do, but had no idea how to start. And I probably didn’t really understand the full impact of what could be achieved through this new lens I was viewing the workplace with. ‘Facilitation’ came on my radar and I quickly concluded that being a good facilitator isn’t the same as knowing how to manage people or run a meeting. It all comes down to understanding the tools – and structure – that help people collaborate. It dawned on me that collaboration in a new way could help resolve most, if not all, of these issues because they were often created by the very people who were living them.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I ‘fell’ into actual facilitation but before I knew it, I was offering my services to support (internal) clients. I started with small activities, like dropping into a department meeting and running a quick icebreaker for a manager who might have mentioned that team meetings felt a little stale. Or I offered to run the first hour of a strategy offsite that we’d otherwise not be involved with. Before long, word got out that HR could add value in a new way, and I could feel myself gravitating more and more into this new world of Organizational Development (OD).
Time to tool up
It became obvious to me, even in those early days, that my career was heading down a new path. I knew I was only scratching the surface with the OD work I was doing at that stage. But the engagement and reaction from client groups told me everything I needed to know. There was something magical in this thing called ‘facilitation’.
After some digging around, I understood that for me to progress, I needed to arm myself with the right tools. So, I started to build my facilitator’s toolkit. I shared my career objectives with my manager, and we agreed that my annual L&D budget would be invested in profiling skills. I hunted high and low for good icebreakers and other transformational change management activities and I stored them until the next opportunity to use them. Many went in the bin, others quickly went on to become favourites. (Fast forward and this also became the motivation for building Facilitatr over the past 12-months – to share the knowledge and tools I wish were available to me then).
Practice makes perfect
Once I had built up a reasonable toolkit that suited my level of expertise, I set out to get any experience I could. I kept my ego in check and never took on assignments too far out of my level of expertise, but I did look for ‘stretch’ opportunities. I was pretty bold in showing up in a manager’s office and asking for opportunities to support them or their team. Of course, I always did my homework so that I could hit the nail on the head with whatever issues that team had (and believe me there is always stuff to sort out). Did I ever run activities that didn’t work? Absolutely. Did I dive into a topic with a team only to find that those team ‘issues’ were complex and I was well out of my comfort zone? Yep. But 95 per cent of the time, my work was hitting the mark. And I felt a deep sense of satisfaction that I was able to move the needle in the right direction for that team. Before long, running the occasional activity became half and full day workshops, and then complete change programs.
You have to start somewhere
For those wanting to start out on this journey, I recommend taking small steps. A psychologist or doctor doesn’t just jump into the heavy stuff on day one and expect success. In fact, the journey of ‘building’ over months and years in facilitation is imperative to your capability and results. And life experience is key. Because it adds depth and meaning to the journey you will take your clients or teams on, and powers the storytelling that becomes part of your ability to shift teams.
So, get out your career map, understand where you’re at and where you want to be, and get on the road. Be brave. Be focused. Be bold. A career in facilitation takes energy, courage, smarts and a good dose of risk. The destination is worth the journey.
About the Author
Ainsley Jeffery is founder and CEO of facilitatr. She’s a team strategist and people geek, sought-after facilitator, coach and change manager, health advocate and closet creative.