- What is facilitation?
The word 'facilitation' is originally from the Latin word 'facilis', which simply means 'to make easy'.
In practice, professional facilitation involves a range of techniques and process management tools used to ease group collaboration, allowing teams to effectively achieve their planned goals. - What does a professional facilitator do?A facilitator acts as a neutral catalyst for your meeting or event. Specifically, the facilitator takes full responsibility for:
- Process Management: Safely guiding the group from point A to point B and ensuring everyone stays focused on the shared purpose.
- Energy and Engagement: Reading the room's atmosphere and strategically introducing energizers or breaks whenever concentration drops.
- Participant Involvement: Asking the right open-ended questions and ensuring that every voice is heard.
- Managing Resistance: Effectively intervening to handle any dysfunctional behavior and ensuring a constructive dialogue.
- Can’t our CEO or manager just handle the meeting management and process management?
Yes, and no - as it places incredibly high demands on the leader.
The biggest challenge is that an ideal facilitator must be completely neutral. As a manager, project leader, or internal expert, you almost always have an opinion on the content and the specific decisions being made. Bringing in an external expert for leadership facilitation frees up the leader to actively participate in the professional discussions on equal footing with the rest of the team. - What is graphic recording, and why does it work?
Graphic recording (also known as visual facilitation) means that we simultaneously draw and visualize your presentations and ideas as they happen in the room.
The advantage is that it creates shared learning and understanding during the meeting itself, and that complex points are anchored in a powerful visual testament when the day is done. Experience and research show that visual elements make the content much easier to remember, allowing the decisions to live on longer within the organization.
- For what types of events can you use event facilitationProfessional facilitation can add value to almost any format where a group of people gathers with a purpose. We provide expert assistance with:
- Workshop Facilitation: Idea generation, strategy, and innovation.
- Meeting Management: Project meetings, networking groups, and standard department meetings that need to break away from the "business as usual" culture.
- Large-Scale Event Facilitation: Strategy seminars, theme days, and major conferences.
- Virtual and Hybrid Meeting Facilitation: Expert virtual facilitation of meetings working flawlessly across screens and locations.