Stick To What We Know

In facilitating a recent series of product development workshops with a mixed audience of senior business and technology stakeholders, one of the technology stakeholders made what I felt was a profound statement re. Facilitation:

“We don’t understand the product, they don’t understand the process”

A Senior Technology Manager

As a facilitator, how often do we attempt to understand both?

Facilitation is about guiding the process, not the product or content.

It can often be a very fine line separating the two.

1. The facilitation process to guide and help participants create their content and achieve the expected outcomes.
2. Influencing and/or contributing to the content creation.

That’s why good facilitation can almost be an art form. 

Knowing when to stick to the process and when to mess with the content.

Spending time with one impacts time for the other.

As a facilitator, if you’re spending most of your time on the content, who’s facilitating the process?

On the other hand, if you have experience with the content, how might that experience help without abandoning your facilitator-first stance?

• Empathy with the challenges of the content may help you know when to dive a little deeper and when to press on.
• Increased value add and credibility as a facilitator who understands the content domain.
• Demonstrating curiosity with the content by asking powerful questions about the content.

Even if you manage to hold back from materially influencing and contributing to the creation of the content, is it sufficient to just stick to the facilitation role? 

How might handing over the reins of facilitation too help?

• Think “Training From the Back of the Room” (which I love, but the way). Another way for you to get out of the way.
• As the facilitator, how often have you been called upon to follow-up with participants after the meeting? When you hand over the facilitation reins, even temporarily, ownership and accountability for the effectiveness of outcomes  and any follow-up become a shared responsibility with the participants. 

Now, you might be thinking:

• If I don’t create the content.

And

• If I don’t facilitate the process.

Then what use am I?

Well, it all depends on what your objective was?

If your objective was to become indispensable to others, then you’re no longer indispensable and now, you’re out of a job. 

If your objective was to help others fend for themselves, then you’ve just done that with this one group and can now move on to help other groups do the same.

The latter is my modus operandi.

If I was to sum up my “Top Five” list of what to avoid as a facilitator, here’s what that list would include:

Top 5 Things to Avoid When Facilitating

1. Staying at the front of the room
2. Biasing the conversations 
3. Taking ownership of the problem
4. Uneven share of voice / engagement amongst participants due to taking up time and space
5. Being a “know-it-all” even if it’s only in your own mind which then perpetuates and doubles down on your contribution to the other four things on this list.