Facilitation Essentials: What do people want to learn? Here’s what we’ve heard, so far.

The idea: Better meetings plus better participation equals better outcomes

Meetings are expensive. Unproductive meetings are expensive and painful. How can we work more effectively together — on our teams, across organizations, and with our clients, stakeholders, and the public? As public servants, we’re called upon to collaborate with one another, across jurisdictions, and with people from all parts of society to accomplish our shared objectives. How might we plan for, design, and host great group meetings and work that results in more inclusive and lasting decisions?

A “facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements.”

Sam Kaner, Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, 3rd Edition

Facilitation can improve our conversations, meetings, events — any kind of gathering where people need to work together and get results. When our Transferable Skills team approached public servants to ask about what they’d like to learn about facilitation, we also promised to share our findings. Like facilitation, building great learning experiences is a collaborative practice. I look forward to working with you to bring this to life, to sharing the course design as it progresses, and to continuing the conversation. We’ll continue to refine the design as we pilot it, and hear back from learners on their experience with the tools and approaches.

Facilitation. Curious? Passionate? New? Experienced? What would you like to learn? (We’d like to understand your needs.)

How might we build learning activities that respond to people’s needs? And how can we share our work openly, so we can involve people in both shaping the experiences — and build connections across from the public service. In the case of facilitation, we reached out to practitioners, some functional communities, plus shared our questions on GCCollab posts and via a conversation on Twitter.

Image of a twitter post asking people what they’d like to learn.

People shared great ideas; we’re excited to include them in the course design

Not surprisingly, asking people about their needs is a great way to check our blind spots. People shared great ideas and resources. Here’s a recap:

1. The “why” of facilitation really matters. How we work together and collaborate affects our overall outcomes. Traditional ways of discussing and interacting (e.g., presentations, panels) limit participation to a minority of participants, whereas facilitated approaches try to include everyone.
2. Canada is a big country. We need to be able to work well together both in-person, and virtually. While the intent may be similar, the practices are different, and our learning should highlight important steps to connect with and include people in both contexts.
3. We’re not starting from scratch. Organizations such as the National Managers Community (NMC) and Learning Organization Community of Practice (LOCoP) have developed great resources. Several departments have practitioner networks.
4. Strong preparation is critical to successful outcomes. People want to know more about understanding their “client’s” needs, diagnosing the underlying need for a session, and managing expectations. They asked about designing fit-for-purpose approaches, making a great facilitation plan, and how to get the most out of a dry run exercise.
5. How to build trust with and among groups. People asked about strategies to meet a group where they are at, establishing norms and expectations, getting buy-in to a process, leveling the playing field and establishing psychological safety so participants could have genuinely open discussions.
6. How to help groups stay on track. People asked about time management and flow techniques, including how to get discussions back on track. They asked about working with different types of personalities, and addressing challenging group dynamics.
7. How to choose and use tools and methods. Facilitation is a huge playground of methods and tools. We got lots of suggestions about what else we could add, including Liberating Structures, the Art of Hosting, storytelling, tools and tech to enable virtual collaboration (e.g., Zoom, WebEx); tools and tech to enable dialogue (e.g., Slido, Mentimeter).
8. Preparing yourself as a facilitator. A facilitator’s personal approach is key (energy, competency with particular tools, contexts), as are strategies for being at their best during a session. People suggested we offer guidance to help facilitators understand and articulate their approaches, to help them and possible clients assess fit.
9. Facilitation is closely linked to other skills. How might we address links to empathy, problem definition, gamification, conflict resolution, iteration and failure?
10. Practice makes progress. What opportunities do I have to practice my craft? Where to access a peer support network? How do I get buy in or formalize opportunities to facilitate with my “traditional” org? How will folks across the system know facilitators are willing and available to help?

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has offered advice and opinions so far. Have we captured your insights, or do you have more to say? We’d love to continue the conversation. In my next post I’ll share what we’re planning for our first iteration.

As the course grows, we’ll share our progress here or on our team’s Transferable Skills GCCollab page. Please do feel free to comment — we’d love your feedback. Want to know more about when we’re piloting? Drop us a line.