There is no collaboration without people. And when people don’t have the opportunity to voice their thoughts, everyone is not heard. While the goals and desired outcomes guide the design of a meeting or a workshop, the facilitator's task is also to help people to work together and contribute to the collaboration.
A participatory approach is a form of human-centered thinking. The facilitator thinks about the participants in every stage of planning. Is there enough space for people to warm up for collaboration? Do they need a break after the ideation exercise? Do they agree that we’ve reached our goal? Asking questions and empathizing with the participants results in confirming your assumptions with the participants.
A facilitator should get to know participants in advance. In some cases, this means actually getting to know the people. For example, when you work with your own team, you may be able to predict how the people will participate and what kind of support they’ll need during the collaboration. On the other hand, there are situations where you’ll receive information about participants second-hand. For example, the contact person of a client knows their own team and you can ask them for information about the participants.
Knowledge and skills
To help you to get to know your participants, you can start by figuring out their level of knowledge of the subject matter and their participation skills. What do the participants know in advance about the subject? What kind of participation are they used to? Below are two sets of elements that you should figure out before planning the workshop.
Things that might affect participatory skills include:
How comfortable and experienced is the person with holding conversations, decision-making, or workshopping together?
Ability to use the meeting software. This could be video conferencing like Zoom or a collaboration tool like Miro
Knowledge of how to get to the meeting space or virtual meeting
The culture of participation in the organization
Things that might affect the knowledge of the subject include:
Have the participants worked with the content earlier?
Expertise with the content
Access to supporting material before the meeting or the workshop
Educational background
How the content affects the participant’s working role
You might think that getting straight to the point in a meeting is the most efficient way to reach the goal. But if some participants know more than others, and some participants are more open to participatory collaboration, everyone doesn’t have the same possibilities to affect the outcomes. In that case, it’s important to include activities that help to level the participants’ knowledge and skills.
For example, if some participants haven’t used a virtual whiteboard before and need it for your remote workshop, you could prepare a test template for them to try in advance. Or if some of the participants are new to the subject matter, you could prepare a short update to go through in the meeting. You’ll learn more about creating a space for collaboration in Chapter 2.
When you want to empathize with your participants, you can ask them or yourself these helpful questions:
What is their motivation for participating?
How do they relate to the goal?
What do they know about the subject matter?
What kind of collaboration methods are they used to?
What kind of tools have they used before?
What might prevent them from participating?
What will make them feel like their contribution matters?
What opportunities do they have to affect the matter after the meeting or the workshop?