We’ve all seen facilitators at work. They’re the people who run meetings, host workshops, write on sticky notes, and tell us how much time there is left to achieve something. Facilitation means designing and running successful collaboration in workshops and meetings.
Facilitation skills include a participatory and human-centric mindset, an understanding of goals and results, and the use of activities – such as dialogue and creative methods – to help participants achieve the goal of collaboration. Facilitation is usually seen as a task for the host of the meeting. During this course, you’ll also learn how all team members can benefit from learning facilitation skills.
Facilitation makes teamwork easier
With facilitation, teamwork becomes more efficient. Well-designed meetings reach their goals and make participants feel that their time was well spent. Facilitation skills also help ensure open communication and equal opportunities for everyone involved to participate.
Looking at the bigger picture, facilitation means helping people to achieve their collaboration goals. Collaboration usually occurs in meetings and workshops but can also happen on virtual platforms, in shared documents, and during coffee breaks. When you start learning facilitation skills, you might realize you can use them outside of meetings as well.
The most important tools: goals, desired outcomes, and participants
Designing a successful meeting starts with defining the goals and desired outcomes and getting to know the participants. These are the elements this course is going to focus on.
Whether you start designing a meeting, a workshop, or a series of workshops, you should always start by asking yourself: what are we trying to achieve? The goal should always be clear from the beginning. You might want to understand something better, agree on project plans, or develop new ideas.
Understand the key terms
Goals: What will change after the workshop? Goals define the general direction in which the content should be heading.
Desired outcomes: How can we tell that change has happened? Desired outcomes are the tangible results of the workshop, such as project plans, documentation, or decisions.
Participants: Who is participating and why? The participants’ knowledge about the subject and collaboration skills affect the ways you can achieve the goals.
What’ll change after the meeting? Defining the goal helps you figure out the desired outcomes of the meeting. For example, if there’s a need for better understanding, the outcome could be answers to a set of questions. When you know the desired outcomes, it’s easier to design collaboration activities.
The third important tool is to know your participants. What kind of knowledge do the participants have in advance about the subject? What kind of participation are they used to? If the participants’ level of knowledge or skills varies, with proper facilitation, you can help them find common ground and make collaboration easier.
There are a lot of different facilitation methods that can be used. Sometimes people get excited about the methods more than the outcomes. And sometimes, the methods may feel irrelevant. During this course, you’ll learn about the mindset and skills a facilitator has and understand how to use different tools in different situations.