Facilitation Guide

Any questions? Additional ideas to include in this guide? Things that could be simpler? Other feedback? Please send them to [email protected].

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We’ve all been in meetings where people are talking over each other, discussion jumps from topic to topic and back without resolution, everyone is confused, tensions are high, nothing is decided, you end way over time, and everyone leaves frustrated. But meetings don’t have to be this way. Effective facilitation can make meetings more pleasant, organized, clear, supportive, inclusive, and egalitarian. This guide is meant to help more people feel empowered to facilitate (both inside and outside of NAC) so that roles can be more equally distributed and meetings can run smoothly in every organization.

A facilitator’s overall role is to ensure that everyone is heard and that good process is used to reach common goals.

Facilitation Principles

Here are a few core facilitation principles. Someone who mastered just these would be an excellent facilitator. The rest of this guide provides examples and specifics.

Clarity – Make everything as clear and as simple as possible so it’s easier for people to participate.
Focus on the group – Pay attention to the group. What does the group need?
Steward the process – You focus on the process so others can focus on the content.

Facilitation Roles

A facilitator wears many hats as a result of being a steward of the process.

Keep the meeting on track – Keeps discussion to one topic at a time and finish each topic before moving on to the next one.
Stack – Tracks who wants to talk and whose turn it is to talk. (More below)
The big picture – Makes the purposes of the meeting and topics clear to all.
Vibeswatch – Maintains awareness of participants’ levels of emotional, mental, and physical needs throughout the meeting/conversation.
Timekeeper – Keeps track of time and what’s left on the agenda. Reminds people of the time so they can decide what’s important to prioritize.
Decisions – Checks for consensus and temperature checks for decisions as needed. Follows the decision making / consensus process the group has agreed to. (More below)
Conflict Resolution – Evaluates how to handle conflict if it arises. (More below)

Facilitation Tips

There are a lot of tips here, but remember the key is to just on the group. What does the group need? These are just some ways to respond to what the group needs.

Explain everything – You’re the narrator of the meeting. What can be obvious to you can be confusing to someone else so explain what’s happening in the meeting (especially if there are new people present). This includes explaining what you’re doing as a facilitator.
Pay attention – People are relying on you to support them (to speak, to address a problem, etc). Look for hand signals, people with confused expressions, people who clearly want to say something but aren’t, etc. If you’re distracted, everyone is distracted. Listen.
Read the room – What are the group dynamics? What does the group need? Do they need something explained/clarified? Do they need a break? Do they need a clearer proposal or simpler question? Do they need to focus? Is there tension that needs to be addressed? Do they need to move faster/slower? Do they need to explore this fun tangent for a moment?
Summarize – Listen to what people are saying. When there is a lull or confusion step in to summarize what you’ve heard. This can clarify where people agree and disagree and make the rest of the discussion easier.
Ask permission – Everything you do is with the consent of the group. Ask permission frequently to remind everyone that they are in control. “Shall we move on to the next topic?” “How about we focus on this question first?”
Help each person feel heard – Use paraphrasing, scribing (writing stuff up front where everyone can see it), summarizing, and other methods to reflect back what people are saying.
Be impartial – Ideally a facilitator should be completely impartial and just serve to facilitate the group, though that is not always practical. If you must give content (opinions, solutions, answers to questions, how you feel about a proposal, input), label it as clearly separate from your facilitation role, verbally place yourself last on stack, and be brief. If you realize your feelings on an issue cloud your ability to continue facilitating, you may pass on the duties to someone else (let the group know that this is what you’re doing).
Always use an agenda – If there isn’t an agenda then make a quick one. Always have an agenda so it’s clear what you’re talking about and what’s next.
One discussion at a time – Keep to one topic at a time and finish it before moving on. Break up complicated discussion into multiple smaller ones if needed.
Frequent temperature checks – Frequent, quick temperature checks for big and small decisions ensure that everyone is on the same page and welcomes even slight hesitations that can end up being valuable concerns.
Be open about your needs – You’re a person with needs too. Don’t hesitate to say if you need a short break or if you need someone to take over facilitating (for whatever reason).
Ask for feedback – We’re always learning and growing. Asking for honest feedback at the end of the meeting is the best way to improve.

Consent Based Decision Making

At its most basic, consent is the general agreement within a group. Consent based decision making is also known as Sociocracy. Consent Basics:

Consent – Consent governs decision-making. Consent means there areno argued and paramount objections to a proposed policy decision.

Circles – circles are semi-autonomous, self-organizing units with their own domain and aim and their own action, development and feedback processes.

Double Linking – between circles - enables information (feedback) to travel up, down and across an organization

Selections – Circles elect people to functions, tasks and roles by consent and with transparency

3 tools from sociocracy to use right away, plus magic phrases

by Ted Rau; link

1. Rounds

Rounds are the most contagious tools of sociocracy. The basic idea is ridiculously simple: everyone gets a turn to speak, one by one. Yes, that’s it. (I promised easy, right?)

How to

The easiest way is to do rounds is to sit in a circle and follow a natural order by where people sit. When I see that the person next to me is speaking, I know I will have my turn next. That also helps people to mentally prepare for their turn. In online-meetings, we encourage facilitators to call on two people at a time so the second one can get ready. (Which also means they will have their contribution somewhat pre-sorted!)

Obviously, it helps to have a facilitator to do rounds. We also do not recommend doing rounds in a group bigger than 8 or 9 people. (If your group is larger, continue reading to tool #3.)

Benefits

Rounds have benefits for both sides, speakers and listeners. Let’s look at the speaker first. What is inherent in rounds is that everyone’s voice matters. Equally. What I say matters as much as what my co-worker says. And what my co-worker says matters as much as what I say. One might have more insight on a given topic than the other but good thoughts sometimes come from unexpected places.

Rounds change the rules of the game so it doesn’t become a game of convincing each other. Instead, it becomes a game of sharing your thoughts and co-creation. It sometimes feels like we’re all giving our offering and put it in the middle of the circle where it can grow into something bigger and better than I could have come up with. When I am speaking I know I am protected from people wanting to prove me wrong. Rounds carve out a safe space to share.

What are rounds like for listeners? One benefit for listeners is that when I know it is not my turn and I know it will take another two or three turns until I can speak, I start to relax. I sit back and listen because there is nothing else to do. I can focus on the speaker, trying to understand what the issue on the table looks like from their view.

Rounds make it manifest that our views might be different. Beyond finding the absolute truth or pushing my own agenda, we honor the variety of experiences. All of a sudden there is space. And once there is space, solutions are more likely to emerge.

Typical reservations

Are rounds artificial? Maybe. After seeing how easily my children picked up rounds, I have given up on finding out what is artificial or natural. I find something else more important. Talking without order means you will be in “natural” flow of conversation. In Sociocracy For All, we call this debate style. Debate style: you say something and I will try and prove you wrong because my idea is better. Debate style brings along all the implicit and mostly unquestioned power dynamics, men speaking more often than women and so on. That means that deciding to not use rounds means making a choice, and it is a choice that has known, measuable disadvantages.

Are rounds hard? Yes and no. In the beginning, rounds are hard for some people. Yes, changing your patterns is hard. But they are not complicated. Whenever I attend a (non-sociocratic) meeting where people talk over each other, I silently enjoy noticing how startled I am when I witness that.

Of course I myself am ego-driven and I have a ton of good ideas! But I also know that it only takes one person in the circle engaging in cross-talk and the good effects of rounds are lost. What do I do with all my brilliant ideas? I write them on a piece of paper. When it is my turn, I will often look at my piece of paper and realize that, after a few minutes of listening to others, about 90% of my ideas have either been named or, on second thought, they don’t seem all that great or urgent anymore. Humbled, I am often grateful for having been forced to weed through what I say. And when people pass on their turn saying “All I wanted to say has been said” I feel the urge to get up and hug them in gratitude for not putting the group through endless repetitions. Which also answers the last reservation I hear very often: aren’t rounds lengthty? Maybe. But inconsiderate decisions, repetitive statements and emotional “clean-up” after disregard of team members take a lot of time too. Your choice!

How to start

Next time you find yourself in a debate style discussion, try one of these two sentences:

“I would really be interested to hear what everyone in the room thinks about this. Can we do a go-around and everyone shares, and we try to give not to interrupt each other?”

“I notice how I want to say something but I don’t want to over-talk anyone else. Could we slow this down and talk one by one in a round so we all get to speak without having to compete?

2. Small group decisions

More a principle than a tool, sociocracy, like all frameworks building on distributed power, pushes authority to the teams on the “lowest” or most specific level. Those small teams will be the people who do operational work in that domain and have a defined area of responsibility and authority to govern their own team’s work, a key ingredient of self-management. As often as you can, let the people decide who are going to end up doing the work. There is much more to say about organizational structure but I promised easy, accessible tools, so let’s keep it simple.

A common reaction here is “but if we are all equals, shouldn’t we all decide together?” Although this sounds so intriguingly logical, it simply doesn’t carry over into reality. It is not how people are wired. In a large group, individuals will dominate the discussion or struggle to make themselves heard. Or they will disengage and give up on getting heard. Is that what we have in mind when we all want to be equals? Not really.

Deliberation in a small group makes it easier to listen to each other and to engage with each other. But then — how can we trust that those few people will make a decision that works for everyone who is affected by the decision? In short, how can we make sure everyone is heard and still have the benefits of an engaged discussion (ideally, in rounds)?