Facilitators have a bad rap in some circles. Many people experience facilitation as a power position, and even the language of typical facilitators backs this up: we “run meetings” and “keep groups under control”. And unfortunately most of us have experienced a facilitator herding the group in a direction we know (or suspect) they want things to go in. On the other side, we’ve all sat through meetings with someone at the helm who is so ineffectual that we may as well have ordered pizza and watched a movie for all the work we got done (and we’d have had more fun!)

Facilitation is an art. It’s a skill set. It’s a way of being that fosters positive group process. “Facilitate” literally means to make easy. When you combine that with a trained facilitator’s ability to keep a group both on task and in connection with one another, you have the basic ingredients of facilitation as servant leadership.

A servant leader is someone who aligns their energy with supporting people’s growth and joy, in the process of supporting the planet moving in a positive, life-affirming direction. Servant leaders hold a big picture perspective, while holding their own personal agendas lightly. Any facilitator who focuses on the group good and is willing to truly hold the group through difficult moments in order to further the collective will is a servant leader. It requires being both quick on your feet (a right brain skill) and compassionately tuned in to the energy in the room (a left brainer.)

We train facilitators in a wide range of skills: being able to bridge between seemingly disparate perspectives, tracking where the conversation is in relation to the planned agenda, staying present and facilitative when tempers flare or tears flow, and holding a group to their own agreements (even when they resist them in the moment). This is just a sampling of what a good facilitator does, and this range of things is important, because the skilled work of facilitators is important. Facilitators make it possible for a group with good intentions to effectively act upon those intentions in the world—to move past talk into action. And the skills of peaceful conflict resolution are ones the world needs right now. Good, service-based facilitators are a gift to the planet.

Try these tips to improve your meetings:

1) Choose facilitators who don’t have a strong attachment to the outcome of the topic at hand. Neutrality is key to moving away from facilitation as a power trip and into facilitation as a service trip.

2) Recognize that meetings are almost always a mix of getting work done and people connecting with each other. Include both things in your agenda, and you’ll ultimately be more productive because more people will be getting more of what they came for.

3) Practice reflective responses. This means that you accurately state back to someone the gist of what they just said. Reflective responses go a long way to assuring that people feel heard and feel that the other participants care about their perspective, and this keeps people more thoroughly engaged and committed to the work of the group.

Dynamic Facilitation Training is currently being arrnaged in North Carolina, souther California, New England and Washington state. Contact us for details, to bring the training to your area, or to set up a facilitation for your group.