When to use an expert facilitator

Good leaders know when to lead from the front and when to step back and build consensus or develop collaborative solutions.

In these moments, it helps to use an expert facilitator to create highly structured meetings and events where participants create results and joint action plans.

There are 4 key times when facilitators can add particular value:

1. The outcome is critical to the business:  if you need to get to a fast consensus on the best way forward, especially when there is a broad range of opinions, then a facilitated workshop or meeting can quickly flush out all the beliefs, needs and facts.  The facilitator guides the team through activities that creates potential solutions and helps them to home in on best action steps.
2. You need the full engagement of a team:  most projects and processes work more effectively and efficiently with full team engagement, but often there are only one or two key people driving things.  A facilitator can help teams establish common goals and actions, and help them improve their effectiveness.
3. There are wide ranging opinions amongst key stakeholders.  Some meetings can feel like herding cats because there are so many divergent opinions in the room, all of which may be valid and useful in some way.  Facilitators have tools and processes to capture and organise wide ranging knowledge and opinions, and help divergent teams focus on developing meaningful common solutions.
4. When you know that the meeting will be dysfunctional.  Sadly, there are situations where a team or group of stakeholders becomes dysfunctional, or there is a disruptive member who gets in the way of effective discussion. A facilitator will plan activities that allow everyone’s voice to be heard, and transforms disruption and dysfunction into collaborative problem solving.

Great facilitators are worth their weight in gold because they leave your team or organisation with a greater sense of shared purpose.  They move the process forward by encouraging open communication, building consensus, and making sure everyone feels listened to.

Even in highly complex situations, facilitators will make sure that all of the knowledge has been captured in a way that makes it useful to future decision making, and will help to encourage full ownership of action steps so that your business move forward more quickly.

You might want to engage a facilitator for:

• New product ideas and development
• Strategy development
• Team formation and development
• Getting broad based customer or stakeholder input/ feedback
• Getting staff insights and feedback to drive improvements

But watch out!  Don’t use a facilitator if you have already decided the answer, or are not open to alternative solutions.  Facilitated sessions unleash creativity and collaboration – people will be inspired to drive positive change!