Four Facilitator Roles Guarantee Success

The goal, therefore, is to create satisfaction within a work session. Here are four distinct roles for a facilitator in this context:
1. Meeting manager (emphasizes process and psychic satisfactions)
2. Process consultant (emphasizes process)
3. Collaboration specialist (emphasizes process)
4. Strategic thinker. (emphasizes content and process)

Meeting Manager. Understands the nature of meetings and uses appropriate skills (active listening, directing, eliciting, involving, cheer leading) and behaviors (supportive, protective, complimenting, corrective) to manage the process. Fully capable of dealing with the range of personality types in meeting settings.

Process Consultant. Can bring into play, group techniques such as brainstorming, problem solving, negotiating, conflict management, creative thinking, and consensus building. Can suggest individual methods such as mindmapping. Uses deadlock-breaking tools to help the group get past fixed positions.

Collaboration Specialist. Understands the dynamics of collaborating & building coalitions. Has discipline to build multiple small agreements of process, procedures, and obvious agreements before moving on to the more controversial topics. Accepts diverse personalities and the uniqueness of people. Patient and flexible.

Strategic Thinker. Sees the whole as a generalist – a systems thinker. Implications mapping is a tool in this area. Is versed in strategic exploration. Able to position the group’s work to achieve optimal results that fully support organizational goals. Helps the group answer the question, "Is what we are doing helping to drive our vision or mission?" If a ‘yes’ answer does not jump right out, then the task under consideration is probably not a priority and the facilitator needs to get the group back on track.

Play the Roles

It would be good to suggest a sequence to use the roles. There is none. Just like the basketball player dribbling to the basket against a defender, the precise path is uncharted. What the dribbler will do next is fully dependent on that moment in time. I trust you get the point. The key to facilitation success is to learn the tools so one is prepared to react with the right tool at the right moment.

Final Thought

The funds management facilitation was to get the parties deliberating together and that was accomplished after three sessions. During the second session, it was necessary to require all 35 participants to sign a behaviors document as a physical reinforcement of their agreement. It was simpler to refer to their signature to remind them of their ‘pledge.’

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