Whether you have been asked to facilitate an important work meeting or you are responsible for your next CPD workshop, having the right skills is crucial to effective collaboration and enable you to lead a group towards achieving common outcomes and objectives. In this CPD article, we will look at how you can improve your facilitation skills and provide some helpful tips for the workplace.
What are Facilitation Skills and why are they important?
Facilitation skills are the abilities and competencies needed to work with a group. They embody a set of techniques that are used to manage how everyone interacts together. As a facilitator, you will enable and support the group through an activity or meeting, breaking down any larger discussions into manageable pieces. All members of the group should be included in the decision making. This will help to enhance problem-solving and encourage them by ensuring that they all think critically to achieve a desired outcome.
Whether in a professional or personal setting, the importance of being able to effectively facilitate cannot be understated. Here are some reasons why facilitation skills are so essential.
Builds Trust and Engagement. A skilled facilitator should be organised and ready to welcome participants on arrival. It is important that everyone feels that they are in a safe space, they will therefore be more likely to engage, raise possible concerns and be able to share their opinions and ideas openly without fear of criticism.
Improve Cooperation. A good facilitator will ensure everything runs to time and that no singular person dominates the discussion. Creating a cooperative environment will help the group fulfil their objectives through collaboration and so achieve more together.
Conflict Resolution: The objective of the group is to reach a collective conclusion. Different experiences, backgrounds and diversities can lead to an informed decision being reached. Even if participants know each other well, there is always the possibility of conflict in a group. By addressing all parties, being respectful and inclusive of everyone’s feelings, the facilitator can create a space where opinions can be explored and common ground can be found.
Effective Decision Making: The role of a facilitator is to enable participants to achieve their objectives. In order to get the best from participants a facilitator will ask questions, but not make decisions, instead guiding them to come to a resolution by general consensus. They will have the ability to reframe questions and look at things from a different viewpoint so that decisions can be made by the group.
What are the benefits of Facilitation Skills?
Being a skilled facilitator in your organisation will make you a valued member of staff and have a positive impact on the team for a number of reasons. These can include:
Improved Communications. Clear communication skills reduce chances of misunderstandings. A skilled facilitator will use active listening skills and be empathetic to the group’s opinions, leading to more honest open communication which will help build stronger relationships.
Increased Productivity. An organised facilitator will ensure that all participants are informed in advance of what will be required of them. Meetings are more likely to stay focused if subjects have an allotted time slot. This helps the group stay on topic and improve productivity to achieve the objectives.
Innovation. It’s often easier sometimes to repeat the same techniques and do things as before. A skilled facilitator can reframe scenarios and questions, allowing members of the group to push the boundaries of what previously was the norm. They will also create an environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking which can allow the group to flourish.
