Our facilitation services

When it comes to the meaning of facilitation, there’s dictionary definitions aplenty. At Ensemble Strategy, we define facilitation as guiding and supporting a group of people to progress through a discussion. As we said earlier in this article, facilitation is about bringing people together to have conversations that matter.

When done well, facilitation has a range of benefits such as:

• Ensuring everyone in attendance contributes and participates;

• Bringing out creativity, new ideas and different perspectives;

• Navigating difficult topics, complexity and ambiguity;

• Building rapport and social connection; and

• Using the available time effectively.

To avoid the overthinking and undercooking we mentioned earlier, it can be helpful to cover off on the following aspects of facilitation:

The why

Why are we having a facilitated session? What outcomes are we seeking? What two or three key questions are we aiming to answer?

The who

Who needs to be in the room to deliver on the outcomes we seek? What mix and number of people will work well? Is there a risk that our workshop includes too many people or too few?

The what

What topics will we dig into to progress the session’s why? What specific questions, activities and exercises will draw on? What workshop structure will help us achieve the outcomes we seek in the time available?

The how

How will I facilitate? What is my facilitation style and approach? How will workshop attendees participate and contribute? Do we want to set ground rules or principles for the session?

The where

Where will we hold our workshop? What kind of space and setting will work best for this session?

The when

When will we hold our workshop? Is there a time of day that will work best for attendees? Do we need to schedule around busy periods?

A range of facilitation skills and capabilities are needed to run sessions. In our opinion, the foundational facilitation skills are:

• Listening

• Synthesising

• Planning

• Giving clear instructions

• Timekeeping

• Notetaking

• Being flexible

If you’re looking to move beyond facilitation 101, we suggest building on the core facilitation skills we outlined in the previous paragraph with the following elements.

Unique tailoring

Great facilitation is bespoke. It considers the people in the room, the objectives sought and the broader context. This means some workshops are higher energy and more playful, while others are more formal. In other cases, the entire session might involve whole group discussion as opposed to breaking out into pairs and small groups.

Playback plus

Facilitation involves recapping what’s been discussed. To level up, great facilitators see strategic patterns and trends, highlighting the most important points. To level up again, experienced facilitators ask pertinent questions about these important points which further progress the thinking and conversation.

Handle the disruptions (and disruptors)

Workshops involve people, who bring their individual emotions, personalities and agendas. Experienced facilitators are equipped to manage the dynamics at hand. This includes dominant participants, shy contributors, agitating cynics and more.

Absent egos

Great facilitators know that the workshop is not about them. Their role is to mobilise and enable the group to work effectively together, generate ideas, make decisions and compromise as needed. Outstanding facilitation requires stepping back and lifting others up.

Workshop ground rules or principles are essentially a code of conduct. They outline what kind of behaviours and attitudes are expected so the session is productive. For example, in Lord of the Flies, there’s an agreement that only the person with the conch can speak.

So, as a facilitator, what ground rules should you set? And where does conch fit into this? We have two suggestions here and conch features in neither. The first is to look at the company’s values/beliefs and see whether applying these to the session could be useful. This can help strengthen existing company culture. The second is to agree workshop principles with workshop participants early on in the workshop. This can increase ownership of the ground rules among the group and give you, as the facilitator, a sense of what matters to them.

When developing a facilitator workshop agenda, we always start with and come back to the outcomes sought. For strategy facilitation, this may be about confirming your organisation’s vision and purpose, and shaping the strategic direction. From here, we identify a series of topics and questions that will progress these outcomes. Next, we allocate approximate timings to the various topics and questions, and think about the specific activities, exercises and resources required for each topic/question. This means our facilitator workshop agendas often include the following:

1. Agenda item

2. Description including questions, activities and exercises

3. Approximate timings

4. Other notes e.g. any prep work required

It’s rare to share your facilitator workshop agenda with workshop participants. Instead of providing your detailed facilitation plan, it’s generally a good idea to share a high-level version of the workshop agenda with them and include some pre-thinking questions for consideration in advance of the session. In some instances, it can be valuable to share further background information and other insights as well.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of facilitation tools, exercises and techniques out there. We recap a few of our go-to ones below:

• Rotating between whole group, small group and paired discussion as well as time for individual reflection

• Alternating between sitting down, standing up and moving around the room

• Experimenting with some workshop discussions being held inside and others outside (walking chats in pairs can work well)

• Making the session tangible and tactile with whiteboards, butcher paper, post it notes, individual notebooks / sheets of paper and sticky dots

• Using digital platforms like Miro, Mural, Sli.do and Mentimeter for online sessions

• Bringing in topic-specific frameworks like the business model canvas when looking at funding diversification or strategy maps and the value discipline for strategic planning

• Covering multiple topics in small groups by building on one another’s ideas by applying the world café facilitation technique

• Finding appropriate ice breakers that are short, easy, fun, energising and importantly not too cheesy

If you want to dig further into these facilitation tools, exercises and techniques, refer to our favourite resources further down in this article for links.

We mentioned earlier that “the where” is one of the key aspects of facilitation. The first question to answer here is whether the workshop will be in-person, online or hybrid. We’ve outlined key considerations for each of these options below.

In-person workshops

If you’re facilitating a face-to-face session, ask yourself:

• Is the room large enough? Do we have enough space and enough seats for everyone? Do we need to practice physical distancing and, if so, is there sufficient room? Is there adequate space or nearby rooms so we can breakout into smaller groups?

• Does the venue have windows that let natural light in? A note to beware dark and artificially lit rooms as these can hamper engagement and energy levels.

• Is the space accessible for people with physical disabilities, including wheelchair users?

• Does the room have a nearby outdoor area? Is there an option for workshop participants to move outside?

• Is there an air conditioning or heating unit, and is it easy to use? Another note to beware rooms that get too hot or too cold as this also impacts engagement and energy levels.

• Can the workshop be held somewhere other than the company office? Running sessions in a different place to normal can help with creativity and open-mindedness.

Online workshops

If you’re facilitating a digital workshop, ask yourself:

• Does everyone have access to a laptop/computer and any other technology they require?

• Are participants able to dial in from a quiet space?

• Will people dial in individually or in small groups?

• Are attendees familiar with online workshop tools? If no, do you have time factored in for a live tutorial during the workshop?

Hybrid workshops

If you’re facilitating a hybrid session, ask yourself:

• How will you make sure everyone is included and engaged, regardless of location? Could you refine your facilitation skills and approach to help with this?

• Is it possible to access speakers, microphones and a projector screen to ensure the best possible experience?

There are some general statements that apply here. For example, board workshops are often run more formally than team sessions. In addition, board and executive facilitation usually involve smaller groups of people, whereas team and stakeholder facilitation are likely to be larger sessions. We consider the capability, context and capacity of who’s in the room, and adapt our facilitation approach accordingly.

For the most part, not-for-profit facilitation and private sector facilitation are similar. Yes, there will be cultural and contextual differences but this is true for every organisation and every workshop. It is worth flagging that specific approaches and skills are beneficial when facilitating workshops involving people with lived experience (e.g. people with disability, victim-survivors of family violence).

There are pros and cons of engaging an external facilitator or consultant to help you with running workshops. Your experience here will also vary wildly depending on which firm or individual you go with. We’ve outlined some of the key points to consider below.

Pros

• Enable everyone in your board and team to participate fully in workshops and meetings, rather than someone needing to be the facilitator

• Bring in ideas from other sectors and organisations

• Alleviate internal capacity challenges

• Independent third party facilitation may elicit new or different perspectives from internal and external stakeholders

• Opportunity to learn facilitation skills by observing (and/or co-facilitating if the external facilitator is open to this)

Cons

• Will incur a cost

• Some consultants don’t understand your sector and won’t understand your organisation (or will take a very long time to!)

• Risk of losing internal ownership of your strategic plan, operations and strategy implementation

• Removes opportunity to practice and learn facilitation skills by doing (unless the consultant is open to co-facilitating)