What Makes for Good Facilitation?

Facilitation is one of the most underrated leadership skills, although it is one of the most important.  Most leaders never get training in how to include their team in ways that encourage new thinking, reinforce relationships or surface doubts before they can start to sabotage planning.  They should, because team meetings are where many organizational values get tested, setting the tone for how much people experience feeling included, validated and respected.  If meetings are not facilitated to meet the needs of all people, they become performative at best, and a passive-aggressive minefield at worst.

Part of the problem is how people understand facilitation.  Good facilitation is not what most people think it is:

• it is not about being the best content expert;
• it is not about how well you keep track of time;
• it is not how well you speak.

Fundamentally, being a good facilitator has little to do with YOU.  Good facilitators use their knowledge, skills and selves in service of moving the group forward.  The word facilitate comes from the latin verb facere which means “to make” or “to do”, leading to today’s definition of making something less difficult.

Good facilitation means being able to bend and flex rather than lock in and break.  When someone levels a critical comment at you or someone else in the group, rather than doubling down to put that person in their place, a good facilitator with tao-chi the energy to say instead, “It surprises me to hear you say that. Can you explain more?”  Or “do other people agree with this?” Or “what do you think needs to happen differently?” Good facilitators lean in, rather than check out.

Good facilitation is about reading power dynamics and doing what you can to create equitable participation.  Who is in the room, and who should be in the room?  Who is speaking the most and who isn’t? Whose voices are getting heard, and whose are not?  Good facilitators know how to track and interrupt invisible patterns of dominance and oppression, holding back the group as a whole.

Good facilitation is about assessing the group’s comfort for conflict.  Where is this group at in terms of their cohesion? Are there issues lurking, what are people not comfortable saying?  Is this group ready to have a brave conversation?  Good facilitators know what to do to challenge people’s comfort for the sake of learning, without pushing too far.

Good facilitators fundamentally have to develop a high level of self-trust through an ongoing practice of self-inquiry.  During any group process, I make the best choices I can in the moment, but during the breaks I run my mental tapes: What went well? What did I miss?  Do I need to course correct? Is there anyone I need to follow up with?  But more deeply, “am I getting triggered or caught up in their dynamic?  Am I taking care of myself so I’m not getting hooked on the group’s emotional needs? Is there something I need to do to reset?

A mentor once said to me “a good facilitator has to be willing to die in front of the room if needed”.  What he meant was that a good facilitator needs to be able to sacrifice their ego—their own need for recognition, status or comfort—to be able to do or say the hardest thing if it will free up some blocked energy to move the group forward. 

If a leader isn’t ready or willing to look at themselves, they will not be able to serve the individuals they are responsible for.  Good facilitation requires skills that take courage and commitment to keep developing, but gosh darn, do our organizations and the world need more of us in these times.  Good facilitators are the glue holding groups together.

To develop your own facilitation skills, join us for Authentic Facilitation: Guiding Groups through Polarizing Times. As a last participant shared, “I’ve applied something I learned in the course in every meeting, customer conversation or training I’ve led since.”   

Annahid Dashtgard

CEO and Co-Founder, Anima Leadership

As a seasoned change-maker and non-fiction author, Annahid gets juiced by figuring out what makes people and systems tick, and how to move them from survive to thrive. Over the last two decades she has worked with hundreds of organizations and leaders to create more just and equitable futures. She’s a first generation immigrant woman of colour who uses her voice to illuminate our common journey to belonging. Her new book Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders is available for pre-order now. Alongside her bestselling books —Bones of Belonging: Finding Wholeness in a White World (2023) and Breaking the Ocean: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Reconciliation (2019)— she has written for numerous other publications and sits on the boards of both the Writer’s Trust and the Writer’s Union of Canada. 

Annahid has a Masters in Adult Education and has trained in various psychological modalities (Process work, Somatic Experiencing trauma training, mindfulness and Chinese medicine) to understand the root of systems change in human consciousness. Besides consulting, educating, coaching and writing on JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) issues for over two decades across both public and private sectors, she has carefully cultivated her love of reading, usually on the couch with a glass of wine in hand trying to tune out the voices of her little ones. Check out her wiki page or website for more.