How to facilitate sessions without stressing out yourself (and everybody else)!

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Many times people have asked me how I facilitate sessions that are meaningful, enjoyable, interactive and valuable. Why are people leaving my sessions enthusiastic and empowered? How do I decide the content of the session? These are some hard learned tips and also some traps to avoid that have helped me through the years.

😎 Relax, it's not about you

One of the first traps is thinking that because you facilitate it's up to you to carry the whole session and make it successful. Thinking this way will affect how you operate. 

• Stress builds up in your system and effects the decisions you make and your ability to think. 

• Your focus shifts from pursuing the best outcome to a win or lose scenario in your head.

• Your attention shifts to yourself instead of the group you are facilitating. Helping others doesn't work well while your focus is on yourself.

One of the reasons I love using liberating structures is because - even though I have a important role to play - my role is setting the group into motion, activating the brains in the room and facilitate 'having the conversation' instead of carrying the conversation. The people in the session have a shared responsibility to make it a great session and I create the environment where it's possible for them to do so. Having this mindset enables you to relax because - even though you have an important role - it's not all on you.

👫👫 Let the group decide

Facilitating is a flexible process of things being discovered, insights gained and decisions made. In the mids of it all it's hard to know which direction to take. When another direction presents itself it can be a trap to anxiously stick to your preparations. However it might also be a bad idea to divert from the plan on a whim. In a situation like this it's trap to try to solve it all alone in your head.

Letting the group decide which direction to take is a smart move. You have a joined responsibility to ensure the best outcome. When the group can't decide you can - at times - take the lead. You could suggest a direction and gauge the response of the group. You could have a conversation about the indecisiveness as well. In the end you want it to remain their session and guide it with a soft touch. Creating the environment where they can take their responsibility to make it valuable.

🔭 Focus on enabling an outcome

Your focus should be guiding the group to an outcome. Don't direct them toward the outcome you want. In all your wisdom you might think to know what's good for the group but you might be robbing them from something better. Don't you think many brains know more than one brain? When you guide them toward an outcome - and they decide what that outcome will be - it will still be their session, their outcome and their responsibility to bring it further after the session.

🏋️ Prepare rigorously, execute flexibly

In preparation for a session I try to envision the possible scenario's. I can't look into the future but I try to prepare for the best outcome and the best steps to get there. Discovering the core purpose of the session by asking myself questions. Why are we having the session? What is the intended outcome? How will these steps get us there? When I can't answer these questions I find someone who can.

You prepare the right steps to enable the group to have the discussions needed to reach an outcome. You think about the steps. You select the order. You choose the best invitations or questions. You create the agenda. You plan timely breaks in between. You think up energisers. You try to anticipate follow up steps when things go differently. You prepare rigorously! When all that is done... You execute in a flexible manner. That means, you let go of your intended outcome and are open for the outcome that presents itself. 

You are well prepared but things can turn out differently. They usually do! When you try to rigidly hold on to your plans the friction in your mind increases the further you move from your expectation. It's a trap to spend a lot of energy to steer the session back to how you originally designed it. 

Don't eliminate the possibility of something special happening. Don't you think all that brainpower in the room could generate something better than you originally thought? Or do you think they should execute your plan regardless? Being flexible in executing opens the door to something more. At the same time it's build upon your preparation. You can always fall back on that if things go wrong.

⁉️ Don't know what to do? Name it!

What if something happens that you don't have an answer for? Which is bound to happen! Thinking it's up to you to solve the situation could be a trap. 

I've stepped into that trap many times. One thing that I've discovered is 'naming it'. Naming the situation that has occurred and acknowledging that you don't know what to do can be very freeing. No-one is expecting you to be the almighty facilitator that has all the answers. You don't have to save face. Same goes for question's that are hard to answer. 'I don't know (yet)' is a perfectly good answer that can liberate you. It removes the stress of pretending to be 'in control'. It opens the door to discovery. Instead of pushing the group into a passive stance it invites participation together.

👀 Facilitate, don't participate 

It's hard to do two things simultaneously and do them right! When facilitating a session it's best not to participate. It's hard to keep oversight of the session when you are in a heated debate. Also being part of the conversation and having an opinion can have side effects.

• You can inadvertently steer the session towards your bias (which is a temptation that's always present, but harder to keep under wraps when actively sprouting your opinion).

• As a facilitator you are in a visual leadership position and should be aware that your opinion weights heavier than usual and should be careful not to abuse that.

• You are no longer viewed as an unpartisan facilitator by the group because of the position you put yourself in. Therefore trust is lowered. That's the trust you will need when taking them forward in to the following parts of the session.

• When tempers run high you need to be the one outside of the group helping them instead of being in the battle in their midst.

💪 Detach yourself

Being able to detach is important. When you detach you give yourself the gift of observation. What patterns are going on? What internal struggles are occurring in the group? What's the underlaying theme at the core of their discussion?

When you don't detach and you're in the chaos of everything that's in motion, the millions thoughts in your mind, the time pressure of the time box and the questions that are being fired at you from participants... it's hard to know what to do!

By placing yourself outside of the discussion it's easier to detach. In the past I've even paused the chaos. Telling the people to take a short break. Gathering myself and my thoughts in the meantime. Discussing with the organizer or co-facilitator. All to give myself the time to detach, determine what's going on and then decide to act. Doing this alone can be tough. That's why asking someone else with an outside view can be helpful. Which brings me to the next topic.

🎮 Co-op is not only for games

Whenever possible I find a partner. Someone to do preparations with or to help with facilitation. Two know more than one. It's a simple truth. The other person fills in the parts that I might miss or perfects what has been prepared already. Together we are cancelling out each others blindspots.

Many times you'll facilitate alone. It happens often because we don't have - or take - enough time to do things in two's. Sometimes we feel that sessions are too small to have two facilitators. It might feel like too much. Still there's a difference in quality when preparing or doing a session in a duo (or small group even). 

The tip is prepare or execute the session with multiple people as much as possible. At times it might be enough to get a second pair of eyes on it. Sometimes hearing yourself explain your preparation to someone else (experienced or no) gives you new insights. Having a co-facilitator gives you:

• More time in the session for you to detach.

• Another pair of (detached) eyes to see things you don't see.

• A partner to quickly discuss with.

• Another pair of hands to make your work lighter. Less pressure.

When I had no co-facilitator and I was facilitating a session I would ask the organiser (if it was not me) to do the welcome together with me. The organiser would have a 3 min speech ready on the why of the session and I would introduce the agenda and what we were going to do and how we would do the session. Giving the organiser a role makes my life easier and creates a partner. At the same time it keeps the session theirs!

🧮 Keep it simple

To ensure all the brainpower can focus on the topic and not be distracted by the format of the session. Keep it simple! Adding complexity in the mix is only a good idea when you have a ton of experience, a good plan and rigorous preparation. Even then my advice would always be to keep it simple. 

When you prepare questions or the steps you want to take for the session. Try to walk in the shoes of the participants. If it's hard to answer the question yourself. It's probably hard for participants as well. Try to simplify the question. Make sure it's not a question that has 3 questions in it or is multi-interpretable. Bring it back to it's core or divide it in to multiple sequential steps. Giving participants the ability to answer the questions one by one. 

For the steps of the session the same applies. Keep the steps separated, simple and in a logical order. I often remember the 5 steps of a retrospective as described in the book Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great written by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen:

• Set the stage

• Gather data

• Generate insight

• Decide what to do

• Closing (wrap up & next steps)

It's still for me a good guide to keep in the back of my mind when building valuable sessions.

🎬 Action, to the team!

When using the previous tips and avoiding the traps you will create sessions that have a central element: The people are in the lead. 

What does that mean? It means all minds are activated. People are actively participating. The group feels responsibility, makes decisions and generates actions to undertake. Without concrete actions to follow up you are doomed to do the discussions again. Risking that people perceive the session as valueless. Consequently why would they do a session like this again? So, concrete actions are important!

Let's say this time you've reached the stage of the session where you have concrete actions to undertake! Great!

One trap that is very common is to feel as a facilitator that you should take the lead in the actions to undertake. Instead I would advice you to prepare something to help people make their actions concrete. That way the group can leave with a next step and undertake action themselves. Much like a previous topic let the group decide first and only lead when needed. As facilitators we should avoid the saviour complex! In previous steps we've set the people up to think, discuss, clarify and determine their actions. Don't take that away from them at the last moment! People need to stay responsible for their own actions. That way when they undertake the actions and succeed, it's their victory as well!

🛠 Start doing

The best way to learn is to start doing. You can apply one or multiple things mentioned in this article. They will help you be less stressed when facilitating and help you to empower people when you facilitate. What I've found that helps me greatly with this type of facilitation is liberating structures. 

Check it out here: https://www.liberatingstructures.com/ 

If you want to know more about liberating structures or facilitating sessions, reach out to me. I'm happy to help!

The topics mentioned above are not exhaustive in any way. I am very curious to hear how you get the best out of your sessions or what you do to facilitate with less stress.

Will you let me know in the comments? Let's learn together! 💪