Facilitation Skills Tips

Management Analysis & Development's experienced facilitators have developed a two-day course that teaches basic facilitator skills to, and builds confidence in people who facilitate meetings and focus groups. 
The following tips are excerpted from the Facilitation Skills Course manual.

What is a Facilitator?
A facilitator provides neutral guidance to decision-making groups.

Among the facilitator's many tasks are:
   • creating a context that sets boundaries for session participants
   • designing appropriate, open-ended questions that elicit genuine responses without      
      directing or dictating certain answers.

Creating The Context
The word "context" comes from roots that mean to bring together, like braiding. The context braids together participants' understandings so they are working from a common perspective. The container becomes a framework that sets basic boundaries for this group discussion and gives participants a sense of where their freedom to express themselves lies.

The context includes any combination of the following that is appropriate and needed for the situation:

1.  The agenda and format of the meeting
2. Review of why the group is together (purpose, mandate, anticipated outcomes)
3. Expectations of the session or series of sessions or project
4. Usefulness of the discussion (how the results of the discussion or session work will be used)
5.  The givens of the situation (the internal or external limitations that must be considered or respected in the session) 

Designing Questions
Many groups engage in discussions that are circular, "loop back," or repeat themselves without resolution. Well-crafted questions help guide a group to a fruitful end.

Guidelines for designing questions
Design questions to flow through four conversation levels:

Objective - questions about facts and external reality as experienced through the five senses

Reflective - questions to elicit personal reactions and internal responses to the objective level information; may include emotions, hidden images, and personal experiences related to the topic

Interpretive - How have the needs of the organization changed? or What benefits has this work provided to the organization?

Decisional - questions to elicit resolution, bring conversation to a close, enable the group to plan the future

Examples of questions
Topic: team reflecting on its work
Objective - What tasks has this team accomplished?Reflective - In doing the tasks, what pleased you? . . . surprised you? . . . frustrated you? or these less emotional questions: What was difficult? What was easy?
Interpretive - questions to draw out meaning, significance, values, and implications
Decisional - Given the new needs, what would you like to have this team accomplish in the next six months?

Use action verbs to elicit a specific and practical level of responses to questions. The benefits of using action verbs include: (1) clarifying relationships among the facts, (2) focusing on people and action, and (3) reducing the need to clarify terms like "quality" and "communication." Example: What are our expectations? Or more specifically: We expect our suppliers to [fill in the blank].

Some do nots to keep in mind for question phrasing:
Do not ask questions that elicit a "yes" or "no" answer unless you are clarifying information or requiring a vote or decision.

Do not imply an answer in a question

Do not ask "leading" questions ("You agreed that this was a good idea, right?")

Do not ask questions that give advice.

Do not use slanted or manipulative questions (where you expect or want certain answers)

Do not use threatening questions

Avoid most "why" questions because these may elicit a defensive response. Check to see if these might more precisely be asked as a "what" or "how" question. Examples:

From: Why did you do that? To: What was your reasoning for doing that? or What happened? or How did you come to this line of thinking?

Why did that happen? What were the circumstances that caused this? How did this evolve? Tell me what's going on here.

Why was this important for you? What was important about this for you?

Why do you feel or think this way? What is the reasoning or experience behind your current outlook? What in your experience has led you to this viewpoint? Explain this to me in more detail.

Taking some time to practice wording questions will assist you in your learning as a facilitator. Keeping lists of questions to reference or spark your imagination is easy and practical.

The material above is taken from a variety of resources, including The Art of Focused Conversation, Hatch Organizational Consulting piece on "Tips for Framing Flip Charts"; a presentation on adult learning to the Twin Cities Complexity Consortium by Jan Berry, director of Learning Labs on Outcomes; Susan Mainzer, mediator and consultant; and an outline from Advanced Strategies, Inc., on questioning skills.