Facilitation Excellence

Master facilitators make deliberate behavioral choices that help facilitate trust, connection, growth, and goal achievement. We call these choices “contributions,” and they fall into three categories. When all of the contributions are employed skillfully, people may not consciously recognize why, but they feel more productive, trusting, and valued. 

Mindset

We carry our own set of values, preferences, habits, triggers, biases, and insecurities. The abilities to act in alignment with our own values and manage our own negative internal voices (or self-talk), allows facilitative leaders to show up at their best, set a productive environment, and serve the needs of the group. 

Content

Subject Matter and Context are the two buckets of information that fuel successful conversations. They are important, of course, and tend to be what people focus on most before a big meeting or presentation. Content competence gives one permission to play. But remember, by themselves, these two contributions only make up 1/6th of the conversation framework. 

Process

The rest of the framework addresses conversation process, and as that implies, we believe that most conversations succeed or fail based on the quality of their process. For example, a person’s credibility will be determined as much by how they physically Establish Presence with their body, voice, and words, as by what they say. Great facilitative leaders Listen with Empathy before (and more than) they speak; they Balance Risk and Safety by calibrating how much and when to challenge others and when to focus on providing safety and comfort. Contributions are often felt in their absence- meetings often suffer from a lack of Managing Focus and Purpose.