You are not alone! Facilitation skills are acquired over time, and with them a sense of confidence. Some problems come up more often than others. So today I'd like to cover Common Difficulties of Facilitation and How to Handle Them.
Problem 1. Do we really need this meeting?
It's important to start by figuring out whether a meeting is needed at all or not.
When meetings are most likely not necessary
❌ Someone alone reads the report in front of everyone else — have them videotape the report or write the text.
❌ Need to decide on a minor thing on which nothing fundamentally depends. We discuss it in the chat room and get on with it.
❌ Everyone takes turns telling their part — have them write a slide each in the overall presentation and put it all together.
❌ Someone alone has to make one big difficult decision. Then they should load all the information into it in writing, and let them make the decision themselves.
❌ No one understands anything, the situation is uncertain. Then first gather all the information and decide, and then decide if a meeting is necessary.
The solution is to transfer the meeting into an asynchronous state.
When a meeting is exactly necessary
- to develop a joint plan of action,
- to make a decision that can be influenced by different people,
- sessions (usually creative) that benefit from the diversity and number of views
Problem 2: combining two roles
A barrier that most teamleaders who act as facilitators at the same time may encounter is the need to somehow combine these roles during the meeting
Tip 1: Speak up last
This way, your opinion as the leader has less influence on the others. The team feels more relaxed in the discussion, it is easier to express thoughts and agree, because the discussion is more horizontal and therefore safer.
Tip 2: Try to keep your opinion to yourself
Your opinion during the discussion can narrow the flow of thoughts and become an emotional barrier. Have faith in your team — they can handle it, especially if you help them.
Tip 3: Change your hats! (Use the Belbin/De Bono role mechanic)
The six hats are six different ways of thinking or just six different roles that can be set depending on the goals of the meeting. Change hats, try on different roles to learn how to think in different ways depending on the situation. Hats can be changed not only by the participants, but also by the leader!
In De Bono's system: the red hat is emotion, black is criticism, yellow is optimism, green is creativity, blue is thought management, and white is facts and figures.
Tip 4: Use the silent brainstorming method
It helps you think without being guided by the opinions of opinion leaders. You can use it in two formats.
The simple version: the brainstorming process takes place individually, everyone writes down ideas on a piece of paper, and then voices them after a given period of time.
A more complicated version: participants independently write down as many ideas as possible to the question asked by the leader, and then, passing their ideas to the neighbor to their right and receiving a list of ideas from the neighbor to their left, get acquainted with them and develop their ideas. After a few steps, all the post-its with ideas are collected, and they are discussed and sorted.
Tip 5: Delegate difficult facilitation
Sometimes this is a necessary measure to make the process run comfortably and as efficiently as possible, don't be afraid of it.
Tip 6: If the decision is yours, discuss the risks with the team
If a situation arises in which there are not many ideas and yours is in the spotlight, ask others to get its minuses, risks, and difficulties. So that later, when you are committing to it, it will be clear for everyone. That way the decision will be more informed by the team.
About how to handle the next common problems:
- Different Participants of the Meeting
- Timing
- "Useless meetings"
read in our open free database Teamlead Handbook
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