Anyone can initiate a meeting, but if you truly want results, you need to facilitate. And yes—there is a difference! 

Today we’re giving you a sneak peek of our “The 5 principles of facilitation” Training Labs course. The course will help you develop the mindset of an expert creative facilitator with the ability to create a collaborative environment so you can efficiently innovate and solve problems. And while the course focuses on creative facilitation, it can easily be applied to facilitating sessions for Agile planning, training, and business process transformation.

The course is free and includes practice sessions, videos, and a quiz that will ultimately prove you’re a facilitation wizard in less than 30 minutes! So, let’s dive into a preview of the content.

Mindset principles

Good facilitators make their jobs look easy, so you may think their jobs are easy. But there is a lot more to creative facilitation than meets the eye. The best facilitators can empower their team to think creatively and find the best solutions to a problem.

To truly own the experience as a facilitator, you first need to understand the three major roles in a creative session:

1. Sponsor: Someone who owns the objectives and outcome. They make the final decision on how to move forward.

2. Facilitator: Someone who owns the experience and guides the team through the process from start to finish.

3. Participant: Someone who owns the content, bringing their unique expertise to bring the best ideas possible to the session.

Note that you may act in more than one role at a time. 

As the facilitator, it’s easy to feel like you need to be the hero or expert or that you need to make decisions quickly. But remember—it’s not your job to own the ideas, it’s your job to own the experience. You don’t need to find a solution, you just need to help the group find a solution. It’s important to maintain neutrality.

Environment principles

Okay, so we know mindset is important as a facilitator. But it’s also vital to control the environment. Here are two of our favorite ways to do that from the get-go:

1. Follow the pizza rule: Invite the number of people who could easily share a pizza.

2. Breakout boards: If your group is extra large, consider breaking the session up into smaller groups so everyone has an equal chance to participate.

And don’t forget to establish the rules of engagement, or the group norms. For example, leaving cameras on if the session is virtual or using the chat feature. It’s a great idea to brainstorm norms on your Lucidspark board so everyone can see them visually, vote, and agree to them.

Once the session has started, monitor body language and activity to indicate dips in energy or to tell if the group is checking out. If this is happening, have icebreakers or energy starters ready to get everyone reinvested in the session.

As the session continues, utilize abstraction activities when the group gets stuck. Ask questions to encourage your team to think outside the box. Reverse thinking can also be helpful here. For example, asking the group “What would absolutely not work here?” or introducing strategic constraints, like coming up with an idea that requires magic or that would definitely not be approved by the CEO. All of these ideas will help your group get past roadblocks to come up with the best ideas.

Get started with the course

The course has so many more helpful tips and tricks on your journey to become an expert facilitator, but that’s all we can share with you now! Access the rest of the content, plus helpful resources, practice activities, and a final quiz. Good luck!