We have moved to a world of online meetings: team meetings, ad hoc meetings with our friends and colleagues, formal meetings, cabinet meetings, large organisational meetings, community meetings, focus groups and workshops.
Our days (and sometimes our evenings) are now taken up with talking to people on a computer screen. Online conversation raises some challenges, a simple one being about when to speak – many people hang back and wait for the silence, others are competing to have the next word. So online meetings can be tricky.
Every meeting no matter how small or informal needs a lead person, whether that is a chairperson, a facilitator or simply the person who initiated the meeting. Meetings will always be more focused if someone has set the agenda even if it is as simple as “I’ve called this meeting to discuss the problem of xxx.”
And meetings will always be more productive if one person leads the meeting in terms of being clear about the agenda, keeping the group on track, managing the discussion to ensure everyone contributes and bringing the group to a clear outcome or decision.
There are many meetings for which a member of the group can take up this role.
But when is it wise to appoint an external, independent facilitator?
FIVE REASONS FOR APPOINTING A SKILLED FACILITATOR:
1. Trust between the organisation and your meeting/workshop participants is low
If trust is low, then participants will not believe that an internal facilitator will run a fair meeting. The internal facilitator will be perceived as an integral part of the organisation who will put the needs of the organisation ahead of the participants. In essence, the participants will feel that they don’t have any influence or power within the process.
2. It’s a complex issue
Organisations are often dealing with and wish to discuss very complex issues with their stakeholders or community. An external facilitator can bring fresh eyes to the task and work with the project team to design a workshop process (set of steps) that will enable the participants to understand and discuss complex information, and resolve issues.
3. Internal facilitation skills are low
Facilitators bring skills in both workshop design and managing group dynamics. Internally, you may not have people who have experience in designing an engaging process that achieves the workshop objectives, nor have experience in managing the multitude of interactions that occur in a meeting: dealing with people who dominate, those who do not contribute or heated interactions between people.
Added skills are needed in more complex situations (e.g. deliberative engagement or decision making workshops) where the facilitator needs the processes and skills to bring a group of people with diverse views through idea generation and into final whole group agreement.
4. It’s a highly emotional or outraged community
As an internal facilitator standing at the front of a highly emotional community meeting you will know that you are not trusted (see point 1 above), and you are very likely to feel ‘under attack’. An external facilitator is more able to hold people to their agreements about how the meeting will be conducted and take the heat in a calm and neutral manner. They are more likely to be trusted to run a fair meeting.
5. It’s a complex community
In some places or around certain issues the community can be very polarised or in fierce disagreement with each other. In these situations, local government facilitators often find it harder to stay neutral. You can be easily swayed by your own local affiliations, or the disagreement is just too difficult to bear. In these complex community environments, you will find it easier to be the ‘host’ of a conversation rather than the facilitator.
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