A successful facilitation session is one where participants are empowered to achieve specific outcomes supporting a shared goal. The facilitator is there to help the group focus on the session’s activities and larger goals, serve as a catalyst for discussion and collaboration, and encourage productive, positive participation. By starting with a flexible session plan, the facilitator provides a useful framework and tools that the group can adapt to best meet their needs and goals. Unlike planning for other types of meetings, you are not preparing a rigid agenda and strict timetables. Instead, consider your task to be creating the right maps, milestones, and possible alternative paths based on the group’s experience.

Desired outcomes

Planning a facilitation session starts with understanding where the group is likely to want to end up at the end of the session: What the goal is and what outcomes are likely desired? Start your planning by establishing the context of the meeting: Where does this the gathering fit with the larger organization goals? How will the outcomes of the session support these goals and what kind of information is needed to create useful outcomes?

The answers come from conversations with stakeholders. By gathering these inputs in advance, you ensure that you have clarity and inclusion across stakeholders for goals of the facilitation session. You want to make sure that you elicit goals and other appropriate inputs from all stakeholders: Leadership, team members, and various groups that will use or be affected by the outcomes.

Although defining the desired outcomes with stakeholders seems likely to result in a very stable set of milestones for a facilitation session, they are not final. While it’s likely that a contextually relevant and complete set of goals will be aligned with those of the session participants, participants can still modify the desired outcomes because they have agency over the decisions made in the meeting about its direction and outputs – the power within a meeting is not with the stakeholders and definitely not with the facilitator. With the general destination in mind, however, you can start on the map, a framework agenda.

Framework agenda

“The way you design a meeting shapes the behavior of the participants.”1 For a facilitation session, you want to honor the agency and ownership of participants, so the agenda becomes more of a guiding resource that can respond to the circumstances as they see appropriate while progressing through the work at hand.

With that in mind, the framework agenda should foster good meeting flow, not set a rigid timeline. We call it a “framework” because sessions follow a basic structure, which is fractal so you can scale larger or smaller according to the needs of the group:

  • Start with housekeeping: This opening activity allows the group to confirm the timing and logistics and to set shared expectations, behavior norms, and participant roles.
  • Set the stage: Get the group centered in the topic to be discussed and define their goals for the session and desired outcomes.
  • Focus on a primary topic: Conduct activities that help the group work towards their goals. Select different sets of activities and prompts that provide a range of engagement styles, from individual contributions to small group working sessions to full group discussions. As part of this work, plan time for the entire group to share, particularly when coming back to the full group from breakout session. Since you are preparing a framework that may change in the session, keep a range of options available that can be tailored to help the participants continue towards their goals.
  • Iterate & extend: Depending on the duration of the session, you may continue work towards the end goal in a number of ways. Some options include conducting additional activities to tackle other aspects of the topic, refining the output of prior activities, or prioritizing findings and ideas. Also, allow time for group reflection on the work they’ve done. 
  • Include small additional topics (optional): If time permits, you might want to have some additional related topics or activities that the group can address following other activities. Additional activities could include a guest speaker who can share a particular perspective on the work. Additional topics might also be “stretch goals,” which help set the stage for a future session. In the case of one-day or multi-day meetings, the additional topic can tee up the next major session – e.g. at the end of the morning, get people thinking about the primary topic for the afternoon.
  • Summarize outcomes: End sessions with a quick summary of what has been accomplished and to let the group confirm the outcomes and celebrate their successes. The depth and formality of this depends on next steps. For example, the summary at the end of the first day of a 3-day workshop would likely be different than the summary at the concluding session which needs to report the findings to the executive team.

When planning for facilitation sessions spanning several days, the housekeeping segment after the first day becomes a time for the group to reflect on the previous day’s discussions and re-orient on where they are in their journey.

Finally, be sure to include breaks appropriate to the duration of the session. Participants will be working very hard, so explicitly allow time for self-care.

Ground rules

As part of the housekeeping, the group will establish ground rules for how everyone is expected to interact. The goal is to create a safe place for everyone in the room and make clear the expected norms of behavior, both good and bad. Typical examples include turning off cell phones for the session and using a parking lot to capture interesting tangents that would detract from the focus of the session. Participants should shape the culture of the event so they can tailor the final set to be one they all ultimately agree upon. Giving them agency and ownership over the ground rules also establishes a clear point of reference should members need to be reminded to adhere to them or, in cases of more extreme behavior, reminded of consequences of too much disruption.

Recording

Deciding how you will capture the discussion and outcomes of the session is an important part of planning and one you are fully responsible for as facilitator. Arrange for a dedicated recorder (or more if the group is larger) who can be focused on the task of capturing notes and outcomes from the entire session. The recorder(s) should have sufficient familiarity with context and language to be effective.

Determine how the notes will be conveyed. Generally, notes should be readily available for easy reference. What resources will be needed? For example, handwritten notes would require having pads, pens, sticky notes, and easels, as well as tape or other adhesive to post the notes around the room for review. You might instead opt for typing notes into a computer, requiring a projector or other technology to share them out. Whatever method you use, make sure that you have everything that you are likely to need in the room before you start.

Ethical considerations

As a facilitator, you are there to guide and assist the participants on their journey, not lead them on a course that you alone chart. Prepare to be humble in your role. Facilitation is about managing the power of the group, not taking power that isn’t yours.

Part of being a humble and effective facilitator is to understand and declare your own relevant biases and perspectives. You likely have perspectives on the topic – pure neutrality is rare – but be clear and open about those so that participants know where you are approaching the topic from.

As you lead a session, listen genuinely and openly. Your job is to make participants’ discussion towards their stated goals productive and easy. Listening without filters or distractions is essential to understand the various perspectives in the room and to help identify whether the discussion is heading in the direction the group wants to head or going off track (which may be OK if it’s intentional and agreed upon).

Above all, take care of participants and their wellbeing. That – not reaching a specific destination, completing an agenda, or even planning the session – is your ethical responsibility as the facilitator.

1. Jay Vogt, ”The Art of Facilitation: Changing the Way the World Meets” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfZOvSU8PJE)

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Design for Context conducts workshops and talks on the subjects of facilitation and change management, including this talk on facilitating a content strategy.