Dan: I have a selection of techniques that I am going to use and I am quite familiar with them. I am a little unsure, however, about the responsibilities of a facilitator and in fact I don't even have a good definition of a facilitator. I am sure that it is something more than someone who turns up with a few tools and techniques to use at a meeting. Do you have any ideas?
Tom: I have always used the following as a general definition and responsibilities of a facilitator.
A facilitator is a person who has a role to enable other people to operate effectively in a group in order to arrive at a mutually satisfactory conclusion.
The job of the facilitator is to make it easy for others to conduct their business. The facilitator is essentially focused on enabling others to provide the best and most relevant contributions to the topic in hand and on ensuring an appropriate outcome. The facilitator ensures that group members use the most effective methods to accomplish tasks efficiently with adequate time to consider ideas and alternatives.
Responsibilities of a Facilitator
- remain neutral on content
- draw out participation
- ensure balanced participation
- encourage dialogue among participants
- provide structure and processes for group work
- listen actively and ask others to do the same
- encourage different points of view
- record, organize and summarize input from group members
- move group through stages of group decision making and concensus
- encourage the group to evaluate its own progress and development
- capitalize on differences among group members for the common good
- protect group members and their ideas from attack or from being ignored
- emphasize that the group is a reservoir of knowledge, experience and creativity and use facilitation skills to tap this resource
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