Why hire an external facilitator?

The word facilitation originates from the Latin word “facil” which means “to make easy.”

Facilitators guide a group through processes that allow participants to do their best thinking collectively. Done well, great facilitation enables all participants to contribute their expertise and ideas, and feel energized in the process.

There are some undeniable benefits that an external facilitator brings to the table:

Everyone can meaningfully participate.

Great facilitators use skills and methods to unearth the variety of ideas and perspectives in the group and avoid the common issue of the loudest or most powerful voices taking up all the space in the session. 

Your group will craft more powerful solutions.

By effectively harnessing the brilliance resident in the group, a great facilitator can help your team arrive at more innovative solutions in less time and with less friction. 

We help you bust the silo mentality.

By helping cross-functional teams make and sustain progress together. Cross-functional groups sometimes just need a different structure or set of protocols to hear one another, combine ideas in powerful ways and commit to executing on a cross-functional plan. Strong facilitators design the experiences to accomplish those outcomes. 

When conflict arises, your facilitator steps in.

A great facilitator is an expert in group dynamics who has extensive experience defusing tension and getting groups back on track. We know when to keep moving for the good of the group and how to make that happen. And we also know when to let the lid off if the tension isn’t going to let us make progress. 

You don’t have time.

It takes time to design a purposeful and effective experience, and your plate is too full to also keep up on the most inclusive and productive facilitation techniques. Expert facilitators are always improving their craft. We do the design work that will meet your objectives. 

You want to fully participate in the experience. 

The team needs you to contribute your best thinking, energy and vision to these important discussions. It’s challenging to do that if you’re also responsible for drafting the agenda, facilitating discussions, capturing notes, tending to the energy or dynamics in the room, adjusting the plan when things go off track and making sure we start and end on time. Outsource that to the process expert so you can be the content and functional area expert.

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When should you hire a facilitator?

It’s true that you don’t need to hire a facilitator to lead all of your meetings. But there are some scenarios in which a facilitator can step in to help you make progress in a smarter and faster way. Especially consider hiring an external facilitator for projects or initiatives that feel high-stakes, demand co-design with all staff, require cross-functional work or have the potential to slow you down or speed you up:

1 | Change is coming and your group needs to prepare for it.

 You’re about to make a huge investment in strategic planning, but your leadership team isn’t gelling. Or new people are joining your leadership team and it’s the perfect opportunity for a reset. 

→ Facilitators help teams build a foundation that allows teams to be ready to adapt to whatever comes their way.

→ Facilitators can help by creating a structured approach to manage transitions, ensuring everyone is aligned and prepared.

2 | Your teams are feeling stuck and they’re not sure why.

You used to make steady progress together but the methods that used to work aren’t working anymore. Or maybe you’re feeling uninspired. Team members are too close to the dynamic to take a step back and see things clearly.

→ Facilitators can provide outside perspective, identifying underlying issues and guiding the team towards solutions. → Facilitators can pinpoint obstacles and help the team find new paths forward.

3 | A group needs to make decisions or solve complex problems.

To find the solution, you need to bring everyone together, listen to different and even opposing viewpoints, and find a way to make a collective decision. Or, figure out what steps are needed to make one in the future. But collaboration is hard and we haven’t all been taught how to do it well.

→ Facilitators can steer the conversation in a productive direction, ensuring all voices are heard and a decision is reached.

→ Facilitators can provide just enough structure to avoid the group circling around the same issues and not landing a decision.

4 | A highly-effective team wants to evolve how it operates.

When a team of high performers has hit a stride, they’ll be hungry to keep getting better. Perhaps they want to challenge one another to be bolder, support or challenge each other more, or re-think their operating rhythms. 

→ Facilitators can introduce new methodologies and frameworks to level-up team collaboration.

→ Facilitators can organize these learning sessions effectively by running a Retrospective (for example), ensuring key insights are captured and applied.

→ Facilitators can help groups play to their strengths and get even better by structuring reflections on what’s working and what innovations they’d like to pursue.

An expert facilitator brings undeniable benefits to the table in these scenarios.

But how do you know you’re dealing with an expert facilitator?