We’ve already covered the basics you need to know to be a good facilitator and how to get better over time. But if you’re already good, how do you become a great facilitator?

Manage your energy and attention

It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn, but I’m much worse at facilitating if I’ve been in back-to-back meetings all day. Taking ten minutes before a session to review my notes, stretch my legs, take a few deep breaths and get present leads to much better results.

This is worth keeping in mind throughout the session. Take regular breaks to maintain energy levels for both you and other participants. I won’t go longer than about 90 minutes without pausing for a break, and I try to structure these so I haven’t got lots of prep to do during them.

Having a cofacilitator is enormously helpful. It feels like you can outsource a big chunk of your thinking if you can get someone else to deal with any tech issues, note taking and monitoring the chat. That allows you to focus your attention on the more impactful parts of your meeting.

Plan to adapt

The difference between a good facilitator and a great one is how well they are able to respond to unexpected things that crop up.

Three strategies that help with this:

1. Plan in detail. Yes, you might end up abandoning parts of your plan, but you’ll have a much better chance of deciding whether that’s a good idea or not if it’s thoroughly thought out. It’s particularly helpful to think in advance about what you would drop if your session runs over time.
2. Notice what’s happening and check in with the group if helpful. If you see a topic getting heated, or the conversation has swerved off the agenda, or the energy in the room flagging, say so! Be matter of fact and give some options. For example, “I’m noticing this discussion is taking longer than we originally planned. We can either move on or drop a later item from the agenda – which would you prefer?”
3. Prepare to deal with common issues. Have some go-to phrases in your pocket to help you respond to things like one person dominating the conversation or a disagreement between participants.

It’s worth spending time working out what could go wrong. As part of planning, I will list out everything I’m worried about and then consider how to address these worries one by one. This helps me head off problems and makes me more able to respond seemingly on the fly when things do go wrong. It also makes me more confident going into sessions, which in turn helps me manage my energy and attention.

Adapting your facilitation to your audience

Keep in mind as you plan:

• How well does the group know each other? You’ll need to spend more time on introductions and building trust if people haven’t met before.
• Is any of the tech unfamiliar to them? If so, share what you are using in advance, allow more time at the start and get a cofacilitator if you can.
• What power dynamics are at play? More unequal groups might need different activities to make it easier for everyone to contribute – less open discussion and more commenting in writing, for example.
• How chatty are participants likely to be? My experience is that more senior groups tend to have strong opinions and will dive right in, but more junior groups might need warming up. Plan your time accordingly. More senior groups are also less likely to do any pre-reading or pre-work, so don’t rely on that for them!

Improve your questions

One last tip: we’ve already covered how asking good questions is an essential facilitation skill. Something that made me much better at questions is coaching. Regularly coaching others (and occasionally being coached myself) has taught me so much about what makes a good, non-leading response to what’s emerging in the conversation. I’ll write more about coaching in future blogs!

This is the last in our series on learning facilitation skills. If you would like more advice like this, subscribe to my monthly newsletter.