What does a Faciltator do?

In group work, the Facilitator works with a group of people to help them engage positively in conversation, reach consensus and to plan actions together, owned and managed into the future. The Facilitator becomes a trusted and neutral outside voice, making decisions during an interactive process whilst enabling the group to control the content of the session (session building). The Faciltator is as gentle in guidance as they are resolute in achieving results. This means dealing with a range of dynamics from personal and organisational relationships, psychological barriers. emotions, capabilities, experience, knowledge, personalities and disciplines. Professional Facilitators are formidable artisans in the use of techniques to get the best out of these dynamic situations. These techniques range from warm up sessions to knowledge generation methods, from creative thinking processes to prioritisation techniques and from facilitating teams to 1-1 mentoring techniques. The facilitator can be a gentle guide, making it easier for the group to have that discussion as well as a protagonistic intejector in workshop sessions to inspire reactions, debate and ultimamately, consensualised group outcomes.

The work of the Facilitator is also self reflective and can have a profound effect on the development and performance of people and organisations.