A good facilitation

As a workshop facilitator, it’s your job to create an environment where everyone is comfortable enough to take risks and learn from what they experience. Demonstrate the attitude you want to see in them: you should laugh, so participants can laugh – you should be passionate, so participants can be passionate.

Switch roles as needed; from teacher, to exercise facilitator, to coach, to one-on-one instructor, to staying out of the way.

Stay out of focus

Participants come to learn. They can learn from each other as much as they can from you, provided that the atmosphere is relaxed and everybody feels safe. Participants will mimic your behavior, so be friendly and conversational so that participants will be as well. Invite participants with special skills to help more struggling participants.

Design exercises to make everyone feel comfortable talking and getting feedback from each other, as much from you. The beginner’s mistake is to center everything around yourself.

Your job as a facilitator has four important tasks:

Suggest . Suggest and explain ways to apply principles throughout all stages of a project.

. Suggest and explain ways to apply principles throughout all stages of a project. Focus . Pull participants back into focus once straying away becomes unproductive.

. Pull participants back into focus once straying away becomes unproductive. Remind . Remind workshop participants of various approaches.

. Remind workshop participants of various approaches. Restrain. Restrain yourself from being too dominant. Only interfere when it’s absolutely needed.

With those tasks in mind, your job is to steer the activities and reflections of your partipants by following these principles: