Fearless Facilitation

The Ultimate Field Guide to Engaging (and Involving!) Your Audience

Cyndi Maxey, Kevin O'Connor

• Publisher: Pfeiffer
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118417508
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Reuniones y presentaciones

As the workforce ages and younger trainers and managers emerge, facilitation skills take on a new importance and, with the increased use of social networks, new facilitation skills are needed. Written by two facilitation gurus, this book shows how to make any learning environment come alive. It outlines proven guidelines any trainer can use to unify groups, inspire creativity, and get audiences, teams, and colleagues to speak up, talk back, participate, and engage in meetings.

Chapter One

Heard on the Street

The Audience Does Know!

“I want them walking out of my office feeling better than when they walked in.”

—Mehmood Khan, MD, FACE; CEO, Global Nutrition Group; SVP and Chief Science Officer, PepsiCo

• Audience involvement results in audience satisfaction, significant learning, and achieved outcomes.
• Facilitator fearlessness begins with courage to lead from personal power, not superiority.
• Fearless facilitation is a courageous activity for both the speaker and the audience.

The Audience Doesn’t Lie

If you have ever been in charge of a meeting, training session, or event of any kind, you know how great it feels to have everyone as excited and involved as you are. Those are the meetings people talk about later—in a good way! Those are the meetings that are remembered when people are promoted. Those are the meetings that truly inspire change and productive work relationships. Yet, sadly, most meetings don’t garner such rave reviews and results. Instead, what’s more commonly “heard on the street” or in the parking lot afterward is that the meeting was a waste of time. People feel that their energy and mental capacity were undermined and underestimated. Admittedly, how many times have you yourself proclaimed, “What a waste of time!” “I already saw those slides.” or “She read the slides. Next time, just e-mail me.” or “His meetings are always the same . . . B-O-R-I-N-G!” or “I stopped listening about an hour into the training. I was so confused.”

Time, energy, and mental capacity are not small considerations. And yet, most presenters avoid involving others when they have the floor. Why is that? What is fearful about facilitation? How can one be more fearless? First, to clarify, let’s define some terms:

Facilitator: one who helps to bring about an outcome (for example learning, productivity, or communication) by providing indirect or unobtrusive assistance, guidance, or supervision.

Think about the last time a presenter opened the discussion up for everyone, and then made it easy for everyone to participate. That’s facilitation. When we see a ballet, enjoy a comedy routine, hear a sixteen-year-old Judy Garland sing “Over the Rainbow,” or watch Gene Kelly dance in the rain, we are astonished at how effortlessly they perform. Yet, their actions are the result of painstaking practice, gifted talent, and specific skills that come together to make for classic moments in our lives. Successful facilitation is much the same. The best facilitators look as if they are doing so with no effort, with little movement, and on the spur of the moment. In truth, these facilitators are at the peak of their skill, just as the performers are. But not everyone knows the skills, practices relentlessly, or is able to command competence with such ease.

Kevin had a group of dentists and dental students in a wine bar (yes, we are not kidding!) for a meeting about mentoring for three hours. (The wine came later.) The venue was not perfect, but it did attract dental students, which was the heart of the reason for the meeting. Kevin’s goal was not to teach mentoring, but to have them experience mentoring, to meet one another, to talk, and to have a positive experience with one another. He wanted the younger and more experienced students to build connections with one another.

Therefore, he made a decision early on that connection, not content, was the king of this meeting. He prepared four mini-lecturettes and interspersed them with groups of two and three speaking to one another about the topic at hand.

After the seminar, the host said, “Today I met ten people I did not know . . . that’s what I came for!”

Be aware when connection trumps content, and then get out of the way!

For many presenters, it is much easier (and seemingly safer) to keep talking. When have you felt safe to say what you wanted to say (and what needed to be said) in a meeting? Too often, it feels safer to just say nothing. Nothing said, nothing noted.

Fearless: possessing or displaying courage; able to face and deal with danger or fear without flinching; invulnerable to fear or intimidation; audacious.

Presenters, participants, and leaders who facilitate well are fearless, because they give up the traditional control of an audience or of a team and allow the other to talk, question, and disagree. While this may not seem like a big deal, consider the last time you knew that what you were planning to say would be challenged, disagreed with, or even met with a caustic remark. How did you feel? More to the point, how did you proceed?

Acts of courage: when you let your audience talk to you, when you seek input from your team, when you ask your boss (or your administrative assistant) for advice.

Those who keep talking take the safe route. Those who facilitate the conversation take the courageous route. These courageous ones act—not without risk, of course—and for that, they are “fearless” in our book. “Fearless” facilitation results in “flavorful” responses and outcomes. Diane Kubal, founder of Fulcrum Network, a consultant referral network specializing in training and organization development, auditions many presenters and trainers before she puts them before her clients. They present a mini-module of their typical approach to a topic. She has noticed that “a lot of training and human resource people are doing the same thing. I’m looking for a flavor other than vanilla.” Fearless facilitation is one important ingredient for adding flavor.

Think back to your last meeting. Did the presenter talk, talk, talk, and then at the very end say, “Any questions?” (Some even add the nonverbal look that says, “I hope not!”) Socrates learned in ancient Greece that asking questions engaged learners. He also learned that it was not always well received by others who preferred to lecture. While it is said that it cost him his life, these days we believe the reverse is true: talk, talk, and more talk makes you indistinguishable from your colleagues and your competition. You become vanilla.

• Dare to be different, even in small ways:
  • Don’t read your slides, ever.
  • Form the audience into discussion groups early.
  • Be simple and direct. Complex directions will not be well understood. Ask them to do one thing at a time.
  • Remove the traditional outline slide and speak to needs instead. Throw some meat out to the audience with a bold statement that will make them respond internally with, “This is worth listening to!”
  • Move around the room early and often. Move physically close to your audience.
• Lighten up your presentations:
  • Don’t be afraid of humor; just never tell jokes.
  • Present in metaphors as well as in a data format.
  • Consider different kinds of snacks and drinks.
  • Consider not using PowerPoint when it is expected.
  • Become the master of teaching with a flip chart or whiteboard.
  • Consider yourself a teacher, not a presenter. Model your style after your favorite teacher.
• Really engage with your audience early and often:
  • Meet and greet.
  • Talk with them on breaks.
  • One-on-one during breaks or discussions, ask whether they are “doing OK” frequently. They will often respond with encouragement for you, which will help you stay on track.
• Prepare your audience for something that is extraordinarily “out of the ordinary”:
  • A leap of movement from one way of being to another
  • A creative meeting environment
  • Different kinds of food for meals or breaks
  • Interview a special guest (CEO, trustee, local leader) in front of the group.
• Develop an internal routine, unseen by the audience:
  • Cyndi always walks into the audience no matter what the content or how large the room.
  • Kevin always begins with a story, usually three, to set the tone; then the audience is put into pairs to discuss a relevant question, then groups of three. This is standard for him.
• Be ready to move, fall back, surge, and wait as needed:
  • Move when you see boredom in their eyes.
  • Fall back when they engage willingly with one another.
  • Surge when you feel more passion and energy in the group than you assumed would be there.
  • Therefore, add more of your own, move them less often and with deeper questions.
  • Wait patiently for them to tell, for them to explain, for them to summarize.
• Be conscious of your goals, your time, and your unneeded content:
  • Streamline your content.
  • Teach in “chunks” of material. Adults learn best this way.
• Never ever:
  • Race through your slides because you are short of time. No one is listening anyway. Focus on what experience they need, not what content you need.
  • Finish late. Never. Ever. Never. You will not be forgiven . . . ever!
  • Call someone out who seems not to be involved. He or she will hate you forever.
  • Think that you know more than they do. You might, but it is useless to think so. Form a learning community, not an adoration society.
  • Use a laser pointer . . . ever. It is the mark of a rank amateur, but we will be the only ones to tell you so.

It’s About Time!

Facilitation is the skill of the present and of the future. Gone are the days when great presenters lectured for an hour or more. Or in your experience, are they gone? Gone, too, are the days when the presenter’s questions were as they were in school—with only one right answer. Really gone? Really? Gone, too, we hope, are the days when the PowerPoint presentation was more powerful than the presenter. How about your last meeting? Perhaps these days should be gone.

If you want to assert leadership with your team and be seen as the expert, then you must learn how to facilitate a presentation (whether to one person or to one hundred people). Make conversation easy and useful, and help others think through necessary solutions rather than restating the problems we all know exist.

So How Do You Begin?

• Know the “real” reason for the meeting and the “real” outcome desired.
• Prepare short mini-lectures that address content but are short enough to allow for more interaction. Adult learning research says that “chunking” material, breaking it down into its component parts, is one of the best ways to convey complex information.
• Assertively put the audience into small groups of two or three, with the following notice: “Please find a partner who is not the one sitting next to you, and have a seat.”
  • This is all it will take to get the room buzzing.
  • Then give them a topic and a time to talk.
  • When finished, somehow recover the data so all hear.
  • Trust that the audience knows more than you do.

Recognize and understand that to facilitate is not easy work. It is easier to prepare and deliver a PowerPoint presentation, beginning with: “I’ll take questions at the end.” It’s far easier to start a discussion when you know the answers. Leaving a voicemail message that spells out precisely what we want without creating a connection or engaging the other is just as easy, also.

The world of entrepreneurial work and the world of organizations are replete with examples of control, fear, authority, and organizational correctness. How often have you stayed quiet at a meeting when you knew your contribution would not be well received? How often do you see junior staff struggling to obey, conform, and do whatever is perceived as right in order to gain favor and to mov...