Page 324 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

Facilitation is an art and not necessarily easy for just anyone to do in guiding dialogues.

It’s generally accepted that facilitation has three basic principles

1. A facilitator is a guide to help people move through a dialogue and group process

together, they are not the seat of wisdom and knowledge. That means a facilitator isn't

there to give opinions, but to draw out communication and ideas of the group members.

2. Facilitation focuses on how people participate in the process of learning or planning, not

just on what gets achieved.

3. A facilitator is neutral and never takes sides.

While facilitators have important tasks to accomplish (as shown above) they have to get

through an agenda to make sure that important issues are discussed, the most important thing is

what the participants in the meeting have to say. So, focus on how the meeting is organized and

run to make sure that everyone can participate.

This includes things like:

1. Making sure everyone feels they are welcomed and comfortable participating

2. Developing a structure that allows for everyone's ideas to be heard

3. Making members feel good about their contribution to the discussion at hand

4. Making sure the group feels that the ideas and decisions are theirs, not just the leader's.

5. Supporting everyone's ideas and not criticizing anyone for what they've said.

Most meetings have some kind of operating rules. Some groups use Robert's Rules of Order

(parliamentary procedure) to run their meetings while others have rules they've adopted over time.

305