What is the role of a facilitator in a dialogue?
The facilitator is responsible for keeping the dialogue on track and in adherence to dialogue guidelines. They also often take the lead in managing time and ensuring each person’s voice is heard. The facilitator does all they can to promote the 3C’s during the dialogue: curiosity, care and courage.
What is Facilitation?
To facilitate is “to make easier” or “help bring about.” (Merriam Webster). The facilitator guides the dialogue and attempts to maximize participant’s time and energy by keeping the discussions on track – in terms of time and topic. Facilitation generally encourages all members to participate in some way, shape or form. By recognizing and utilizing the unique and valuable contributions of each member, an effective facilitator increases the collective value of the entire community. The facilitator plays an active and critical role in ensuring that a community taps deeply into its own knowledge and practices curiosity, care and courage with one another.
What Makes a Good Facilitator?
Competent facilitators have both traits and acquired skills that make them good at what they do. Many good facilitators make a difficult process seem very natural and intuitive, even when lots of planning and training goes into the craft. Chances are, if you’ve volunteered to take on this role, you have these traits or you have an inclination toward them.
- Good facilitators value people and their ideas
- Good facilitators think quickly and logically
- Good facilitators are excellent communicators
- Good facilitators are both product and process oriented
What are the Facilitator’s Basic Responsibilities?
- Prepare in Advance.
Good facilitators prepare in advance to be effective. They take into consideration the “who, what, why, and where” of your dialogue to help you figure out the “how.”
- Plan and Share the Agenda or Dialogue Protocol/Process.
- Name the Learning Targets and/or Dialogue Purposes at the Outset of the Dialogue.
- Establish or Review Community Expectations/Guidelines or Norms for the Dialogue.
- Guide the Group in Presenting and Sharing Information.
This will likely be detailed in the plan for the dialogue.
- Provide closure. Offer Thanks and state any Action Items or Next Steps.
Some Trouble-Shooting Tips
- Staying on-task and on-time.
You may have a lot you hope to discuss in a short amount of time. With passionate and knowledgeable peers, it is easy to veer off onto other topics or get side-tracked by minute details of a dialogue topic. In order to help the group stay focused, you may want to:
- Remind the group of the learning targets or overarching questions.
- Re-focus the group on a new question that connects back to your learning target or purpose.
- Close the discussion tangent or set it aside in a “parking lot” for consideration later.
- Let the group decide if they want to continue with the current discussion direction or return to the stated targets or questions.
- Dealing with unproductive behavior.
Difficult behavior is often unintentional or occurs as the result of an emotionally charged situation. You might also be dealing with inattentive peers who are engaging in side conversations, or other off-task behavior. You might also be dealing with behavior that is disrespectful to the group, the content or particular dialogue members. Here are some strategies you can try:
- Take a pause. Ask participants to reflect quietly or write down what they’re thinking /feeling before resuming the discussion.
- Restate the ground rules/guidelines that the group or individual participants may have strayed from. .
- Respectfully seek clarification from a participant who may be off-task.
- Address the issue with the participant during a break or time when participants are working individually.
- A gross violation of group ground rules should be addressed more promptly or else it might be perceived as acceptable, inviting further potential harm. For instance if a participant engages in an “ad hominem” attack (attacking a participant for their beliefs, rather than disagreeing with their ideas) or if a participant otherwise demeans participants (or folks not in the room), it might be advisable to have the group “take a pause” as noted above, refer back to the ground rules and then speak privately with the offending student.
- If the unproductive behavior persists, seek help from a teacher in the room.
- When a Dialogue Lags…
While your peers will often have a lot to say during a dialogue, it is not uncommon for a dialogue to experience a lull or even prolonged silences. In fact, you can let peers know at the outset that silences will happen and are OK. Here are some techniques to keep the conversation going:
- Use questions like these that work in most any dialogue.
- Consider offering a question that allows peers to draw from their experiences.
- Ask any peers who have not yet contributed if they would like to speak up.
- Offer a new, substantive question and then give peers an opportunity to write for a few minutes before resuming the discussion.