Break the Ice

Even in a group in which members know one another, they need to engage in icebreakers to set a warm and supportive tone. With groups of strangers, warm-up exercises are even more important. They help people get to know each other and they help to remove barriers to speaking in front of strangers.

Books of icebreakers abound. Do your homework so that you have at least four to six simple warm-up exercises handy at all times.

Clarify Your Role

In situations when people seldom work with outside facilitators, they may hold back if they're confused about your role. Near the beginning of any facilitation, tell participants why you're there and what you'll be doing. Be clear about your neutrality and explain that your role is to make sure everyone is committed to the work of the group and that discussions stay on track. This will help people feel that you are there to support them.

Share your hopes for a successful meeting, so people know you intend to help make it a productive session. Don't be afraid to brag about yourself a bit. Some participants will be more likely to speak up if they have confidence in your skills.

Clarify the Topic

At the start of each discussion, take pains to ensure that each topic is clearly defined. For example, if the meeting is being called to solve a problem, ensure that there's a clear problem statement. Regardless of the type of session, a clear statement that describes the purpose of the meeting is a must. Refer back to page 13 in Chapter One for an outline of a clear start sequence.

You add to topic clarity by having a well-defined outcome statement for each discussion. This means helping the group to agree on what they hope to achieve. This aligns the participants.

You can ensure topic clarity by:

• reviewing the history of the situation so that everyone understands the need for the meeting
• sharing any input members gave during surveys, focus groups, or interviews to emphasize member participation in creating the agenda
• engaging participants in ratifying a purpose statement to ensure understanding and commitment
• stating the goal of the facilitation so everyone is clear about the desired outcome

Always be alert to the fact that even a crystal-clear purpose can quickly become cloudy. Members can become sidetracked or bring in new elements that obscure the purpose of the meeting. Performing effectively in your role means checking often to make sure that members remain clear about the goal and haven't become confused.

It's quite common for facilitators to have to redesign a session in midstream. That's what makes facilitating such a challenge! The wise facilitator is always open to making changes. Forcing a group to continue a discussion that no longer makes sense, just because it's on the agenda, is a sure formula for disaster.

Create Buy-In

In today's work environment, it's folly to run any meeting without gaining buy-in from the participants.

In many organizations, speculation about layoffs is rampant. People may also be weary after wave upon wave of new initiatives. These and other forms of turbulence have left people cynical. They may be feeling vulnerable. They are often working longer hours than in the past. In many organizations, employee morale is low, while distrust levels are high.

Facilitators who naïvely think that people are automatically going to be keen and enthusiastic about coming to their session are in for a shock. These days it's especially important to check with your group to determine how many of the following harsh realities are going to be a factor:

• people are working extra hours and don't know how they'll find the time to attend the session
• facilitated meetings usually generate many action plans; this is extra work no one wants
• the organization may not support the ideas generated by employees; priorities could shift tomorrow
• a feeling that the improvements gained will only benefit the organization

On the simplest level, getting people to commit is achieved by asking them to answer the universal buy-in question: “What's in it for me?” The most basic buy-in exercise is to pair participants at the start of a session and ask them to spend several minutes discussing two questions in relation to the purpose of the meeting:

• “What's the gain for the organization?”
• “How will you personally benefit?”

After the partner discussion, participants can recount their own or their partners' responses. Record all comments on a flip chart or electronic board.

The responses to the second question amount to the participants' psychological buy-in to the session. This process seems simple and is actually very effective.

You will need to vary the buy-in question for different situations. To create buy-in for a process-improvement exercise, ask members: “How will your work life be made easier if we manage to simplify this process?”

To create buy-in for joining a team, ask group members: “What are the benefits for you personally if you become a member of this team?”

To create buy-in for learning a new skill, ask group members: “How is learning to operate the new software going to benefit you?”

If the pre-workshop diagnostics reveal that participants feel that there are lots of reasons for them not to participate, you'll need to spend more time on the buy-in activity.

In these cases of heightened levels of resistance, you can add two additional questions to the partner buy-in exercise:

1. “What's blocking me personally from participating? Why might I be reluctant?”
2. “What will it take to overcome these blocks? Under what conditions, and with what support, will I consider giving this my total commitment?”

When you record member responses to the two questions above, you'll actually be negotiating group-member participation. People may say they'll participate if they receive assurances of senior management support or that they'll participate wholeheartedly if they receive training or other needed assistance. Having their conditions on the table lets you assess the extent to which participants are feeling blocked.

The problem with identifying the blocks is, of course, that you may not be in a position to negotiate some of these items. If you anticipate strong resistance, it's best to surface the blocks in the planning phase. This allows the time that may be needed to negotiate support issues before the session. The results of these negotiations can then be presented at the beginning of the session to help relieve concerns and help people move forward with commitment. In high-resistance situations, managers and even senior managers may have to be present at the start of a meeting to respond to the needs expressed by the members.

For more on dealing with resistance, refer to page 148 in Chapter Eight.

Identify Organizational Support

If the pre-workshop interviews reveal that people are worried that the session might be an exercise in futility, be sure to express these concerns to the appropriate manager. There's nothing worse than having members balk at the start of a workshop because they feel that their ideas won't be supported. If organizational barriers can be dealt with before the session, that will help create a much more positive environment.

Another common strategy is to have a senior manager attend the kick-off portion of the meeting to offer his or her personal assurance of support for the group's efforts. If this isn't possible, a memo or letter from the senior manager expressing strong support is a help.

If there's no senior management support and barriers are a major concern, it's important to surface these issues and discuss them, rather than pretend they don't exist. Set aside time at the end of the workshop to identify the barriers, analyze them, and generate solutions for getting around them. This way, members will feel that the discussions have been honest and that they have strategies for dealing with the realities they face.

Manage the Participation of Leaders

If you're acting as an external facilitator, you'll often be asked to plan and manage meetings in which the group's leader is present. This leader may be the person who contacted you and may consider him- or herself to be your client.

Leaders are accustomed to influencing the outcome of meetings. For this reason it isn't unheard of for a leader to ask a facilitator to lead a discussion in the direction of a predetermined outcome that he or she favors. The harsh reality is that some people see facilitation as a sophisticated tool for manipulating others.

To avoid misunderstandings, the facilitator and leader need to meet ahead of time to discuss a number of key points. The leader needs to be tactfully told that:

• while the leader is very important, a facilitator's client is always the whole group, including the leader
• facilitation is a democratic undertaking in which the leader agrees to accept decisions made by the whole group
• the facilitator needs to be able to contact participants before the session via interviews or surveys to gain their input

If the pre-session interviews with staff reveal that the leader is domineering or that staff are reluctant to speak in the leader's presence, it's a wise strategy to speak with the leader before the session and ask him or her to hold back. Every experienced facilitator can recount stories of situations in which the group leader had to be taken aside at a break and asked to temper his or her participation.

One strategy is to have the leader attend a kick-off session, pledge support, and then leave while the staff work. At the end of the session, the leader returns to hear final recommendations, give any needed approvals, and offer to act as an ongoing sponsor of member activities.

If you're lucky enough to have a group whose leader is open and regarded as a valuable colleague by team members, encourage him or her to play an active role in the entire discussion. After all, one of the reasons leaders bring in facilitators is so they can participate and offer their expertise to the group.

Help Participants Prepare

People often hold back at meetings because they aren't prepared. To prevent this from happening in your sessions, make sure that the purpose of each meeting is clearly communicated ahead of time so that people have time to prepare. If a meeting is expected to be complex, identify who needs to do which portion of the homework. When people do adequate pre-work, they gain confidence and participate more actively.

Create Targeted Norms

All groups need guidelines to ensure a cooperative and supportive climate. As mentioned many times in this book, all groups should have a set of core norms that were created with the input of all the members. Having a basic set of norms may not, however, be sufficient to handle the task of getting through a sensitive conversation.

If the conversation the group is about to have is sensitive in nature, the group will need to create specific, targeted norms to ensure that members feel safe enough to participate freely. Safety norms are an example of targeted norms. In this case, norms are created to reduce the risk to participants for speaking out.

Help members create safety norms by asking these questions:

1. “What rules are needed for today's conversation to ensure that everyone can confidently share what's on his or her mind?”
2. “Under what conditions are you going to be able to speak freely?”

Some examples of safety norms are:

• everything will be said with positive intention to improve the team and the workplace
• all ideas will be listened to with respect
• all discussions will be held strictly confidential: what's said here stays here
• both people and issues will be handled with sincerity
• there will be no retaliation on the basis of anything that is said during this meeting
• no one will personally attack another person
• all feedback must be phrased in a constructive manner and be aimed at helping the other person or the team
• if anyone feels emotionally stressed, he or she can call time out or request a change in how a topic is being handled
• everyone will use neutral body language and avoid things like finger-pointing, eye rolling, or sighing
• instead of arguing personal points, we will listen to and acknowledge each other's ideas first
• anyone can call a time out if he or she is confused about the topic or feels that the discussion is going off track

We all know that these rules will be most effective if they're suggested by the group members themselves. There's one exception to this general rule, however.

If you are conducting an intervention with a group of people who are not only extremely dysfunctional, but also unlikely to suggest effective rules for themselves, you will have to suggest the rules. In these types of circumstances, clearly state that you will be unable to facilitate unless these rules are accepted by each member. Read the rules aloud at the start of the session and then go around the entire group and ask each person if he or she is willing to adhere to the rules. This will not only set the right climate, but will provide you with the leverage you need to intervene if people act inappropriately.

Targeted norms may also be necessary in a variety of other situations.

If conflict is anticipated, ask a norming question such as:

1. “What rules are needed today to ensure that we have healthy debates instead of heated arguments”?

If any members of a group are reluctant to participate, ask:

1. “What would encourage participation and make everyone feel that their ideas are important?”
2. If the group has trouble staying on track, ask:
3. “How do we ensure that this meeting stays on track and on time?”

Make Eye Contact

This is a simple but very important technique to improve participation. Facilitators need to make eye contact with everyone, not just the active participants. By looking directly at quiet people, you're telling them that they haven't been forgotten. Sometimes your glance will prompt them to speak up. The eye contact must, of course, be friendly and encouraging, not piercing and intimidating.

Use Humor

Everybody enjoys a good laugh, and humor is a great way to create an open atmosphere. You can introduce humor into your sessions by having people reveal amusing anecdotes about themselves, showing cartoons, or stopping periodically for a team game. Running jokes and amusing comments are all useful as long as they're in proper proportion and don't detract from the focus of the session.

Set Up the Room to Encourage Participation

It's a factor that may not seem major at first mention, but how you arrange a room will greatly affect how group members interact. Theater-style seating is the worst possible arrangement for facilitating an interactive discussion. People automatically assume that they'll be spoken at. It also discourages people from looking at each other.

Large boardroom tables have an especially stifling effect on people. This is very unfortunate, as many large companies have huge boardroom tables stuck squarely in the middle of many of their best meeting rooms. If a boardroom-style space is your only option for your session, break people into pairs, trios, and foursomes as often as possible to keep everyone talking.

If you have any choice in the matter of seating, select a large room with smaller, modular tables. Small tables arranged in a large horseshoe for whole group sessions is a good arrangement for groups with more than twelve members.

When a group has more than twelve people, it's important to break it into small groups of five to six people. People can sit in their small groups, even when the whole group is in session. Small groups always help break the ice and create a more private forum for discussions.

Discussion Partners

This simple technique can be used as a way of starting any discussion. After posing a question to a large group, ask people to find partners to discuss the question or topic for a few minutes. (The term for a pair of people is a dyad.) Have people report what they talked about. You can use this with threesomes (triads) as well.

Tossed Salad

Place an empty cardboard box or an inexpensive plastic salad bowl on the table or in the middle of the room. Give out small slips of paper and ask people to write down one idea per slip. Have them fold and then toss the slips into the box or bowl. When people have finished writing, have someone “toss the salad.” Pass the bowl so that each person can take out as many slips as he or she tossed in. Go around the table and have people read the ideas on the slips they drew. Discuss and refine the ideas as a group.

Issues and Answers

When faced with a long list of issues to tackle, rather than attempting to problem solve all of them as a whole group, which may take too long, post the problems around the room. Put only one issue on each sheet of flip-chart paper or section of the electronic board.

Ask all members to go to one of the issue sheets and discuss that problem with whoever else was drawn to that topic. Make sure people are distributed evenly, with at least three people per issue. You can use chairs, but this works best as a stand-up activity.

Allow up to five minutes for the subgroups to analyze the situation. Have them make notes on the top half of each flip-chart sheet. Periodically ask everyone to move to another flip-chart sheet. When they switch, ask them to read the analysis made by the first group and to add any additional ideas. This round is often shorter than five minutes. Keep people circulating until everyone has added ideas to all of the sheets.

Once the analysis round is complete, ask everyone to return to the original issue he or she started with. Ask them to generate and record solutions to their respective issue on the bottom half of the sheet. Once again circulate people until everyone has added ideas on all of the sheets.

To end the process have everyone walk by each sheet, read all of the solutions, and check off the one to three ideas he or she thinks are best.

Talk Circuit

This technique works best in a large crowd because it creates a strong buzz and lets people get to know each other. Start by posing a question to the group and then allow quiet time for each person to write his or her own response.

Ask everyone to sit “knee to knee” with a partner and share ideas. Have one person speak while the other acts as the facilitator. After two to three minutes, stop the interaction and have partners reverse their roles. After two to three more minutes, stop the discussions.

Ask everyone to find a new partner and repeat the process, but in slightly less time. Stop the action and then have everyone repeat the process with a third partner.

In the final round allow only one minute per person. When the partner discussions are over, share the ideas as a whole group and record them.

Pass the Envelope

Give each person an envelope filled with blank slips of paper. Pose a question or challenge to the group, and then have everyone write down as many ideas as they can within the given time frame and put the slips into the envelope. Tell people to pass the envelopes, either to the next person or in all directions, and when the passing stops, ask them to read the contents of the envelopes they received.

Place participants in pairs and have them discuss the ideas in their envelope. What ideas did they receive? What are the positives and negatives of each idea? What other ideas should they add? Combine pairs to form groups of four and ask them to further refine the contents of their respective envelopes into practical action plans. Hold a plenary to collect ideas.