10 Characteristics of Good Facilitator

A successful meeting needs to be well organized with a sense of purpose and direction. To ensure this, it is helpful to have a facilitator take charge of the session. A good facilitator adds immense value to any business or learning setting. The number of meetings is on the rise, with the average professional spending up to a third of their work week in meetings. However, with the right facilitator at the helm, the time spent in meetings doesn’t have to be lost time.

Some people believe that facilitating a workshop/team is easy. It is not. When you have a group of people in a room, anything can happen. Some people will dominate the meeting, while others won’t say a word; a few will stick to the issues at hand, many more will go off tangent. Experienced facilitators know how to control a meeting without deciding its outcome; how to follow an agenda while accommodating discourse; how to build consensus without alienation.

Here are some key traits that an excellent facilitator must-have:

1. Involving

It can be a real challenge to ensure that the ideas of every single person in the room are heard, especially during larger meetings. One person may hold the floor for too long, more introverted attendees may be hesitant to speak up, and the flow of conversation can be hard to manage. Ensure that you are able to bring in all the people into the conversation. Successful facilitators are by nature people-lovers. They have a genuine respect for the uniqueness of every individual and believe that everyone has something to contribute to the team. The facilitator makes sure every point of view is heard and respected.

2. Active Listener

Listening is a key characteristic for a facilitator. Both being able to listen to others and to encourage others to listen are equally as important. A facilitator needs to be able to actively listen to their group and understand what they are trying to say. Paraphrasing, summing up or using other active listening techniques are great ways to fully grasp and gauge the meaning of what people are saying. An excellent facilitator needs to be able to listen to a group, an individual and also themselves. If you feel like you aren’t feeling yourself, if you are tired this will emerge externally in your facilitation and the group will feel it.

3. Inquisitive

Asking questions is crucial to allowing valuable dialogues to be had. The facilitator does not want to simply talk to the group and tell them things and you don’t want to just give the group the answers to their problems. Instead, they must come up with them themselves. Asking open-ended questions that can spark helpful and beneficial discussions that can trigger solutions is much more valuable to all involved. The facilitator must also know how to probe respectfully, firstly to get people out of their comfort zones, but also to encourage participants to delve deeper into thoughts in order to get more out of the meeting.

4. Authentic 

A good facilitator needs to be authentic. People will soon tune out, disengage and not trust what you are saying if you are insincere. Being authentic allows you to connect and relate much easier with the participants and enables you to bond with them. In order to be an authentic facilitator, you must create a safe space to encourage people to open up and express themselves without the fear of retribution. If people do not feel comfortable or safe to convey their feelings both they and the facilitator won’t be able to present their true authentic selves. Trust is the key to encouraging others to express their true thoughts and feelings. Without trust and authenticity, the meeting will be sure to be a waste of time.

5. Impartial

Having an unbiased perspective and not tainting other’s opinions with your own is crucial to allowing open and worthwhile discussions. You don’t want to push your views onto others, instead, you want to create a forum where people can freely discuss and express themselves, enabling problems to be solved and decisions to be made. Not to mention, treating all participants as equal ensures that you maintain honest and open-minded conversations. It will be crystal clear to participants if the facilitator is trying to steer the conversation and push their own predetermined conclusions onto the group. An excellent facilitator provides an unbiased space for alternative opinions and views to be brought up in a respectful way.

6. Enthusiastic and Encouraging

A facilitator has to know how and when to bring the energy into the room and at the same time when it needs to be reeled back in. The facilitator’s energy holds the ability to control the feeling and environment of the room. It can help to inspire, encourage and motivate the group in order to provoke solutions and creative ideas if there is a brainstorming exercise or bring the energy back down if a serious discussion needs to be had. The capability to manage the emotions in the room will be of great help when constructive conversations and to keep the meeting on track.

7. Promotes Constructive Feedback

In order to ensure participants are not caving into one person’s idea(s), the facilitator will challenge the group by posing questions to either help them think more broadly, deeper or wider. If required, the facilitator encourages the group to stop and reflect on their performance or ideas for purposes of improvement. Feedback is best when it is constructive and is based on real, observable events that others can relate to. The facilitator also demonstrates their willingness to receive feedback by actively listening and incorporating process changes where it makes sense.

8. Flexibility

You need to plan appropriately how you intend to cover all the session agendas within the available time limit. Be firm with how much time you allow participants and know when to call back the team to the agenda if they start to deviate. Even after planning, things may not always go as expected. If you stay rigid, it will be difficult for you to adapt to the new circumstances and still carry through your session successfully. For example, if new agendas come up, will you still be able to address them, or will you neglect them? Flexibility allows you to innovate solutions to challenges as you go so that the end objective is still realized no matter what.

9. Patient

As they say, patience is a virtue and it is a fundamental trait when it comes to facilitating. Staying calm in discussions or when things get heated is important to limit any tensions or situations before they occur. As the facilitator, you want to help improve the situation so leading by example and keeping composed is essential. It is almost unavoidable that sometimes things just don’t go to plan. Whether it be technical or process issues, things just don’t always go how you thought they would. The facilitator must ensure they are patient and resolve the issue by encouraging dialogues and introducing different questions to the group as the purpose or plan changes and adapts.

10. Goal Orientated

Keeping the participants on track and keeping the conversation aligned with the main outcome is important and sometimes tricky. It is human nature that conversations go off on a tangent, which yes provides some of the most interesting and constructive discussions, but the facilitator needs to know when and how to bring the conversation back to the main purpose of the meeting. If the meeting is too long people will tune out and not focus, therefore managing the time is a tricky but essential part of facilitating.

Becoming an excellent facilitator takes time and practice. The skills you need will be honed and tweaked over many years of preparing and practicing in real situations. It is very rare that you would wake up overnight and be the perfect facilitator. Successful facilitators are made, not born.