What is Facilitation?

This is Part 1 of an occasional series on facilitation and its uses in organizations. I recently attended this course and I’m using this blog as a platform to explore the concepts further.

Over the past several years, facilitation has become a popular word and concept in organizations. We are asked to “facilitate” meetings or processes or introductions. It’s become a bit of a junk term, with unclear definitions. Just what does facilitation mean?

“Facile” is the root word of facilitation, and according to Merriam-Webster Online, a synonym for facile is “easy.” In other words, facilitation at its most basic means to “make easy.” In the context of organizations, it is a different thing than training, teaching, or managing.

When my class listed words to describe training, teaching, and managing we came up with terms like directing, deciding, authority, and evaluating result. This is very different from what a facilitator does. Our description of facilitation included neutral, guiding, framing issues, and inclusion.

The facilitator is not part of the group, but is tasked with helping the group come to a decision. This is key, because groups are much more likely to implement decisions when everyone in the group has a sense of buy-in and commitment to the decision. An equation we used in class is:
ED=RD*CD
where ED=Effective Decision; RD=Right Decision; CD=Commitment to Decision.

Facilitation is a widely useful set of tools. In future posts I’ll be exploring ways to take these tools and apply them for organizational effectives, especially with regard to change processes.