Why Facilitation Skills Are Important

Facilitation is so much more than running meetings; it’s a way to help people make progress, accomplish goals, remove impediments, and generally do great things. You can apply facilitation to all sorts of careers and job roles. It’s truly a foundational skill that can grow and serve you well on a variety of career paths.

Employers today want employees who know how to facilitate. They know this skill helps their staff make decisions and reach outcomes. Employees benefit from facilitation because their ideas will be heard and they will get an active role in decisions and collaboration.

Scrum Alliance-certified educators help you build your facilitation muscles in the Agile Coaching Skills - Certified Facilitator (ACS-CF) course. Grow as a facilitator who supports group events so people can make a difference at their workplaces. Please use the form at the bottom of this page to get an email when the ACS course is open for registration. 

How Facilitators Fulfill Their Role (and Why It Matters)

Facilitators help teams unlock their full potential. They do this by supporting teams during meetings, workshops, and other gatherings to solve problems and make decisions. They do so by:

• Helping a team discover and define a process
• Upholding that process but pivoting when necessary
• Remaining neutral to the outcome 
• Fostering an environment in which all voices are heard, especially those that are normally silent
• Making sure that detours and unrelated conversations are brought back on track

The neutrality of facilitators is vital: They are the party that is neutral to the outcome the group reaches, which allows them to focus on process. A facilitator isn’t there to steer the group to a predetermined result or to influence. Instead, they are there to support the process that makes it possible for the group to reach a decision. 

The group needs this neutral support because it allows them to focus on their expertise: the content of the meeting/event. The team is the expert on the content and the facilitator provides the process support.

What’s It All For?

Effective facilitation may lead to:

• People collaborating to innovate and co-create
• Teams accomplishing a goal or outcome that they want or that their stakeholders/managers are expecting
• Decisions being made
• Buy-in from everyone on the reason for the event/meeting
• Everyone’s participation

Even a group with the very best intentions may stray off-topic without the support of a facilitator. The facilitator helps them re-focus and commit to actions that support desired outcomes.

A group is more likely to have every member fully committed to the outcome when a facilitator is there for support: The process will be cooperative and involve everyone’s buy-in. People are more likely to have their voices heard and thereby lend their support to a decision under these circumstances.

A facilitator also helps with conflict when it arises. It’s normal and expected for disagreement to arise when a group of passionate people gets together on a topic. Without an effective facilitator, conflict may lead to an impasse, while a skilled facilitator knows how to support the group through disagreement and how to show the group to use conflict to come to a well-considered decision.

Effective facilitation makes a real difference. Without it:

• Workshops, meetings, and other purpose-driven gatherings may lose direction
• There’s no agreed-upon process or structure for the team to come to decisions, so progress stalls
• Only the most assertive and outgoing people speak up and share their ideas
• People who aren’t as comfortable expressing their ideas hold back and remain silent
• There’s less buy-in because not everyone’s had an opportunity to speak
• People don’t collaborate, communicate, or stay engaged when they meet
• No one has quite the same understanding of goals and purpose

Facilitation is important to job industries across the globe, including for remote teams who must collaborate virtually. 

Facilitators Are Essential to Agile Teams

While you may automatically associate facilitation with scrum masters, facilitation is a good skill for agilists in many different roles to develop. Because agile teams are often cross-functional and adapt rapidly based on feedback, group discussions and meetings are an important part of communicating, delivering, and improving. Facilitators are there to support those discussions and meetings. While a scrum master often fills this role, agilists in general can benefit from understanding and practicing effective facilitation.

How You Can Grow As a Facilitator

These interpersonal skills can be incredibly hard to master but will ultimately help shape you into a better facilitator, teammate, and employee. 

If you’re interested in improving and growing your facilitation skills, we're excited to announce our new course, Agile Coaching Skills - Certified Facilitator (ACS-CF). This course is taught by experienced practitioners and  feature live facilitation practice. To learn more about the course and view the learning objectives, click here.

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