Facilitative Leadership

Why more leaders should dive into the world of facilitation

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

What do facilitators and leaders have in common?

(Almost) everything.

Like leadership, facilitation is all about people first. It is the art of balancing processes, tools, observations, and human dynamics and creating a space around it that allows psychological safety to evolve and grow. Facilitators are skilled in using the right tools at the right time and carefully play with the balance between empowerment and disruption.

Even though many facilitators are uncomfortable with this, facilitation is a form of leadership. Many say that despite growing experience, running a workshop with a new group feels similar to being a leader for the time, and if it weren’t for the facilitative skillset, they would struggle.

Leaders face similar challenges.

They are expected to perform from day one. They are trying to balance formal and informal spheres. They face increasing employee demands to acknowledge the softer, invisible side. They are asked to guide and empower their teams to perform.

The list goes on.

The demands towards modern leaders have grown and changed over the past years. With the broader acceptance of psychological safety and vulnerability as a strength and diversity and inclusion as core topics on the agenda of today’s employees, leaders are required to reinvent themselves. Regardless of a formal or informal leadership role, facilitation can help.

Here are some cornerstones where facilitation can help leaders to become better versions of themselves.

Awareness of presence.

It starts and ends with oneself. Leaders must become better at self-reflection and the awareness of how they show up in any given moment. The same goes for facilitators. If they aren’t fully present from the onset, the connection to the group will not be as strong, undermining the trust and consequently sabotaging psychological safety. However, being present means being aware of oneself and having a synchronized connection between our thoughts, appearance, and actions.

Comfort with power.

Leaders are often involuntarily the ones undermining psychological safety in a group, not least due to their perceived power. It is pretty frequent that self-perceived power and externally attributed power are mismatched. Power is a highly complicated and multi-faceted concept. For both leaders and facilitators, it is essential to become aware of and comfortable with their own formal and informal power spheres. Having a variety of approaches helps to work with power in a nuanced and inclusive way.

Human Dynamics.

It is all about people, and where humans come together, human dynamics play out. For leaders and facilitators, it is prerogative to understand and continuously learn about human dynamics. Modern workspaces present a different way of working from a few years ago. Remote, hybrid, diverse, and global workforces add new dimensions to human dynamics in the workplace. Beyond understanding, facilitation offers beautiful approaches to designing and dealing with all human dynamics in a positive yet impactful way.

Process Design.

It is no secret anymore that meetings need a makeover. The way we meet each other in companies has led to a dislike of what once was considered the most essential way to be effective in a company. The problem, however, is not the format. It is how these forums are run. Instead of creativity, they lead to disengagement. The secret is all in designing an exciting process rather than just conducting the same thing repeatedly. Facilitation offers concepts and frameworks for leaders to become better and more courageous in playing with their meetings, workshops, and other formats.

Variation of methods.

Having a vast backpack of different methods and approaches is essential to make these processes exciting. The most attention in recent years has been put on agile working methods. However, there are many different ones, all with advantages and disadvantages. Leaders should build their methodological competency and facilitation with continuously evolving resources, whether playful, disruptive, or experimental.

It is all about leaders daring to play with various facilitative approaches and identifying what works for them.

Facilitation is a beautiful craft that can help leaders grow in their confidence and enable them to be the leaders they want to be.