facilitative leadership

Facilitation Skills Training for Facilitative Leadership

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Case study logo - picture of open file and magnifying glassCase Study: How client-driven development led to effective facilitation skills training for leaders, for customer success, and for hybrid working.

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Some years ago, a client approached us with a request. He said that he had been reflecting on the range of learning experiences he had been through in his long career. And one had stood out most for him, in terms of its impact on him, and his enjoyment of it. That course had been facilitation skills training.

The need for facilitation skills training

He went on to explain that, he had been reviewing his next level of senior managers. Wherein, he identified that there was still a strong tendency to be directive and autocratic. Particularly when under pressure. And he had realised that much of this was to do with a lack of awareness, skills, and confidence in practical alternatives. Alternatives that he himself had found through the facilitation training he had received two decades earlier. Training that had changed his approach and his career.
We had led that training, and he was asking whether we could do the same for his leadership team.
Twenty years is a long time. We had delivered that training as part of a Total Quality Programme which required major investment. And the training alone had cost currently unthinkable amounts of money and time – 6 weeks per trainee. Everybody’s thinking had moved on since that time, including ours.
But he was right. When the pressure is on, and the outcomes have to be right, people will resort to practices they know well and can count upon. If they have not: been equipped with facilitative approaches; applied them under pressure; and built their own confidence in them delivering a better outcome, they won’t use them. They will resort to more direct methods to get their way.
Also, reflecting back, we were confident that we had a much broader range of understanding, insight and resources. We could now do much better with far less time. And we could make the course more efficient, more intensive for all concerned, and more experiential.

Defining the facilitation skills required

Visualising adventure - discussing future trends in small teamsWe started by interviewing members of his senior team in some depth. Exploring the situations where they had been directive. What they were trying to achieve. And what they saw their options as being. We asked what they had seen in the leaders they most admired and what they wished they could emulate. (In this, they frequently cited our client.) And we explored what they knew and what they didn’t.
As a result of analysing the interviews, we clarified that we needed to develop the groups skills and confidence in:
  • Understanding what facilitation is and why it is used
  • Supporting a group in determining clear objectives, and the process to achieve them
  • Guiding a group to keep to the process & redevelop that process as needed
  • Coaching new skills & attitudes (behaviours) in individuals
  • Knowing when facilitation is appropriate (& the options to it when it isn’t)
  • Adopting and adapting current business processes to better utilise facilitation
  • Evaluating and assessing their own and their teams’ facilitative performance
  • Driving further understanding of facilitation in themselves and in others
And of course that they should enjoy themselves in learning and employing all of this.

Designing an efficient programme

We decided, early on, that the course should run in two blocks approximately six weeks apart. This would give the attendees a period in which to apply and experience the facilitation skills for real. And then, in block two, to formally learn from their experience. With an optional third block after six months to pick up further learning.
We also decided that the length of the training should be five days. This would be three days in the first block and then two in the second. This reflected a good balance between the ‘cost’ of the programme, and the change that could be achieved within it.

not training but facilitated group learning

We structured the programme as intensive, interwoven experiences and self-discovery. It was not so much a training course as facilitated group learning. As a result it needed precisely 12 candidates to be at its optimum. But the result was that people learned at multiple levels all at the same time. They learned facilitation skills from the content, from experiencing facilitation, and from enacting it themselves. In fact the programme almost ran itself.

Programme performance

Picture of using facilitative Leadership around a set of sticky notesAnd the reaction of the candidates was better than we could have hoped. We used a scoring scale where 4 represents ‘expectations completely fulfilled’ and 5 represents ‘expectations exceeded’. The course averaged 4.6 across the 12 participants and over seven criteria.
Although the interviews were all from the first client’s organisation, we repeated the training programme for several other clients in other organisations, and discovered that the course itself applied equally well to all. The feedback scores were consistent across all courses.
In the intervening ten years, this course has remained our staple approach to equipping people with facilitative leadership skills. Over the years, we have improved it, and accommodated a number of new ideas.
We have also adapted it into two other variants to meet the needs of an evolving facilitation market.

Customer facilitation

The first has been the development of a more flexible two-day version aimed at equipping client staff to facilitate their own customer workshops.
With the growth of cloud based services and the goal of better consumption, we have seen the emergence of Customer Success professionals as a core strategy of software organisations. The role of these specialists is to help their customers ensure they rapidly realise the full benefits of their software purchases. It concerns facilitating the customer in: developing a vision for those benefits; understanding the behavioural changes requires to realise that vision; establishing a programme to bring that about; measuring progress and keeping things on track.

facilitating customer success

Image of group enthusiasm and engagement and an example of ownership culture and shaping cultureOf course, the Customer Success professional has no authority within the customer space, so their success depends on constructing questions and debates that enable their customer’s leadership to self-discover a change management strategy which will most rapidly deliver the results they both want. And facilitation is the core skill in enabling this to happen.
Two things were clear at the outset. The first was that the world of software vendors is more volatile than most organisations, and their paradigm for spending time on training is more restrictive. However, the level of skills to be transferred is significantly less than for facilitative leadership, particularly where the customer engagement process is clearly defined.
Our first client was a well known Global software business in the vanguard of Customer Success thinking. The courses we ran for them averaged 30-36 people per course, working in groups of six. They proved very successful, and helped sustain the reputation of this client in this field.

Online facilitation skills

The second emerged in response to the restrictions occasioned by the Covid pandemic. This accelerated people’s use of online methods to collaborate, communicate and manage at a distance.
We originally developed our offering of facilitation skills for online meetings a decade previously, but take-up had been poor. Back in 2008, people tended to seek to recreate their experience of physical round the table meetings in their virtual equivalents. As a result, people saw little need to change the nature of what they did – only the vehicle for it. Accordingly, only some of the more enlightened organisations took up our offer.

new environments bring new possibilities

Inspiring interaction and participation in virtual meetingsHowever, a new environment brings new possibilities, and successive lockdowns have meant that there has been a much greater take up and use of online meetings and virtual collaboration software. It has also provided a greater challenge in ensuring engagement of people at a distance. And it has opened up new ways of thinking about working in this way: better global partnerships; wfh and hybrid working; digital nomads; …
We have taken the opportunity to adapt a combination of our successful facilitative leadership programmes into a four-day digital programme.

better than physical meetings

Image of massive whiteboards used to support online facilitation skills developmentUsing best-practice online facilitative approaches, participants are more absorbed and stimulated than they commonly experience, even in physical meetings. As a result it avoids the fatigue and disengagement typical of virtual meetings. Because of this, we can deliver it in full day, which makes it more efficient and easier to schedule into peoples calendars.
The programme is highly visual. It uses ten vast virtual whiteboards (similar to the one on the right) to both engage participation and to provide a lasting reference to the learning experience. The boards created in the programme are available to participants after the programme completes as a resource for recall, for extending their practice, and for their own meetings and teamwork.
These programmes are all delivered on a client by client basis. If you are interested in discussing how you might adopt the programme for your own business, please contact us.
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Relevant Links:

Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?
People throwing papers in the air looking happy - reflecting wellbeing leadership and mental wellbeing - courtesy alena darmel viaPexels

Wellbeing leadership – facilitate healthy supportive working environments

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Wellbeing leadership uses facilitative approaches to nurture supportive relationships. These make success more likely and reduce the stress of conflict and criticism.
This article is part of our series on stress resilience and mental wellbeing..
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Relational Anxiety

They say that, often, people do not so much leave their job, as much as leave their boss. If you speak to anyone about their career, you usually find that they have had times that they found unfulfilling, and unpleasant, even damaging.
And when you explore deeper you usually find that the biggest factor in that is people. It may be an individual, a group, or even an entire work community. You hear stories of indifference, bullying, confrontation, blame, unhelpfulness, secrecy, politics, lies. Situations where everyday is a battle – not so much with the work but with the personalities around it.

The Need for Wellbeing Leadership

being denied the opportunity to ‘belong’ …

facilitate healthy environments in meetings to achieve wellbeing leadershipAnd whereas a healthy team can inspire and amplify everyone’s efforts, an unhealthy team can do entirely the opposite. And in doing so, it can create disabling levels of anxiety and depression. We were all built for relationship, and when we are denied the opportunity to ‘belong’ in this way it can have harmful effects on us. It can strip us of enthusiasm, self-belief, confidence, mental wellbeing, even hope.
But why do these things occur?

… can strip us of enthusiasm, self-belief, confidence, mental wellbeing … even hope

responding under stress source pexels-thirdman-5060570Oftentimes they are the result of unresolved performance anxiety. As those around us feel stressed and vulnerable, they focus more narrowly on themselves and their own needs.  As they feel impotent or see themselves falling short, they can become more demanding of others. In protecting themselves and their own situation, they leave others vulnerable, and even exploit that vulnerability.

survival of the fittest leads to suboptimal choices

Such behaviour doesn’t sit well with them – at least not initially – but needs must. And they begin to justify themselves with stories about it being survival of the fittest – a dog eat dog world. Until it becomes true.
But, in an interdependent organisation, this narrowness of focus, and selfishness, leads to suboptimal choices and everybody losing out. And so the performance situation further declines and the pressure builds even greater. Silos form, the blame game starts, politics abound, stress builds and mental wellbeing declines.

Stressful behaviour

The situation described above is a reflection of the left-hand side of the diagram below.
Extended inner condition model - image of wording on either side of a person representing meaningful conversation
When we feel that our situation and our expectations are being threatened in any way, we tend to close-in. It is psychological. Even small amounts of tension and anxiety – amounts so small we are hardly aware of them – can do it. Our thinking shifts from the subtler higher order functions to older, more direct, functions. If we pay attention to ourselves, we will sense it in an increased alertness, a small tightening in our middles.

the entire balance can shift in a moment

And the shift in our thinking makes it much more likely that we will tend toward the closed dialogue responses on the red side of the diagram above.
The thing is, when we do, our inclination toward judgement or cynicism is picked up by others – often subconsciously. They can perceive it is a threat to their ideas and acceptance, and this will influence their own brain chemistry, accessing other thinking centres in them. In turn, their behaviours shift toward the red, and in a moment, you can find that the entire balance of the discussion has shifted.
And that is in healthy environments. In environments like those described in the first section, people arrive at the meeting already closed. People begin defensive. Empathy is hard to come by. Ideas are quickly shot down. Creativity doesn’t really stand a chance. And meetings stop being productive.
For more on this, take a look at our blog item on meaningful conversation.

Facilitate healthy environments

So how do you avoid this? Or how do you fix it when you are descending into this vicious circle? How do you facilitate healthy environments?
The temptation as the leader responsible for the meeting is to become more directive. For some people this may be driven by the red chemistry that is going on in their brains. For others, it may be the only form of leadership they feel confident in delivering.
Either way, it is more likely to close things down further than to open them up. What is required is a more facilitative approach to leadership. A more vulnerable and open approach. One that defuses the tension and which reflects humility and acceptance. Not from a weak and timid position, but from a strong and assertive one. If you are someone who wants to change the culture in your own organisation, we recommend you consider the following to facilitate healthy environments:

8 Steps for Wellbeing Leadership

bringing it back to green

  • Temporarily accept the current performance. Lets face it, ‘not-accepting it’ is not going to change it. But accepting it alleviates some of the pressure that has led to self-interest and the current decline.
  • Explain what is happening, and in particular your own part in it (this will give others permission to be honest about their own parts too). Give people the insight and the vocabulary to discuss their behaviours and the implications of them without blame or guilt. And then facilitate forums in which such discussions can safely take place, and people can experiment with adopting different approaches.
  • Explore with people the damage that stress may have inflicted on diversity and inclusion, Ensure a clear understanding and a vision for both. Provide education if required. And take the opportunity to agree practices which embrace everyone.

build in a vision for diversity and inclusion

  • Introduce education about open conversation and train people to be self-aware and able to manage their own internal condition in dialogue. Introduce review points into meetings, so that people can more easily see the meta-process and work with it to ensure healthy and supportive dialogue.
  • Equip the leadership with facilitation skills. These skills will provide them with the confidence to achieve their aims using less directive and autocratic approaches. As a result they will be able to more readily see and coach the interpersonal dynamics. In this way, they will better ensure wellbeing leadership themselves through healthy and supportive dialogue.
  • Use more design thinking and participative tools in your meetings. These enable people to contribute without having to compete to dominate the discussion. The tools enable people to relax more – and not continuously be on the alert for the micro-breaks in the dialogue that will enable them to make their point.

enable easier contribution

  • Build a better sense of the Internal Customer. Use a more holistic and systemic understanding of the organisation to help people understand how it works. How their role works through others to achieve the goals of the organisation. And to create a greater sense of interdependence and the role of mutual service in making progress.
  • Remove any divisive incentives that might tempt people to compete at a cost to their colleagues. Reward performance collectively, and attitudes individually. Reward (and celebrate) ‘assists’ more than ‘goals’.

The Benefits of Wellbeing Leadership

The situation won’t change overnight, but it will change. It may need some individual coaching of those who cling to their original behaviours. But as they begin to realise they are no longer benefiting from them, they will either fit in or move on. The result will be a more efficient, more effective and more fulfilling place of work. Creativity will begin to flourish, and performance will grow … and so with the people.
Wellbeing Leadership is all about facilitating healthy environments, and providing an increased sense of belonging and value that will help to minimise the risks to mental health.
Share this on Linkedin –   |   Follow Culturistics insights on Linkedin –

Relevant Links:

Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?