Facilitation is the process of learning together

UN SDG Partnership B Corp Workshop Facilitation

Facilitation is the set of structured and collaborative activities organized to discover, understand and learn together. The facilitator helps a group of people and decision-makers to face complex problems, producing a collective intelligence more powerful than each individual could do, alone.

What does “facilitation” mean (to me)?

“Facilitation” comes from the Latin word “facilis” which means “it can be done”. A “facilitator” is somebody who makes things “doable”, easy for somebody else.

A facilitator is a professional who helps people to organize collective processes. They create the context and the opportunities for creativity and understanding to happen.

Corporate meeting facilitation for the design of public service.
Corporate meeting facilitation for the design of public service.

In a facilitation workshop, many participants can be invited. Usually from 5 to 20 but you can have dozens or even hundreds of participants. Facilitation helps to remove any obstacle to collaborative thinking and creation. It also sets the pace and the rhythm to promote the participation of all attendees.

During workshops, a lot of different participatory methods can be used. They give structure to the collaborative activities of participants.

A facilitator sets the workshop objectives with the sponsors who hired them. The objectives must be clear to allow an evaluation of the facilitated activities. They also guide the facilitator to set the top priority of this learning experience. The facilitator needs to decide where to work harder and what to remove to make the workshop a success.

Facilitation is a set of structured and collaborative activities organized with an agenda.

UN SDG Partnership B Corp Workshop Facilitation
From the workshop I’ve held in Cascais, Portugal, in 2017 for B Lab Europe.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for Partnership, How B Corps can collaborate“.
Workshop Facilitation

The facilitator covers several roles:

  • a referee,
  • a coach,
  • and a presenter.

And works in helping, motivating and supporting a group of participants.

Among the goals of a workshop you can find:

  • exploring a topic,
  • investigating a complex problem,
  • gathering different perspectives from different actors,
  • earning a better understanding of the context,
  • rendering explicit the causes and the relationships behind a concept,
  • ideating a set of actions to take to solve the identified problems
  • or clarifying and improving the way of collaborating and working together.

I like to facilitate diverse and creative thinking

I’ve been performing professional facilitation activities, for more than 20 years, in the most diverse settings with the most incredible participants:

Facilitation Systems Change by convening diverse stakeholders.
Facilitating Systems Change for the Sustainability of Agri-food systems by convening diverse stakeholders.
Osservatorio sul Dialogo Nell’Agroalimentare (OsservAgro)
  • Aspiring artists struggling with new creative technological tools.
  • Professional artists in the filmmaking industries, looking for new creative methods and ways to grow as workers in the field.
  • Organizational leaders coming from any part of the world looking to become better facilitators themselves.
  • University students from very different disciplines: architecture, industrial design, humanities, fashion design, science, math and physics, photography and writing, looking for new insights from the world of Design and Technology.
  • Corporate leaders on the look for new sensemaking tools and methods to understand how to live with VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity).
  • Teachers facing the complex challenge of transferring knowledge in a jolting world towards progress and complexity.
  • Scientists, researchers, journalists, politicians, activists, and decision-makers facing the global challenges of a society in the sector of technology, agrifood, and finance.
  • Entrepreneurs working hard to create new products and services while organizing their teams and resources in an adaptive and resilient manner.
  • Thought-leaders searching for new trends to explore and to build new knowledge on.

When I conclude a co-design workshop or a series of corporate events, I feel complete.

I am happy when I help people establishing a productive creative network. When they face their problems with powerful intellectual tools I am contributing to raising their collective intelligence.

Reaching the end of a well designed and organized workshop gives me immense satisfaction as a designer. Most of all, as a human being, I realized I have contributed to the progress of the community.

Learning while facilitating

I like to design facilitated workshops because it is one of the best occasions I have to learn. A workshop designer must learn about the needs of the organizations involved and the participants invited. At each learning experience, I am immersed in new knowledge domains that enrich me and make me more aware of the diversity and complexity of life.

Facilitation is a crucial activity of Design Leadership.
Facilitation is a crucial activity of Design Leadership.
Design Leadership course, PI-Campus

Successful facilitation is invisible and easy

One of the best definitions of facilitation emerged while brainstorming the writing of this article: “You made facilitation looks like something so easy to create!” my creative partner told me. And that’s exactly the final goal of facilitation: to make things easy.

As Bruno Munari said “To make things hard is easy, To make things easy is hard.” it is not easy for a facilitator to create a successful facilitation event. And successful facilitation must be easy for participants.

Let’s make understanding easier, together

I love facilitation. I organized and delivered workshops on the most diverse topics. I dream about writing more about my experience in facilitation and I am looking forward to the next co-creation workshop.

A professional facilitator makes collective learning easier, and fun.
A professional facilitator makes collective learning easier, and fun.
From the workshop I’ve held in Cascais, Portugal, in 2017 for B Lab Europe.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for Partnership, How B Corps can collaborate“.
Workshop Facilitation

Do you need a professional facilitator for your co-design, co-creation and collaboration workshops?

Let’s talk.


2 responses to “Facilitation is the process of learning together”

  1. Hi Max!
    How are you doing since the video call with Ozan’s Inner Circle?
    I like reading your posts, and will continue looking for opporunities to amplify!
    This post reminds me to ask you, have you already read “Resonate” by Nancy Duarte? I read it back in 2015 and it transformed how I approach presentations, and now I have SOO much more fun! And OH MY GOSH, I just looked it up, you can get a FREE multimedia version of the book!! :O I will check it out myself as soon as I send this comment!! Wooohooooooooo, thank you for spurring more new learning for me, Max!
    Read you again soon!
    Cathy Cheng

    • Hi Cathy!
      I know Nancy Duarte’s work since many years. She has been an inspiration for a lot of presentations I’ve designed and delivered.
      The effect of some of your feedback, about spontaneity and enjoyng the process of writing in itself, inspired me for the style of the latest post I’ve published on:
      https://curatella.com/design-is-planning/

      I need to let it rest to understand better how I feel about it. I have mixed feelings and mixed feedback. What’s your reaction on it.

      Thank you very much for your enthusiasm, I am looking to resonate with your digital brain as well.

      Read you soon.
      Max

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