I enjoy successfully facilitating strategic planning, team building, conflict resolution, idea generation, focus groups, and other sessions. To keep things balanced, here’s my recent facilitation blooper and a timely reminder.
I arrived at a hotel for a 1½-day, in-person strategic planning session feeling prepared and confident. I unpacked my supplies and realized … my facilitation guide was missing.
Cue a brief spike of anxiety.
Could I facilitate without my guide?
Of course. I adapt designs in the moment, all the time, and co-design with participants at the start of and throughout sessions. I draw on years of facilitation beliefs, principles, and methods. I know the participants have the wisdom, and I can gently support them by offering beneficial conversation activities. I know the natural flow of sessions from opening to discussion, decision-making, and closing.
Yet, this session was complex due to deep-rooted trust issues among participants and ambitious outcomes. I had included notes, ideas, and options in the guide to support the work. As well, because the design had been co-created with members of the organization, I wanted to honour their thinking and contributions, all of which were captured in the guide. And to complicate matters further, it was a hybrid session with specific instructions also included. Having the printed design for this session would give me peace of mind.
Deep breath. Problem-solving mode.
I had the design on my laptop. The printer in the hotel business office wasn’t working, so I emailed the guide to a hotel staff person who printed it for me. Great service.
The session went extremely well. Relationships strengthened. Trust increased. Direction emerged. We adapted the design various times to best address what was emerging.
The punchline?
The next day, back in my office, I opened my printer to photocopy something. There
was my guide lying inside. Why I had put it there, I have no idea, but I had a
good laugh. And I reaffirmed (again) that what works for me as a facilitator is
to design thoroughly and then be completely fine without the design or changing
it.