Facilitation 101: Breaking Down a Crucial Leadership Skill

Over the past 4.5 years working on MO, I've run somewhere around 500 meetings, workshops, and classes. That's roughly three sessions per week, across ~35 weeks each year. Yet to this day, whenever I'm in the room waiting for people to join, my thoughts race:

• "How can I bring people's energy up?"

• "How should I conduct break out debrief well?"

• "Is my warm-up question good enough?"

I find myself checking the agenda one last time, reassuring myself, "Ok, I got this."

Facilitation is one of the hardest skills I've learned since starting my first business. Though nervousness still gets me every time, it does get better with practice. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have developed this muscle over the years, as I believe it's one of the most valuable skills for becoming a great leader or manager.

In this blog post, I'll share my experience and insights about facilitation, breaking down this complex skill into manageable components that you can learn and practice over time. We'll explore:

• What facilitation means

• The essential skills it requires

• Practical ways to develop your facilitation abilities

Let’s get to it!

I. Understanding Facilitation

Before diving deeper, let me set some context. My experience comes primarily from online team meetings, classes, and workshops, with some offline panels and community gatherings mixed in. While I'm more experienced in online facilitation, many of these principles can apply to both settings.

At its core, facilitation is the art of guiding a group to achieve a common goal while ensuring everyone feels heard, engaged, and aligned. Whether in a work or learning context, the facilitator's role is to get everyone moving in the same direction, keep them engaged, resolve conflicts, and create space for mutual learning.

II. Breaking Down the Facilitation Skillset

Like any complex skill, facilitation becomes less daunting when we break it down into its component parts. Through my experience, I've identified several key skills that every facilitator needs to develop. Let me share specific examples of how these play out in real sessions:

1. Setting the Foundation

• Creating clear agendas: Starting each session with "Here's what we'll cover today, and here's what success looks like by the end..."

• Establishing ground rules: "We use hand-raise reactions for questions, chat for quick thoughts, and unmute when called upon."

• Setting expectations: "We have 60 minutes together. We'll spend 15 minutes on context, 30 on discussion, and 15 on next steps."

2. Real-Time Management

• Multi-tasking mindfully: Following the chat while someone is speaking, noting key points to return to later

• Time awareness: "We have 20 minutes left, so let's focus our discussion on concrete solutions."

• Energy reading: Noticing when energy dips and switching activities or taking quick breaks

3. Active Engagement

• Deep listening: Taking notes while others speak, capturing exact phrases that stand out

• Meaningful follow-ups: "Mai, you mentioned scalability challenges. Could you share a specific example?"

• Connection-making: "What Tuan just shared reminds me of the point Sarah made earlier about user feedback..."

III. Practicing Facilitation

1. How I learn facilitation

Over the past few years, the way I learn facilitation is through (1) throwing myself into opportunities where I can practice first hand and get feedback and (2) observing great facilitators and taking notes of the parts that I absolutely love.

Here is an example of a few people I learn facilitation from and the notes I take about each of them.

My former cofounder Tung

• Tung is probably the first person I learn facilitation from. Tung has a unique ability to read the room and energy, control the crowd, make everyone pay attention to when he speaks, ask very good questions, and respect participants’ time by making sure things are on time.

• Key lessons from Tung:

  • The ability to control a crowd by setting clear ground rules

  • The importance of time management in keeping engagement

  • The art of asking questions that move discussions forward

  • Let Tung take charge of setting the energy and vibe for a meeting and class:)

My former colleague Quang

• Every time Quang steps into a room, no matter it’s online or offline, he somehow makes everyone feel so seen and held. Quang can hype everyone up while being to make room for softness at the same time - which I find is a great combo in a facilitator. I think this is something quite unique about Quang that I cannot copy hahaha.

• Key lessons from Quang:

  • Balancing high energy with creating rooms for soft and gentle moments

  • Making each person feel individually acknowledged

  • Building an environment where people feel safe to share

  • Show love and care <3

My friend and mentor Tara

• The first time I got to see Tara facilitate was a panel at a conference. I was struck by how elegant she was as a facilitator. Then, I got to participate in a community led by Tara which made me wow again! She is so good at setting the stage, creating a safe space, bringing her own stories and experiences in, conducting follow ups and transitions, and synthesizing takeaways from everyone.

• Key lessons from Tara:

  • The power of thorough recap and follow-up

  • How to create meaningful transitions between topics

  • The art of synthesizing group discussions into clear takeaways

  • Using personal stories to create connection and openness

My former history professor Karl

• After every history class with Karl, I’m always in awe with his facilitation skills. He can listen to a student speaking and take notes, while reading class's chat, replying to chat, and know exactly what to follow up once the student finishes sharing.

• I remember one time I stayed back to ask Karl what’s his secret to great facilitation and he shared with me that the only secret is that he cares about his students. The care encourages him to go extra miles to remember someone’s name, what they wrote in an assignment, take notes of what they are sharing in class…

• Key lessons from Karl:

  • The power of genuine care for participants

  • How to manage multiple channels of communication

  • The importance of connecting past and present contributions

  • Active listening while managing group dynamics

The way I learn was to copy as much as possible from these four people. Get into meetings or classes with them and take notes of the specifics.

Along the way, I learn to add my own colors to my facilitation. In my case, I realize that I love facilitating discussions, engaging people to share, listening carefully to what they have to say and connecting the different sharing on the table. I also believe everyone has something to share and sometimes I need to call on them to get them sharing instead of always waiting for them.

But at the core, great facilitators care. They care about creating a great experience for the participants. The care motivates them to listen carefully, take notes, ask questions to follow up, make sure everyone engage in their own way, and always improve themselves to make a great experience for their participants next time.

2. Step-by-step guide to practice for newcomers

Lastly, for anyone who is new to facilitation, below are concrete exercises and approaches I've found helpful in developing my facilitation skills:

Before a session

1. Create a facilitation script with key goals, agenda, guided questions and transitions

2. Rewatch opening and closing statements from previous sessions to see how I feel about it

3. Prepare backup activities for unexpected moments such as lower/higher participants, participants who cannot open their mic, low energy groups

4. Review participant information and previous discussions (if applicable)

During a session

1. Clearly state the agenda, items we will cover, how much time we will spend on each item

2. Have a flexible agenda with clear priorities: know what can be cut if time runs short

3. Take notes of key points, questions, connections, and active/low active participants

4. When calling on people, ask one person at a time to avoid making the participants confused

   ❌ ”Maybe Trung or Quang, what do you think?”

   ✅ ”Trung, I would love to hear your take on this question if you can open your mic.”

5. When asking questions, ask one question at a time to avoid making the participants forget the question being asked

6. Foster inclusivity by setting norms for engagement early on

   ❌ Ignoring quieter participants who may prefer different modes of engagement.

   ✅ “Feel free to use the chat to share your ideas or raise your hand if you’d like to speak.”

7. Actively listen to validate contributions and maintain engagement.

   ❌ ”Okay, next point.”

   ✅ “Thank you, Linh! That’s an interesting perspective. Does anyone have a different take on this?”

8. Manage dominating participants to create space for others.

   ❌ Allowing one person to monopolize the discussion.

   ✅ “Thank you, Minh, for sharing. Let’s hear from someone who hasn’t spoken yet—Thao, what are your thoughts?”

9. Use pauses strategically.

   ❌ Jumping to conclusions without giving participants time to process or jumping straight into asking someone.

   ✅ “I’ll pause for a few seconds to give everyone time to think before responding.”

10. Paraphrase and summarize key points to ensure alignment.

    ✅ “So if I understand correctly, the group agrees that our top priority is improving onboarding. Did I capture that right?”

After a session

• Reflect on what worked and what didn't

• Document successful transitions or interventions

• Ask for specific feedback from participants

• Review your notes for patterns and insights

IV. Conclusion

Above are my definition of facilitation, smaller components of this skill, and how you and I can continue learning and practicing this skill.

I’m still very new in my learning journey so I would love to learn whether you have other points to add here about facilitation. If you do, please leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading and have a great last week of 2024 ❤️