A facilitator’s skills and qualities
The eight key skills and qualities of a good facilitator.
resources
What is facilitation?
Facilitation is about helping the group to have an efficient and inclusive meeting. It combines a series of roles and tasks.
Introduction to Facilitating Meetings
This guide explores the concept of facilitation and how it can help in creating successful and positive meetings. It is primarily aimed at groups using consensus decision making, a process that involves all members of the group in reaching an agreement that is acceptable to everyone.
Troubleshooting consensus
Like any method of decision making, consensus can work better in theory than in practise. However, most of the sticking points stem from lack of experience, or the fact that the conditions for consensus aren’t being met.
Consensus in large groups
Trying to find consensus in a large group brings its own challenges. Here you’ll find lots of tips for making consensus work in large groups, including an outline of the spokescouncil.
Quick decision making
There are models for reaching a quick consensus that have been developed for fast moving situations such as actions and protests, where people only have a few minutes (at most) to come to a decision.
Guidelines for taking part
Some basic guidelines for participating in consensus decision making.
An example of a consensus process
“The bit of wasteland that we’ve used as a park for the last ten years is going to be sold by the council – they want to sell it so a supermarket can be built there!”
The stages of the consensus process
There are lots of consensus models out there, some groups have developed very detailed procedures, other groups follow a more organic process
The consensus process
The key for a group working towards consensus is for all members of the group express their needs and viewpoints clearly, recognise their common ground and find solutions to any areas of disagreement.