To facilitate means to make things easier. As a facilitator, I help groups of people to reach agreement or achieve a joint purpose. This may happen in a conference, a workshop or some other meeting (or series of meetings). The participants may be members of a single team, or from different departments in a single organisation, or they may be from different organisations, but my role is usually as a neutral actor, focused on the process and steering the group towards a suitable resolution, but without having a stake in a particular outcome. I can draw upon an extensive toolkit of methods and techniques to deal with different scenarios, including World Cafes, Open Space Technology, Appreciate Enquiry and Systems Mapping as well as more traditional methods of running meetings and ensuring that everyone feels safe and able to participate equally.
Photo credit: Stephen J Cole via Foter.com / CC BY-NC