A Moment Is never just a moment

A moment you share with others in co-creation is never just a moment. It really is what you make of it. But should every shared moment be a facilitated shared moment?

If there is a clear purpose and a strong intention to build on whatever comes out of the gathering, there should be some level of facilitation. If it is just a pleasant get-together without the need for any results, it does not have to be facilitated. Just let it take you wherever it takes you and enjoy the ride. It can be a great or intense moment as well; it just does not need to have a purpose or outcome.

I refer to all moments where people gather to start with a purpose and end with a new start to ‘do’ something as moments of co-creation in the broadest sense of the word. Every moment of co-creation can benefit from some form of facilitation to make it count.

As a facilitator you can make co-creation count for all involved. You can be the architect of that moment, drawing everyone into a shared space of creativity. Your facilitation techniques and rituals generate a sense of progress and belonging. But there is a lot more you can do to make that moment count. You can become the guide, the conductor and the catalyst, blending a group of individuals into an individual group, thus lifting them up to their highest co-creative potential.

When applying facilitative leadership, you connect people by their hands, their heads and their hearts.

Guiding (hands), Conducting (heads) and Catalysing (hearts) are three separate takes on facilitation, and when applied simultaneously, they can drive coherence in a group of people. You can interpret them as three areas of competence that help you to become an impactful facilitator.

Guiding the team

is about providing structure by creating an appealing narrative for the session, by giving clear instructions and by managing time.

Providing structure creates trust in the facilitator and that leads to participation. It connects people by their hands because it gets them to actually do things together.

Conducting

is about directing the attention of the team to increase the quality of their conversations. A facilitator can conduct by directing attention to blind spots or to important insights which lead to a breakthrough.

Directing attention increases engagement in conversation which results in better interpretations and conclusions. It connects people with their heads, their thinking, because it gets them to bring together their expertise and experience.

Catalysing

refers to the act of acknowledging contributions of each team member to achieving the goals of the session. It is also about upholding the purpose of the collaboration and tying each activity back to it. A facilitator can catalyse to fuel the commitment of each participant.

Catalysing creates a sense of ownership. And when the participants feel ownership of the goals and the purpose, it is highly likely they will build further on the outcomes after the session. Implementation and execution doesn’t always happens as smoothly as expected after the workshop.

Catalysing is a crucial skill of a facilitator to create momentum for execution. It connects people by the heart because it helps them to believe in a higher purpose and act on that believe together. It helps them believe that their efforts of co-creation matter.

In summary, a facilitator can guide for participation, conduct for engagement and catalyze for commitment.

Participation comes from trust; engagement comes from directing attention and managing energy; and commitment results in ownership. In other words, you are building a safe space for people to openly build on each other so they can find their way forward with strong intention.

I have compiled the skills to Guide, Conduct and Catalyse over the years that I have practiced facilitation. Keeping track of my learnings have helped me to build a competence framework for my own development as a facilitator, explained in the book ‘Captains of Leadership’. Every day, I still learn something new about Guide, Conduct and Catalyse, and I still write it down in my log. I believe that keeping track of your learnings in a structured way will help you to build your facilitative confidence.

Facilitation is a lifelong learning journey. You can create your own style, your own approach. I am not sure if you will ever be able to call it mastery, but you can be sure that you will have made a dent in the universe by trying to become a master at it. It is a brave thing to try and be a selfless leader who just wants to help people to get the best out of a shared moment.

Facilitation is also the purest form of leadership.

In facilitation, there are no egos involved, there is no status to be maintained, no ‘leader’-image to live up to. It is purely about getting the best out of people. A facilitator is ‘giving’ by holding space for others to become a coherent group of people. A facilitator has no hidden agenda and does not require specific output from the team. Your effort to achieve coherence in co-creation, every single time, even helps to build a collaborative culture and uplifts interactions in an organizational system to benefit all stakeholders.

Facilitation is not exclusive, it is not an art, it is not a function, it is a dedication to self-awareness and empathy, it is a celebration of the shared moment and being an ambassador of presence. There are no official grades or certifications that show your ‘level’ of facilitation, there is no framework to evaluate someone as a better or worse facilitator. Your growth as a facilitator is measured by the way people feel when you facilitate their moment.

I do not believe in mastery of facilitation as I do not believe in mastery of being human. The learning journey as a facilitator runs in parallel with the learning journey as a human being, as a person. It is a life-long learning journey, without an ultimate stage to reach. It is about the journey, not the end goal. When you are a captain, you live to be at sea, not to arrive at shore.

The power of the moment that people share is generated by what you can make of that moment for them. A moment should never be just a moment: it can be a moment of coherence, of synchronized brains, of shared empathy, of worldviews colliding and bursting into new exciting possibilities, a moment when you have the opportunity to facilitate for the best output, outcome and impact.

I see a world of captains who are on a mission to generate coherence between different perspectives in collaboration. A form of decentralized leadership which infuses our co-creation with empathy.

Guide, Conduct and Catalyse is a framework to help you on your way to become the best captain you can be.

Want to know how to become a facilitative leader?