Who is an Appropriate Facilitator?

This article seeks to outline the key elements needed for someone to be a good facilitator. The authors, Pardhan and Lamba, note that the role of a facilitator is to guide people in discovering new approaches to problems rather than offering advice or personal opinions. Pardhan and Lamba describe that they learned the purpose of facilitation from hands-on experience working with Kate Bishop, Coordinator of the Shelldale Centre in Ontario, Canada. They describe the roles as identifying and adapting new tools for Kate to use when arranging meetings with community members.

The authors refer to key characteristics of a good facilitator:
(Keith Coriell, 2001)

1. asking others for their opinions rather than advancing their own;
2. compromising rather than dictating;
3. building relationships rather than being task-oriented;
4. adapting to changing situations;
5. maintaining objectivity;
6. effectively using skills to invoke participation and creativity;
7. being knowledgeable about client issues;
8. understanding and dealing with group dynamics.

According to Pardhan and Lamba, an additional requirement to good facilitation is for the facilitator to have knowledge about their clients or issues. This is important so that clients feel comfortable in providing feedback and this leads to more honest responses to questions.

Based on Pardhan and Lamba's personal experience, they suggest that there are certain key aspects to the facilitation process that are needed. For instance, in one case while working with a particular community, they realised that barriers had to be crossed before the facilitation process could start. The example they provide is recognising the need to have a facilitator who in this circumstance was aware of tensions in the community. With this knowledge in hand, the facilitation process, led by someone known to the community, resulted in having community participants more actively engaged.

Pardhan and Lamba make reference to a key lesson that they learned: facilitation can also include the act of providing tools for someone else who is facilitating or running the meeting. That is that facilitation can also include the act of providing tools for someone else who is facilitating or running the meeting. They conclude with this reflection: "external observers and facilitators need to ask themselves whether they are the right people for the task in hand. It is important to build relationships of trust with clients in order to obtain the right response."