Skills for a Good Design Workshop Facilitator

A facilitator offers objective guidance to workshop participants toward achieving a common goal.^[1] They lend a structure to the workshop and make collaboration among participants smooth and productive. Naturally, it is their responsibility to come up with the necessary materials, activities, and techniques for the session.

Problem-solving, conflict management, and decision-making are essential traits in a facilitator. Good communication and time management skills, too, can work in their favor and help them conduct a successful workshop.

The 4 main goals of a facilitator include:

• Ensuring complete and equal participation. This involves creating opportunities for all types of participants to speak freely. The diverge-converge technique is one of the most effective tools to help facilitators in doing so.
• Enabling a mutual understanding. The facilitator must make sure that every participant is on the same page during the workshop proceedings. They can do so by adopting a common vocabulary or by creating tangible artifacts like post-ups for everyone to see.
• Aiding inclusive and collaborative decision-making. When the workshop reaches its end, it’s the facilitator’s job to secure everyone’s buy-in. This can be ensured by having a decision-making process where everyone participates and votes.
• Fostering shared responsibility. A crucial part of any workshop is outlining the next steps. The facilitator must make sure that all participants leave the workshop with complete clarity on who is responsible for implementing what and when.^[2]

The workshop facilitator’s attitude sets the tone for the entire workshop. Being empathetic, approachable, and understanding will encourage all types of people to participate and contribute freely without any hesitation.

Ensure that all voices are heard — especially by encouraging quiet and shy participants to speak up and share. An excellent way to establish a rapport with the participants is to organize fun icebreaker activities at the very beginning.

As a workshop facilitator, you are the connecting force between participants. You may be tempted to take on an instructional "teaching" role, but the key is to step back and let the participants lead. You can do this by:

• Treating participants as contributors. Avoid one-way conversations and encourage the room to come together in discussion.
• Being open to ideas. Do not assume that you know best — be open to insights and ideas from participants that might not be in alignment with what you are familiar with.
• Going with the flow. While it’s a good idea to be prepared, don’t be afraid to go off script when the situation demands it.
• Making the workshop experiential. Don’t tell participants what to think. Instead, allow them to embark on a journey of discovery — this is the cornerstone of facilitation.^[3]
• Being aware of the energy of the group. Energies can flow back and forth throughout the course of the workshop. Monitor the atmosphere in a room and take action when energy levels drop or tension increases. ^[4]

Time management is certainly about sticking to the schedule. But it is also about knowing when to end an unproductive conversation or keep a productive one going. As a facilitator, exercise your judgment to ensure that the workshop goals are being met while keeping participants engaged and comfortable.

Here are some tips for managing time effectively during a workshop:

• When creating the agenda for your workshop, include some buffer time for every activity.
• Announce time limits as unobtrusively as possible. Using a loud countdown can make participants nervous and hinder creativity.
• When participants go off-topic, add their ideas to the parking lot and redirect them to your original workshop plans.
• Plan enough time for breaks, so people can renew their creative energies and be productive during tasks.

Human beings are naturally prone to biases. A whole host of factors can affect how a participant thinks and behave during your workshop — not all of them will be under your control. But what you can control is eliminating biases during your workshop:

• Be clear about goals. Be clear about the goals of the workshop and keep an open mind. This means not assuming that you know best as a facilitator and being receptive to the ideas of participants.
• Mind your language. Take measures to eliminate bias in your language. For example, asking participants to “vote for their favorite ideas” is an invitation for subjectivity to creep in. Instead, ask them to vote on an idea based on a set of criteria you have already agreed upon as a group. For example, “vote for the ideas you think will most effectively cater to our users’ pain points.”
• Use data. Replace opinions with data wherever possible. This can be an excellent way to respectfully disagree with higher-level execs and stakeholders if their biases creep in.
• Use differential voting. Usually, design workshops invite people from different teams, such as marketing and finance, in addition to the design and dev teams. Using differential voting, for example, color coding the votes of each team will ensure you understand the rationale behind each vote. This will let you select ideas that have the approval of all teams vs. ideas that simply have the most votes.^[5]

The most important trait of a facilitator is their ability to communicate in a clear and engaging manner. After all, it’s their job to keep participants motivated and interactive for the entire duration of the workshop. Their communication skills also come in handy to coax shy participants, ask the crowd the right questions, get the whole room on the same page, and smooth over conflict. These skills are needed not just during the workshop but also during the planning stage.

It is the facilitator’s responsibility to draft a good communication plan that covers details such as:

• How your attendees find out about the workshop
• What people should know about the workshop in advance to be prepared
• The workshop’s unique value
• Details on how to join the workshop^[6]

The best way to improve your skills as a workshop facilitator is to practice. By practicing, you’ll get to witness a wide range of situations, from dealing with difficult people to tackling power dynamics.

Other ways to improve your facilitation skills include:

• Co-facilitating workshops with experienced facilitators so you can learn from their best practices and techniques.
• Reading books, watching videos, searching for online resources, and discussing with peers the latest tools and techniques that can help you upskill.
• Undergoing general facilitation training or getting trained in a specific niche.^[7]