Session Host Guide

Facilitation Qualities & Practices

Below you will find facilitation qualities and practices, which bring to life the three principles, whilst also helping you achieve the desired outcome of your individual session. You can use these as lenses to look at your session preparation, design, and facilitation style.

Facilitation Qualities

• Awareness on yourself - grounded and attentive
• In contact - here and now
• Leading from “the inside”, from humanity and with humility
• Communicating with clarity
• Inclusive - parking/acknowledging power, biases & judgements
• Curiosity

Facilitation Practices

Planning and Delivering

• Manage time, focus on your purpose, structure and goals, but be ready to adapt when needed
• Be empathetic - believe in people’s good intentions, encourage and acknowledge
• Listen, listen and listen - sense - and listen
• Strive to be objective
• Be clear in your directions on what to accomplish
• Be flexible, gently “go with” the process and the energy of the group
• Show attention to and invite all to participate - also the outlier

Communication

• Listening - both to the individual, diverse voices and to the whole/the field
• Asking explorative questions:
  • What?
  • Who?
  • When?
  • How (might we…)?
  • What if…?
  • Please, say some more about/ elaborate/tell us more about….?
• Summarizing and wrapping up with neutrality - to create clarity

Planning and Design

• Design keeping in mind the principles Participatory, Accessible, Inclusive
• Consider the session design phases: divergence, emergence, convergence, as you choose activities for each phase.
• Pay attention to the beginnings and ends of the session
• Remember that there is a possibility that your session may be recorded, or folks may take notes. Try to design your session in a way that would best allow for learnings and insights from your session to be captured.