Many things can happen during workshops and meetings, one of them is project alignment. Facilitation, when done right ensures every conversation lead to decision. For Project Management Offices (PMOs) and Project Managers (PM), good facilitation turns every stand-ups, retrospectives, and management sessions into collaboration hence encourage clarity.
This piece will be geared towards understanding facilitation in Project Management, why it’s important to for every project management office and project managers, some of the major facilitation skills for project leaders and some of the common challenges encountered during every meeting session.
What Is Facilitation in Project Management?
While many may have different opinion on facilitation and it’s concept, there has been a structured globally recognized term. It is a structured process of leading a group towards achieving a common goal, while maintaining the organization’s focus and neutrality.
In facilitation, you don’t have to be the manager with all the solutions. It’s more about being the initiator of a productive conversation. We should also understand that there’s a huge difference between managing a meeting and facilitating it.
For example, while a meeting manager maybe responsible for presenting relevant updates and tracking actions, meeting facilitators design the discussion, manages group dynamic, and engages participants.
A meeting facilitator also ensure that energy opinion of the meeting attendees is considered, and the intelligence of each contributor is collected and well harnessed. This is one of the reasons why PMOs are considered the major facilitators in every organization. They are armed with the neutrality and cross-functional perspective needed to manage stakeholders and teams when a complex discussion arises.
Why are Facilitation Skills Important for PMOs and PMs?
There are many reasons why facilitation skills are important to PMs and PMOs, but it’s strategic nature is more imperative. Some of the other reasons include:
- Enhancing Decision Making: When well structured, facilitation ensures that all opinions by meeting attendees are well attended to. This, in turn, leads to more understandable decisions.
- Encourage Inclusivity: Facilitation, when done right, creates a safe space for everyone. It provides all participants with the needed platform, making sure that every opposition opinion are heard.
- Reduces the Possibility of Conflict: Facilitators are required to remain neutral and focus on the goal. By maintaining neutrality, they (facilitators) can reduce tension, channeling any intended disagreement into a problem-solving narrative.
What are Some of the Common Meeting Challenges?
One way or the other, we have all experienced in real time some challenges associated with poor facilitation in meetings. Some of them include:
- Oppressive Tones: These are situations where dominant voices overshadow quiet ones, even when they’re more insightful.
- Poor Preparation: Poor preparation can distort conversations, making the discussions process watery during the meeting. In the absence of good facilitation, a clear agenda is always absent.
- Lack of Moderation: The absence of time moderation and the lack of systems that track meeting outcomes make up one of the most common meeting challenges today.
Major Facilitation Skills Project Leaders Should Adopt
To overcome facilitation challenges, affected leaders must possess specific skills. The major ones include:
- Effective Preparation: Before the meeting, there must be well-defined objectives, purpose, and expected outcomes.
- Listening: Every project manager must master the art of actively listening to meeting conversations. With that, they can easily reflect and summarize the meeting outcomes.
- Time Management: Meetings are usually time sensitive. Managers must therefore master the creative art of time management using timeboxing and visual cue methods.
Conclusion
Facilitation, just like every other skill, requires constant upskilling. Organizations should endeavor to train their project managers on the latest facilitation skills, as the scope of their work changes with the business environment.
Every facilitation process should be structured towards achieving a unanimous goal, and must align with the original aim of the meeting. Finally, leaders must do well to possess some relevant skill like mediation, and time management that will enable them overcome most challenges associated with facilitation.