Facilitation tips for leaders

Facilitating a meaningful team discussion doesn’t come easily for everybody, especially when the topics may be controversial or sensitive. The following strategies to engage team members in productive conversations while managing negative or problematic responses.

Preparation

It’s helpful for people to know what the discussion will be about before it starts. Share the ideas and topics with your team before the meeting. You can email them a list or give paper copies.

Help your employees understand how to be respectful at meetings. The following guidelines are adapted from Mindful Employer:

• Listen actively. Don’t pretend to listen while you’re thinking of how to respond to other’s statements. Listen to understand what is being said. See Listen to understand to learn more. 
• Handle conflicts appropriately. This means no one’s embarrassed and disagreements focus on the ideas and not the individuals. See Conflict response for leaders to learn more.
• Be willing to work towards consensus. Keep an open mind. There’s probably an acceptable solution, even if compromise is required.
• Don’t interrupt other participants. Always be respectful, even if you disagree.
• Avoid one-on-one side conversations. This can be distracting. Share your ideas and concerns respectfully so everyone has a chance to consider the options.
• Be clear about next steps before you leave the discussion. Make notes of what you’re responsible to do by a set date, then confirm with the rest of the team.
• Respect confidentially where appropriate. Don’t share personal information that’s discussed.
• Once you’ve reached consensus, support group decisions and actions. If you feel you have a new idea or concern, bring it back to the team rather than discuss or gossip behind the scenes.

Choose a comfortable meeting room where you can talk easily with your group members. If you feel emotions like sadness, anxiety, or anger before your meeting, check out Questions to ask before engaging the employee to help you stay calm and focused.

Ensure you have enough handouts on the day’s topics for everyone at the meeting. It can help if someone take notes during the meeting and then gives copies to everyone after.

If you’re conducting a workshop or meeting on a potentially sensitive topic you may want to do more advance planning. This might include sending the meeting invitation a few weeks in advance, with reminders. Then provide other materials like workbooks, one to 2 weeks before the meeting.

Suggested wording for email invitation – 3 to 4 weeks in advance

Dear [Name]:

As an organization, we’re working to improve psychological health and safety and support employee well-being.  It can feel challenging to try to accomplish your own work while also managing or working with others – especially if they sometimes experience intense emotions or mental health issues.

We’d like to learn more about (topic) so we can provide you with more help in this area. You’re invited to attend a meeting I’m leading on this topic on (date/time) in (meeting room).

Please email me to let me know if you can attend no later than (date).

Sincerely,

Name, title

Suggested wording for email reminder – one to 2 weeks in advance

Dear [Name]:

I’m looking forward to our meeting on (date/time) in (meeting room). We’ll discuss how to better understand (topic) and look at different approaches and strategies to help us.

Please find additional materials for the discussion attached. While you’re welcome to glance through it, please don’t attempt to do any of the work. This will be part of our group discussion. Please bring these materials to the session.

I look forward to seeing you there,

Name, title

Virtual team discussions

We strongly recommend the facilitator has someone else responsible for webinar tech support from planning through delivery. This person can also be responsible to read questions and responses to the facilitator. This allows the facilitator to focus on the workshop.

Use a webinar platform that allows for:

• Polling – to allow for voting
• Breakout rooms for groups of 3 to 4 – to allow small group discussion
• Chat function – to allows people to ask questions and share thoughts

Before you begin:

• Review the facilitator guide to be comfortable with the entire workshop.
• Develop any polling questions and responses you may want to raise based on the suggested wording.
• Work with someone familiar with the polling function to determine how to incorporate the Q&A throughout the webinar. In some cases, you’ll need to create the polling response choices during the workshop.
• Test the slide presentation to ensure it works with your platform and that you can easily advance slides forward and backward.
• Test your microphone, webcam and speakers with someone who’s remote to ensure your sound and picture are clear.
• Learn how to assign people to breakout rooms if you can drop in to these conversations. Be sure to share in advance if you’ll be doing this.
• Discover if and how you can mute all or some participants while you’re presenting.
• Discover if and how you can give controls to someone in another location so they can share their screen. This can be useful if they’re completing worksheets.
• Offer digital copies of the participant handouts through the original invitation link and within the webinar if possible.

Know your audience

You may have to introduce yourself if some team members don’t know you well. It’s often helpful to wear a nametag.

If team members aren't familiar with everyone, you may want to run an ice-breaker activity. Icebreakers can also be useful in a group with people from different teams or departments. These activities can help people to learn more about each other and may also help create buy-in for the purpose or topic of the session. Ideas for ice-breaker activities can be found on adult education websites.

Acknowledge potential challenges or past problems. For example, past challenges with discussions or a history of not following through on what was agreed, may make participants skeptical about whether their involvement can make a difference. Being up front about wanting this to be different can help you connect more effectively.

We’re more interested when we feel the subject applies to us. Find ways to connect the discussion topic and your team members' work experiences. For example, you may highlight that we all have days or periods in our lives where we feel distressed or are going through something difficult. This could be relevant to a discussion on workplace mental health.

Improve understanding

Remember your team members may not have had the exposure to the concepts, acronyms, and jargon related to the discussion that you have. Keep your language simple so there is no misunderstanding.

Avoid using overly technical terms. When you can't avoid them, make sure you define them in a way others can grasp.

Manage expectations

When discussing strategies or reaching decisions with teams, you can ask: "Does this help support employees to meet their goals or does it make things more difficult?" Each employee must understand objectives to help answer this question. See Performance management for more information.

Let people know what resources they can expect and how much time they have. For example, your budget for a project is $500. Each team member can spend up to one hour per week on it. Focus the discussion on what’s possible given the time and money available.

You might get a request for something that’s unlikely due to cost or time. Instead of saying no, you can ask, “Why (or how) will this help you?” When you know the actual need or objective behind the request, it’s easier to brainstorm solutions that can work with the budget, deadline, or resources available. See Before you say no for leaders to learn more.

Focus on the purpose and outcomes of the meeting. This will help keep the discussion on track and help the meeting be successful. If you get stuck with a difficult conversation, go back to the expected outcomes to get reorganized.

Sometimes one person seems to control the whole discussion. You can still support them and let others speak by saying something like: "You have so much to offer. Is this something we can follow up on later and we can hear from someone else now?" Make sure you follow up with the person later to see if their interest goes beyond the discussion.

You may not know all the answers for a topic you’re discussing. This is okay. It’s fine to say, "I don't know much about that. Let's find resources to get us better informed."

Allow everyone to feel heard

Help give each team member the chance to speak. Give verbal acknowledgement to each person for their contribution.

Know what you want to say. Avoid long speeches. Speak clearly and be straightforward.

Ask a lot of questions to ensure participants understand what you’re saying.

Make sure you’re listening – and that your team members know you’re listening. You can do this by restating a participant’s question, answer, or idea in your own words.

Ask if you understood their words correctly. If they say no, invite them to restate their question or comment. Remember that when nervous, we may not say what we mean to say the first time.

It’s important to remember many people learn better by doing than by being told what to do. When you can, allow team members come to their own conclusions through the discussion process.

You may have to manage emotions in the meeting. Sometimes people spontaneously share information about themselves. This may include information about their personal lives, their health, or disclosure of a mental illness.

Sharing information helps us to know each other better, but it can also disrupt a discussion and make people feel uncomfortable. If someone shares personal information, acknowledge their contribution to the discussion and be respectful. If needed, offer them a tissue or water, and ask if they’d like to stay or take a break from the meeting.

Follow up with the person as soon as possible after the meeting to see how they’re doing. Ask if they need help or if you can help them access resources for accommodation or support.

If you need to support the rest of the team’s reactions or questions, page 22 of the free tool Supporting employee success provides some suggestions for responding to questions or concerns from co-workers.

Provide feedback

If a participant appears to be struggling with an idea, comment on the positive:

• Thanks for bringing up that idea.
• Thanks for taking this to a new level.

Then try giving a suggestion:

• Can you build on this area?
• Can you consider this concept as well?

Avoid criticizing ideas or putting someone down. Instead, you can suggest different solutions and give them praise for their effort, ideas, creativity, or participation:

• Preferred: Thanks for that input--can you think of any ways we can do that within our deadline?
• Not: "That won't work because nobody has the time to do it.

For more tips, see Provide negative feedback constructively.

Address negativity or cynicism

Some participants may think their involvement will have limited impact on lasting improvement. You can acknowledge this up front. Assure them despite what happened before your group wants something different for this discussion.

• There are ways you can help get participants on board:
  • Accept responsibility for what hasn’t been perfect in the past – even if its success or failure was outside of your control.
  • State your sincere desire to change things in the future.
• If a participant presents a negative statement, you may want to ask:
  • How could we do that differently?
  • What would you think might work better?
  • How can we do this in a healthier way?
  • What would a positive outcome of this look like?

If a participant pushes back against positive suggestions or their requests seem unreasonable, explore what’s underlying the person's resistance or demands with questions like:

• What outcome is important to you? What would success look like here?
• If we did what you’re suggesting, what would be the outcome?
• Is there another way we can reach the same goal?

Sometimes people need more time to feel heard and understood before they can accept changes:

• If you see that some people don’t accept the changes, you may wish to say something like, "I see our discussions aren’t working very well right now. Maybe we can talk more about it later."
• Understand the specific problems the employee or employees have on the topic and discuss them at the next meeting.
• You can also offer the individual a separate discussion to allow them to feel heard and understood.

Manage disruptive behaviours

Don’t take disruptive behaviour personally and step in only if necessary. Strategies for dealing with potentially disruptive behaviours when:

A participant strongly or often disagrees

• Refer to the discussion guidelines.
• Don’t get involved in a power struggle – agree to disagree and move on.
• Speak and act confidently.
• Use direct eye contact.
• Manage your own emotions.
• Be clear and to the point.
• Empathize but don’t agree.
• Ask for more information, if necessary.

A participant becomes angry or verbally aggressive

• Refer to the discussion guidelines.
• Have a respectful, relaxed posture and use a firm but calm tone.
• Try to uncover the participant’s concern.
• Focus on a solution.
• Establish boundaries. If participants are verbally abusive, state that verbal abuse won’t be tolerated.

A participant remains very quiet and doesn’t participate

• Have participants work in pairs or small groups (Think. Pair. Share.).
• Encourage responses by using open-ended questions and direct eye contact.
• Pause and give participants time to think.
• Smile and be encouraging and approachable.
• Give positive reinforcement when participation occurs.
• Understand that not everyone needs to interact to learn.

A participant rambles

• Ask closed questions to prevent long, drawn-out responses.
• Listen carefully and bridge back to the topic by gently interrupting.
• Decrease eye contact with this participant.
• Consider assigning the person the role of timekeeper.

A participant engages in side conversations despite knowing the rules

• Stand near a disruptive participant.
• Ask questions to colleagues close to disruptive participants.
• Stop talking.
• Ask the group if they can hear you.
• Refrain from asking disruptive participants to share their conversation.

Resolve conflict

Any discussion will be challenging if 2 or more individuals are in a state of conflict with one another. Before working on effective team discussions, try to fix existing conflicts between team members. This process for resolving conflict offers more tips for facilitating discussions with teams.

Expand the learning

If you have time, you can ask participants what new actions they’d like to try going forward. You can also ask if they have other questions that need more information or training. You can use the following wording:

• Determine action items – Based on the feedback, ask participants to consider some specific action they’ll take to bring what they’ve learned into their workplace. You can invite table groups to discuss and come up with one or 2 ideas to share or allow individuals to come up with their own ideas.
• Check-in – ask participants to answer the question: What questions or concerns do you still have about the topic discussed today? Have participants share their answers. If appropriate, discuss as a group and/or direct participants to available resources for more information.

Wrap up positively

Meetings that take up time without accomplishing effective results are a common complaint. Well-run meetings that produce positive outcomes and clear decisions can be valuable to everyone on the team.

Thank your team for their input and be clear about how this contributes to team and organizational success.

Workshop materials

Free workshop materials including slide presentations, facilitator guide and participant handouts are available on a variety of topics.

These free, practical resources are available for you to download or print. They can be used by you personally, with your team, or as part of a training or awareness session you facilitate. While our website covers many other topics, these are the most popular for learning and development.