Why co-facilitation?

Co-facilitation is usually a deliberate choice. Two or more people working together can share the responsibility for bringing together and meeting the diverse needs, interests, personalities and viewpoints of a group of people.

Co-facilitation may be chosen by the facilitators. It may evolve through a working relationship where facilitators are undertaking similar tasks or services and decide to work together to take advantage of different skills, strengths, experience and expertise. It may occur because a ‘like-minded’ individual is identified and both people recognise advantages in working together. Co-facilitation may arise from the formalisation of a partnership where two or more people who have worked together previously decide to work together again in a more planned way. It may be a logical way for facilitators to develop personal or professional skills. An individual facilitator might deem it important to have another facilitator involved due to the complexity of the task or to have a balance of genders.

Co-facilitation can arise more accidentally from people being present in the same place and time for the same purpose. For example, an organisation may ask two people to be involved in a visioning session with employees. At the first meeting, or perhaps prior to it, these people ‘discover’ that other people have been invited and they decide to work together in order to maximise the effectiveness of the session or to reduce overlap. Similarly, co-facilitation may be necessary because the facilitator employed to conduct a session requires specific cultural knowledge or language.

Co-facilitation may also be imposed through the establishment of organisational codes of practice, or the allocation of particular staff to a task. An organisation may simply assign two people to the same job, such as in the allocation of teachers and teacher’s assistants in an early childhood classroom or two teachers teaching collaboratively.

When facilitators work together they blend their knowledge, skills, experience, backgrounds and attitudes. Co-facilitators need to work toward preventing and managing difficulties, while capitalising on the benefits of sharing a difficult job with a skilled peer. It helps if co-facilitators consciously plan the ways in which they will work so that they can harness their individual strengths.

Co-facilitators may take turns working with the group, enabling the other facilitator to observe, to focus on the needs of a participant or group of participants, or even to leave the room entirely.

Co-facilitators may share responsibilities for eliciting information, encouraging ideas, ensuring individuals within the group are heard, clarifying information being provided and/or recording information.

Co-facilitation can enable facilitators to work with different groups of participants, addressing issues which arise, separating the tasks to be achieved, resolving conflicts between participants, responding to the additional needs of a small number of participants and enabling a more intimate group situation where there are more opportunities for contact with the facilitator and for participants to express their opinions.

Co-facilitation may involve a facilitator who works within an organisation or within a group to bring to the facilitation intimate knowledge of the issues and challenges to be addressed, as well as an external facilitator who may provide more objectivity and not be confined by a particular role in the organisation.

Co-facilitators may choose to provide as much balance as possible between the co-facilitators in planning, the level of intervention with the group and delivery.

Co-facilitators might choose a ‘learner-coach’ model where one facilitator takes the role of learner and the other of coach, either observing or participating in a way that supports the learner to develop their knowledge, skills and experience.

A team of co-facilitators might be chosen to enable some facilitators to be absent for some sessions.

The chart compares different ways of working.

Description of roles	Explanation	Number of facilitators working at one time	Groups	Materials	Responsibilities	Strategies
Tandem On-line/off-line Tag teams Job sharing	One person works with the group while the other prepares the next part	1	Whole	Different	Content	Different
Teacher/ observer	One person works with the group while the other observes	1	Whole	Same	Content or process	Different
Facilitator/client facilitator	The participants in the group co-facilitate the session with the facilitator	1	Whole	Same	Content or process	Same
Intervener/ recorder Task/process Complementary	Both facilitators work with the group but focusing on different elements of the session	2	Whole	Same	Content or process	Different
Equal Separate expertise Internal/ external	An equal balance between facilitators using their individual skills	2	Whole	Different	Content or process	Different
Teaching/ drifting or ‘on purpose’ teaching Intervention/ reaction Alternative	One facilitator has the main responsibility for the group while the other focusses on individuals or small groups or	2	Whole and small group	Same	Content and process	Different
Learner/coach Primary/ secondary	One person with more expertise coaches another or takes the lead	1 or 2	Whole and/or small groups	Same	Content or process	Same
Parallel	Facilitators work with small groups on the same task	2	Small	Same	Content	Same
Modified	Facilitators work with small groups of the same task but using different processes	2	Small	Same	Content	Different
Remedial and re-teaching	Facilitators work with small groups on different tasks.	2	Small	Different	Content	Different
Multiple station teaching	Facilitators work with small groups on different tasks	2	Small groups	Different	Content and process	Different
Team Integrative No explicit roles	All work together as part of the team	2 or more	Whole (sometimes broken into small groups)	Same	Content and process	Same