Cofacilitation: Managing the facilitation event

When a facilitator is contracted to facilitate a group, the process occurs in a broader organisational or community context that may determine the purpose for the group to meet, the participants in the group, the broad outline or design of the group session, and/or the methods for evaluating the social context, the session and the outcomes. Facilitators organise these aspects of the group session, alone or in collaboration with executives, leaders, representatives or members of the organisation or community.

Facilitated sessions have some common structures:

• Contracting and reviewing: Whether a contract is determined by an organisation and the facilitators are part of a greater mechanism, process or project or whether they are responsible for the contract themselves, facilitators negotiate the desired outcomes for the session, the group structure, membership, responsibility for decision making, time required, roles and evaluation methods. The facilitators’ responsibilities often continue beyond the group session, whether it is because they are developing a program that requires further work, because there are final reports to be completed after the event, or because there is future work with the group.
• Organising: There are many aspects to organising a group event including negotiating times and venues, selecting and inviting participants, the outline for the day, gathering of information, preparation of materials and transport to and from the event.
• Openings: One of the most important parts of the actual group session is the first impression. The opening sets the emotional climate for the session that is reinforced by the initial introductions and group discussions about the purpose of the session. Openings ‘tune’ the group and the facilitator into the experiences that are to come.
• Structuring the session: The body of a facilitated session includes identifying and discussing issues, sharing information, exploring possibilities, identifying implications and, perhaps, developing an action plan.
• Closings: The facilitated session can be ‘harvested’ in its conclusion by providing opportunities for people to summarise the content and outcomes of the session, reflect, link elements of the session together, celebrate achievements, build confidence in their skills, translate words into actions, evaluate the group session, leave the group and make the transition back into home and work life.

All of this is true in a cofacilitated session too. Cofacilitators also need to manage the event, but with the support (or challenge) of sharing the responsibilities and tasks.

While facilitators may have guidelines and structures for working with a group, they can exist as ideas and mental organisers and may not be explicitly stated.  Cofacilitators need to make their ways of working explicit to each other so that they are able to work ‘on the same page’. 

One of the challenges with getting ‘on the same page’ is that sometimes co-facilitators don’t choose one another. Cofacilitation can be imposed through the establishment of organisational codes of practice, the allocation of particular staff to a task or the need to train someone to take over the responsibilities of someone who is leaving. There are also occasions where the organisation contracts an external consultant to work with internal facilitators.

There are also times when cofacilitation can ‘just happen’, when facilitators are present in the same place and time for the same purpose.

Fortunately, usually cofacilitation is more planned and cofacilitators can choose who and why they cofacilitate.

Once the cofacilitators are identified, they then need to share the roles and responsibilities.

• In situations where the skills, expertise, experience, backgrounds and personalities of the cofacilitators are complementary, facilitators often choose complementary or seamless models of co-facilitation with both facilitators sharing responsibility for all aspects of the facilitation.
• Sometimes cofacilitators choose to have a ‘task’ person and a ‘people’ person enabling one facilitator to concentrate on the group task or the creation of a product and the other to focus on the interpersonal dynamics of the group.
• Sometimes cofacilitators plan the group processes and then decide which facilitator will support which aspects of the process according to their strengths.
• Others chose to take turns and share the time and responsibility in a way that enables one person to rest or observe while the other is ‘on’.
• In situations where one facilitator has greater skills or more experience in facilitating a particular process, the other facilitator might assume a minor role so that they can learn from their more skilled peer.
• There are also times where it is beneficial to have one person essentially ‘silent’, listening to the discussion and flow of the session and recording the decisions and processes of the group, while the other actively leads the session.

All of these ways of working are choices for cofacilitators.

The ability to co-plan a session that may be delivered by one person, to recognise the collaboration of both facilitators, to ‘represent’ a different point of view, to respond effectively to the group in this way and to jointly take responsibility for the outcomes even though only one facilitator is actually visible to the group requires maturity.

The reality is that often the roles and responsibilities that are negotiated prior to the session change. A facilitator might go from being a passive observer or recorder to assuming a more active team role if a particular skill is required. Cofacilitators may intend to work in tandem but find that they move into a seamless interchange of roles and responsibilities. On the other hand, some cofacilitators intend to work seamlessly but find that the match between the skills of the facilitators and the needs of the group results in one person being more active and the other facilitator assuming a more passive role.

Sometimes, cofacilitators plan that one facilitator will not be present during some part or all of the session. With the added expense of having two facilitators, some cofacilitators plan and evaluate together and take turns facilitating the actual session, endeavouring to represent the ideas of the absent facilitator as well as their own. There are also situations in which a facilitator is called away in an emergency or needs to work independently with one member of the group.

One of the most common challenges of cofacilitation is that it takes more time, time that must be built into managing the event. That can be seen as inefficient, because two (or more) people are planning the same amount of work. In fact, my research participants estimated that the time required to manage a cofacilitated event was two to five times the amount of time required to plan alone because each facilitator has different ideas about what could or should be done and how to do it, the extent to which decisions should be made by the group, the pattern of the session and the procedures to be undertaken. Cofacilitators who have different personalities and bring different perspectives into a problem can benefit the group but these differences require discussion and clarity so that roles and responsibilities can be allocated and shared.

Whichever model of cofacilitation is employed (in planning and in practice) cofacilitators need to be able to ‘give up the script’. While they have taken the extra time required to negotiate the contract, organisation, structures of the session and closings, as well as individual roles and responsibilities, they need to manage the event they plan with the group, the event they plan with one another and the event that emerges.

Do you have an event that requires facilitation or cofacilitation? Call me! 0409 034 692