Gathering for meetings and then arriving at meaningful and effective decisions is a very rare phenomenon in today’s hurly-burly corporate world. Organizations arrange such meetings with a purpose to resolve certain issues by exchange of views & information among their employees. But, most of the meetings usually end up with conflicts, ego clashes and opinion-differences for the reason they drift away from the focal points. Almost all the top management people of the corporate world are ranked by people’s getting together for meetings. It is predominantly found in every organization that meetings conclude with contradictions for want of clarity on the objectives and direction. Such wandering folks, crisscross one another, spend fruitless time over baseless discussions and depart with no outcome. We can say – the meetings for solutions end up with more severe problems.
To ensure smooth operation and to avoid waste of time, such meetings must be monitored systematically by top management people. In order for that, organizations should appoint a moderator/facilitator who exerts his authority without the autocratic attitude.
A facilitator is someone who helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without exerting his authority as a dictator. He has to exert his power of volubility in such a way that the participants have to accept his decisions but at the same time, they also consider him as their mentor. The facilitator tries to assist the group in achieving a consensus on any disagreements that preexist or emerge in the meeting so that it has a strong basis for future action. The facilitator’s role is like a midwife who assists in the process of birth but is not the producer of the end result. It is a tenet of facilitation that the facilitator does not lead the group towards the answer that he/she thinks is best even if he possessed an opinion on the subject matter. The facilitator’s role is to make it easier for the group to arrive at its own answer, decision, or deliverable.
Further, the most usual scenario seen is the resolutions passed in such meetings are immediately forgotten by the participants. They do not bother acting upon the decisions taken. In fact, a lack of their commitment is felt here. But, it is not only the participants who are responsible for their such attitude. Their commitment to the decision depends lot much on how the matter is presented before them. Here comes the role of the facilitator who transmits the importance of the matter effectively to the participants to make them render their complete attention, adhere to the decisions and pursue the matter decided thereupon devotedly. A facilitator is a person who helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to achieve them without taking a specific position in the discussion. He also helps the group to achieve consensus on any disagreements that preexist or emerge during the meeting so as to establish a strong basis for the meeting.
A facilitator should be a multitalented person who can control the folk with diligence. He is desired to encourage the participants for a fruitful discussion by maintaining the discipline and the dignity during the meeting. He should be able to identify the off-track movement of the folk and immediately divert their attention to the focal point and thus escape the possibilities of the proposed waste of time. In nutshell, all his efforts should be directed towards fetching out the desired results from the views and information exchanged by the participants through a congenial atmosphere.
Role/characteristics of a facilitator:-
1) To research various points related to the meeting and its purpose
2) Prepare a draft agenda and present before the expected attendants.
3) Make out the areas of disagreements and the proposed consensus over it.
4) To present the objectives of the meeting before the attendants, and ensure that the whole focus is laid on the agenda and the meeting is not drifting away from the central subject.
5) To wipe out possibilities of adverse situations like the generation of complications, leg pulling activities, oblique comments, etc. during the meeting. To make the atmosphere most conducive for a cohesive decision.
6) To strictly follow the time schedule and to ensure that participants express to-the-point ideas instead of making vague elaborations, and thus, avoid waste of time.
7) To remain calm and quiet without exerting his own opinions, and ensure that each of the participants expresses his views on the subject.
8) To be a good listener and be able to control the situation when it goes out of control at the time of members’ agitation and aggressiveness
9) The facilitator has to ensure the free flow of information during the meeting and encourage the participants in expressing their views without wrangling.
All put together, a facilitator must be outspoken, neutral and capable enough to exert his authority for a fruitful collective decision. In today’s scenario, there is a dearth of good facilitators, and we must encourage an environment to create effective facilitators more in numbers.
