A recent article I was reading referred to the ‘additional roles of a facilitator’ – definitely Advanced Level stuff, so here we go with the O-Level version.

I like to think of working in a team as a bit like a hamburger, there are three aspects of teamwork that need attention:

1. The Task – the ‘what’ of the work. What is the deliverable/outcome? The hard end-point of the work.
2. The Process – the ‘how’. How are you going to get the job done?
3. The People – the ‘who’. Who needs to be involved? How do I keep them involved?

The task leader – the person who is responsible for delivery of the task – needs to keep as much of their attention as possible on getting the job done, so having to devise and keep track of the Process and the People issues is a distraction from ‘doing the job’. Nonetheless they are both essential and this is where the role of Facilitator comes in.

A good facilitator can help the Task leader by working with them to devise a suitable process and then keep the team on track; they can help by watching the people and helping everyone to contribute. The facilitator can concentrate exclusively on these ‘non-task’ aspects of team performance and help deliver outstanding performance. Now one interesting ‘side-effect’ of this division of labour is that the facilitator does not need to know anything about the content of the task, indeed there is a risk that a facilitator who does havecontent knowledge can get sucked into the task and neglect thier primary duties on the Process and People aspects of performance.

So next time you have a challenging task that needs a process to be invented and a new team – that’s the ideal situation to employ a process facilitator, they will add huge value and you will soon learn just how effective facilitation can add to your team performance.