Motivators

Okay, so we have had a look at some of the good skills of facilitation. You thought about some of the things that will get in the way of a facilitated session. That has all been about you. Let us now have a look at the people who are coming to engage with you and really think about why they might want to share their stories with you. There will be different motivators for people coming into a facilitated group.

One of those motivators might be, they have never actually had the opportunity to share with anybody. So, they really may have quite a lot of information, ideas, stuff that they want to get off their chest. You may be in a position where you are wanting to sell your facilitated sessions, so thinking about what is in it for those individuals? What are they going to get out of sharing their information with you? So now is the opportunity for you to think about the kind of situation where you are going to be facilitating, and start writing yourself a list of what might motivate people to come into a facilitation with me. What is in it for them? If they give and for some people, it will be their heart and their soul that they are sharing with you, so you really need to think about it. What is in it for them? So, again, pause the video, grab yourself a piece of paper, another piece of paper. You have got lots of pieces of paper now, but grab yourself another piece of paper and on that piece of paper start to make a list of why people would want to engage with you, what is in it for them?

In summary, then, we have just given you an introduction to what is facilitation. And one of the core learning points that I would you to take away from this section is it is not about you. It is about those people who you are engaging with. It is about giving people space, the opportunity, the time to share their stories, their information, their ideas with you. So, please, please, please remember, it is not about you. Just because you are the nominated facilitator, you are there to facilitate, to make things happen for those individuals.

At the end of the day, if they cannot remember you, if they cannot remember how you facilitated the session, the activities they did, the exercises you got them involved in, that is actually going to be a good thing because what they will remember is that you gave them the space, the time and the opportunity to say what they needed to say, and they will realise that it was all about them and it was not about you.