Facilitating a group within your own organization poses particular challenges, especially if you're perceived as a decision-maker or as highly influential.  The question here is 'how do I ensure that my group sees me as a neutral person engaged in managing them through their decision-making discussion?'  Welcome to the biggest dilemma that managers experience when put in the role of facilitator!

When I train internal consultants on facilitation, their first questions around neutrality are typically:  "how can I be neutral when facilitating my own group when I have a vested interest in the outcome(s)?  Won't people see me as being biased just by the fact that I usually work with/lead them, and now I'm playing the facilitator role?"  These are excellent concerns and can be managed in the following way.

If you're required to be in this position - having a vested interest while having to maintain neutrality - there are several things that you can do to make sure that your opinion is somehow covered during the process of conversation without you having to say it.  Ideas include:

1.      Speaking with like-minded participants before the meeting to determine their viewpoints/ideas and noting if they correlate with yours.

2.      If there's little correlation you may want them to present your idea as well - if they're willing to.

3.      Before commenting on content, let people know that you're putting on your SME (subject matter expert) hat to let them know your point of view.

4.      Depending on how strong your vested interest is, you may want to let go of facilitating and have someone else external to your group facilitate. This way you can act as any other participant - free to say what you feel needs to be said.

Some guidelines to consider when asked to facilitate:

However, sometimes you'll be the only one available to facilitate. In this case, there are still some methods you can use to help the group expand its possibilities during decision-making, action planning, etc.:

• The first thing to do is to acknowledge with the group upfront that as an employee or fellow team member, your ability to maintain neutrality will be challenged due to your vested interest.  Preempting criticism around neutrality puts others at ease and builds trust.
• Quite frequently the group is not clear as to what constitutes 'being neutral,' therefore some participant education is required.  I believe that a facilitator is allowed to do the following without breaking neutrality:

1.      You are allowed to ask probing questions that help the group 'peel the onion' and address any ambiguity in their discussion.  Questioning also assists the group in increasing the breadth and depth of their ideas that they would not otherwise get to without permission to do so.

2.      You are allowed to throw out suggestions that may expand the group's possibilities.  This is especially important in situations where you have some expertise on the subject being discussed.  The difficulty with providing suggestions, however, is correlated to the level of influence that you have in the organization.  For example, if a manager is facilitating and makes a suggestion to a group of directs, the suggestion will not be perceived the same way as if a co-worker makes the same suggestion while facilitating.  Of course, the manager's leadership style has a lot to do with employee perception, but the point is, managers versus employees have greater difficulty maintaining neutrality given their status in the company.

When I train managers and/or strongly influential people how to facilitate, I have them always acknowledge upfront to the group their concerns around being perceived as biased.  I then have them actively challenge their group's decisions/ideas to ensure that they weren't made 'to please the manager.'  This, of course, can only occur when the manager truly wants the group to come up with their own decisions or recommendations.

Both one and two above are within the facilitator's rights, as the group always has the right to not respond or agree to what the facilitator questions or suggests.  As well, what gets up on the flipchart must always be what the group believes is important - not the facilitator.

Some gurus of facilitation believe that facilitators have the right to 'take off the facilitator's hat' if they feel the group is totally off track in their decisions or ideas.  This rarely happens as it has the impact of totally compromising the group's perception of the facilitator's neutrality.  In fact, I really don't advocate this.  I find that questioning and providing suggestions are usually enough to help a group develop greater awareness of their options.  If, in fact, a facilitator has to take off his/her hat to tell the group what they have missed out on, then the group really may not have been truly empowered in the first place to decide or recommend on their own.

What may have happened (here I go!) is that the manager already decided what he/she wanted the group to come up with, but wanted to covertly, through facilitation, have the group feel that they actually came up with the idea.  When the idea doesn't emerge, the manager panics and no longer maintains neutrality by taking off the facilitator hat.  This sends a clear message to the group:  'here's my idea and notice my intonation and concern!' If the group is sensitive to status and (let's face it, good performance reviews are important) they'll fold, and so much for using the power of group input and empowerment!

Michael Goldman is President of Facilitation First, a company that specializes in providing professional meeting facilitation and training.  Visit our website at www.facilitationfirst.com for more information or call us at 416-465-9494.  To subscribe to our free newsletter, email us at news@facilitationfirst.com