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Assessing the Cost of a Facilitator

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This post is one in an occasional series to help guide those looking to hire a facilitator.  Other posts in this series can be found here.  If your questions about facilitation are not answered, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will be glad to help!

The search term that causes many people to end up on my website is some variation of “what does a facilitator cost.” So accordingly, one of the most accessed posts on my blog is a short discussion on the cost of hiring a facilitator.  In that post, I argue that looking at the simple dollar cost of a facilitator is not the starting point for thinking about facilitation costs.  The cost of not hiring a facilitator, the value of the return on your investment, and the value of the long term consulting relationship are better starting places.  In this post I want to delve a little deeper into pondering the mechanics of figuring out how much it costs to contract with a facilitator simply because there is interest in the topic.  So once you estimated what you need in a facilitator and are clear what the return on investment might be, how do you assess the cost of hiring a facilitator?  I would suggest five principles.

Assessing Expertise: The first principle is that there is value in academic preparation and professional experience. I would like to suggest that the value of any consultant is found in what expertise s/he brings to your organization and what that expertise is worth to your agency.  For example, if you are a small office or nonprofit agency and your computer network crashes, you are likely willing to call a computer network consultant and write him or her a check as fast as the network is restored.  Likewise, if you hire an accounting consultant to audit your books, you generally know what expertise you are paying for.  However, in the case of a facilitation consultant, one does not need any credential to use that label.  You can’t fake the repair of a computer network very well and you can’t fake an audit (okay one could fake an audit but it might end that person up in jail) but you can fake being a facilitator.  And many do.  So I would suggest two measures of evaluating a facilitator.

On one level there needs to be some indication of academic preparation.  What academic or theoretical training does the facilitator bring to the table? So, for example, I have two Masters degrees related to program planning, organization theory and learning theory.  In addition, I have taken a couple of variations of a facilitation leadership course and also have mediation and facilitation training from a community mediation center.  I also worked for 3 years on a team that had a nationally known Organizational Development consultant as a facilitation trainer and coach as we hosted large regional and national conferences.

On a second level but equally important is that the consultant should have a depth of knowledge and experience across an array of business sectors.  There needs to be a professional depth from which the facilitator can draw from.  You can’t fake experience.  If a facilitator has one 4 year marketing job out of college they might be valued differently than someone with 17 years of experience across multiple sectors.

Assessing Billing Rate Transparency:  A second principle relates to transparency of billing rates.  If you dig around online it won’t take you long to find a facilitator database.  Facilitators can add a listing in this database and every time the database matches a facilitator with a client they take a “finder fee.”  If you search the database for Oregon you will find consultants with a daily billing rate of $1,500 – $5,000.  Remember that those numbers are likely padded to cover the “finder fee” but he point I want to make is the range of billing rates is staggering.  It gets more complicated when you hire a consulting group, where the billing rate for the senior partner may be $225/hour or more and a junior partner may bill at $90/hour.  Having said all that, take a deep breath.  In my very local and practical world, based on numerous facilitators I know and/or have worked with, I can say that a qualified but less experienced facilitator bills in the $80-$110/hour range and a more experienced facilitator bills in the $140-$200 range.  The one caveat is that for specialized content expertise you might pay more.

In looking at billing rates, the more important variable is transparency in the billing rates.  I once evaluated facilitator proposals for a company and could clearly see that some consultants were, in essence, bidding the job based on the experience of the senior facilitator and only in the details did I ferret out that the majority of work was to be done by much junior facilitators. How much the facilitator is charging and for what experience level is being delivered in return can become a game of smoke and mirrors when multiple people bill at different rates on a project.

To me, the equalizer is finding comparable firms in terms of experience and expertise relative to the complexity of the project.  Simple facilitation assignments could be had for $90/hour but when the stakes are higher and the complexity increases you might be paying at the $140/hour rate or higher. Once you are clear about what you want and find similar priced facilitators, figuring our comparable rates becomes somewhat easier.

Assessing Process and Product:  The third principle is to carefully consider if you are seeking to pay for a process or product.  A facilitator responsible for delivering a strategic plan at the end of the process is different than a facilitator delivering a strategic planning process.  I once was part of a process where the facilitator spent the first 3 hours of a one day retreat doing art therapy as a team-building exercise and at the end of the day we failed to create the forward thinking plan that was the core task of the day.  Who pays for that lost time and energy?  It depends.  Was the facilitator hired to deliver a product or hired to simply run a good meeting?  Often facilitation contracts are not clear enough about the deliverables and the consequences for failing to deliver. So in negotiating with facilitators concreteness of expectations is an important and critical discussion and often paying for the deliverable is a better strategy than paying a facilitator by the hour.

Assessing Depth of Tools: Fourth on the list of principles is assessing the degree to which the facilitator is willing to customize and tailor the process.  I have seen more than one facilitator in my experience, take  a single hammer out of his or her toolbox and apply that hammer equally to every facilitation assignment.  If the process proposed sounds like it comes straight from a facilitation 101 textbook then it probably is.  there will be a case when you can get by with a simple facilitation but the range of tools a facilitator brings to the table is often the distinguishing characteristic between good meetings and performance improvement.

Assessing References: The fifth principle is about reference checking.  I have done reference checking on facilitators before and my experience is few, very few, references will give critical analysis.  The reference check invariably is positive.  Why else would they be a reference?  Get specific. Tell me about a time when the facilitator managed conflict.  What did s/he do and what was the outcome?  What did s/he do when the process of off track?  Were all deliverable met on time or was there slippage?  Describe that slippage.  Even then, references often don’t yield much useful information.  So take references with a grain of salt.

Assessing the Relationship:  The final principle comes back to relationships. Creating a facilitation contract needs to have a relational aspect of trust.  You have to feel comfortable with the person you are bringing into the culture and fabric of your organization.  Relationship and trust is the flip side of clear communication and expectations.  However, I would caution against allowing the relational dimension overshadow the due diligence associated with the previous principles. Relationships matter but competency, experience, transparency, and deliverables matter as much if not more.

Again, there is no easy answer to the question related to how much does facilitation cost.  Cost is directly related to the outcomes being sought and the degree to which solutions are customized and tailored to your needs.  Cost also related to competency and experience supported by a process of due diligence.  Thinking deeply, being clear about expectations, engaging in dialogue and getting it in writing will all help you have confidence in the investments in facilitation and process.


Technology-Enhanced Facilitation

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Back in the mid 1990’s when email listservs were the cutting edge technology and Netscape dominated the web browser market, I was convinced that these new tools would change how we learn both as individuals and as social networks. So I went back to school to pursue a Master’s degree in Educational Technology to learn how, as an educator and system’s change agent, I could leverage technology in my professional life. Now, over a decade later with the staggering advancements in technology, I feel like my masters program was akin to studying the use of slide projectors and rotary dial phones. However, although technology has changed, the basic learning theories that underpin the use of technology have not. What I learned at San Diego State University has not changed. Technology can magnify learning opportunities but the act of learning depends upon content and methodology. Despite all the advances in technology, learning still depends on content, facilitation and process. So considering content and methodology, how can technology can be used to enhance facilitation? I would like to suggest four important technology frameworks that I believe enhance the practice of facilitation.
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Use of Technology in Assessment - Back in the day when email discussion group were still fairly new, I was managing a national project and needed to gather some formative research for the design of a website that we were planning on building. At the time, I was on an email discussion group of likely users of the website so colleague and I decided to conduct a series of email focus groups by email. The qualitative results were so productive, that we detailed the focus-group methodology in an article that appeared in the journal Performance Improvement. Since that time, I have used technology to conduct other focus groups with similar positive results. With the advent stable “webinar” technologies, the opportunity for collecting qualitative information has expanded even more. In addition, Internet technology can also enhance the collection of more quantitative data as part of the assessment process through the use of any one of the many online survey tools readily available for nominal costs. Collectively, these tools contribute to the front-end process and assessments often associated with facilitation. The advantages that technology brings to the assessment phase are that technology: a) can contribute to effective preplanning, b) can increases time efficiency by allowing for asynchronous work to occur, and c) can also be used as a way to increase social distance for the processing of issues that might be controversial or confrontational.
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Use of Shared Technology Workspace – A second way that technology can be used to enhance the facilitation process is by using a shared technology workspace. Online collaboration tools are truly coming of age. A Google search for “hosted collaboration software” or “hosted wiki software” will give a startling array of companies offering low or no-cost online collaborative environments. For any facilitation process that extends over time or has a written end product, utilizing a collaborative workspace is an essential facilitation tool. I once was involved in an advisory workgroup that dragged on and on over the course of a year. Often email attachments were unable to be opened, versions of documents were lost and team members missed important communications. I am convinced that if the paid facilitators understood and used technology as a productivity tool that the arduous and ultimately ineffective process would have been shortened by months and would have had more positive outcomes. But the key is not to simply use a collaborative workspace but to understand the careful planning and active management associated with the use of the collaborative environment. The advantages that technology brings to an extended facilitated process are that technology: a) can better coordinate tasks, activities and communication between meetings, b) can help ensure document version control and real time editing, and c) create knowledge libraries to preserve institutional knowledge.
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Use of Technology in Meetings – While I am not a huge fan to technology-based facilitated meetings, technology can enhance the meeting facilitation process. For example, many teams take real time minutes on laptop that can be reviewed, edited and published at the end of a meeting. Extending this concept, Open Space Technology Conferences, depend on technology to create complex deliverables (like a strategic plan or policy paper) in real time. Smart boards and videoconferencing equipment are other applications of technology to enhance the facilitation process. Even at the lowest end of the technology spectrum, I am no in the habit of using a digital camera to take pictures of dry erase board drawing and notes, before erasing them, and in some cases even taking pictures of chart paper notes as well. Digitizing paper allows for easy storage and retrieval. The advantages that technology brings to meetings are twofold in that technology: a) can enhance the communication process during meetings, and b) can shorten the distance between meeting content and subsequent summaries and deliverables.
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Use of Technology in the Feedback Loop – The final use of technology as an enhancement to the facilitation process is to use technology to close the feedback loop and evaluate the process. Elsewhere I have written more extensively on this topic, but akin to assessment, technology-based surveys and post assessments can be effective in evaluating facilitated processes.
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As a facilitator, I almost always use technology to enhance the facilitation process. Technology is a critical and important tool to help groups and teams achieve greater performance. While having studied the use of technology to improve performance may help me use technology effectively. I don’t believe it is an unfair advantage. I am convinced that the accessibility of online technology tools places within the reach of any team tools that can enhance the delivery of content and methodology.
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Cost of Hiring a Facilitator

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This post is one in an occasional series to help guide those looking to hire a facilitator.  Other posts in this series can be found here.  If your questions about facilitation are not answered, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will be glad to help!

On more than one occasion I have been asked, “So how much does it cost to hire a facilitator?” Unfortunately this question often comes at the beginning of a conversation with a perspective client and is the start of an awkward dance where neither partner names the dance being offered.  The potential client is often carrying a number in his or her head and simply wants to negotiate that price or, better yet, a 10% discount on the price. Unfortunately, facilitation is not a product that you can buy off the shelf like a computer or desk. Facilitation is about process more than product and as the facilitator, if I do not understand the scope of the task or the desired performance outcome it is hard for me to answer a preemptive question of cost.  As a result, the client dances with a product and the facilitator dances with the process much like one person  dancing the tango and the other dancing the waltz.   So I thought I would outline some organizing questions for thinking about the cost of facilitation.

What is the cost of not hiring a facilitator? The challenge with answering this question is that it requires the client to ask hard questions about the outcome and the value of that outcome. For example, let’s say you manage a team of 10 people and your team meets two hours once a month for a team meeting and that each meeting has 30 minutes of preparation and debrief time for each team member. You have observed that your team uses only half of the time effectively. So the productivity of the meetings is 50%. So you pull out your calculator and do the math. 3 hours/month – times 10 staff – at an average salary and benefit cost of $30/hour equals $900/month. Since the meetings are only 50% productive you realize you lose $450/month in productivity or $5,400/year. So the cost of not hiring a facilitator has a cost of $5,400/year? That number becomes the value of your need.  So the client needs to ask him/herself, “what return do I expect on my investment in meeting efficiency, or strategic planning, or job classification redesign.”

What it the value-add rather than the hourly rate? If you have a value-based need, it becomes less important to ask a facilitator about his/her hourly rate and more important to ask what can the facilitator do to close your value gap. Carrying our meeting improvement example, further, a facilitation consultant might propose to use training and coaching to increase your meeting efficiency by 30%. I will let you do the math, but if you did the $5,400/year productivity loss would decrease to a loss of only $2,160/year that translates to a $3,000 plus productivity gain. Even if you lost a third of that gain each year for the next two years, the three year productivity gain would still be near $6,000. As a potential client, you could then ask yourself how much you are willing to invest to gain $3-6,000 of productivity over the next three years. That is a different conversation than”what does facilitation cost?”

What is the Alliance and Relationship being built? Elsewhere I have written that a critical variable in hiring a consultant is to look for someone who not only understands but is willing to enter into your organization and become part of it. It is a myth that a facilitation and process consultant is an external neutral observer. As you look to hire a facilitation consultant it is important to have the lens that you are extending your agency capacity. It is my belief that a consulting relationship needs to be a learning relationship with two goals of 1)  meeting present need and 2) building agency capacity. The discussion of the cost of facilitation needs to explore immediate organizational needs and the organizational change required to alleviate the need for consulting services in the future. Contracts should be negotiated around, outcomes, return-on-investment and performance improvement.

It is easy for a consultant to quote an hourly rate of between $80 and $200 for facilitation services. Unfortunately, such an approach is shortsighted and opens both the facilitator and the client the use of smoke and mirrors in negotiating a price. I have found that using these three principles offers a more thoughtful values-based approach to discussing the cost of hiring a facilitator. As always, I appreciate your feedback.

Expectations & Goals in a Consulting Relationship

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This post is one in an occasional series to help guide those looking to hire a facilitator.  Other posts in this series can be found here.  If your questions about facilitation are not answered, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will be glad to help!

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The basis for most consulting relationships is often viewed in the context of a scope of work and written contract. The scope of work typically defines in some detail the activities, deliverables and associated timelines. The contract codifies and legalizes the “understanding.” However, I am of the opinion that successful consulting relationships are built upon a shared understanding of goals and expectations that goes beyond negotiating a scope of work and contract. For consulting relationships to work there needs to be effort put into entering into a collaborative mindset. For me consulting relationships need to have a kickoff meeting where everyone gets on the same page about goals and expectations. While I believe that the nature of the consulting project may influence the list of goals and expectations that there are some standard overarching principles that need to be discussed So here is my short list of goals and expectations.
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In this consulting relationship we share these goals:
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  1. We all want to produce a quality product
  2. We all want to meet the Schedule
  3. We all want to stay on Budget
  4. We all want to make a Profit
  5. We all want to gain mutual trust and confidence
  6. We all want to create the groundwork for new projects

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In this consulting relationship we share these expectations:
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  1. We engage in ongoing and up-front problem solving dialogues
  2. We clearly delineate roles and duties
  3. We create realistic time lines and budgets
  4. We sign-off and cross-check on key decisions/deliverables
  5. We have a shared understanding of each other’s business/operation
  6. We routinely communicate to build a trusting relationship
  7. We become a team rather than internal/external partners.

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Kick off meetings are a great way to clarify expectations and make sure that assumptions are discussed at the front end of a consulting relationship.  As the project moves forward the agreements reached in the kick off meeting can be periodically revisited.  Being explicit about what is typically implicit often defines the difference between a consulting relationship and a successful consulting relationship.

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Principles for Hiring a Consultant

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This post is one in an occasional series to help guide those looking to hire a facilitator.  Other posts in this series can be found here.  If your questions about facilitation are not answered, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will be glad to help!

My seventeen plus years working in in management positions has given me exposure to a wide range of consultants. Consultants who provide niche content expertise have proven absolutely critical to the success of the various challenges I have faced. For example, HR consultants helped me navigate a challenging performance issue that had legal overtones and a highly skilled technology team solved a potentially traumatic database conversion that was a high stakes conversion for the organization.

However, my experiences working with facilitation consultants have been very mixed. I have experienced facilitation consultants who have empowered me and my team, coached and mentored me, and more than anything else, helped me achieve improvements in performance. I have also experienced consultants who, as the old joke goes, “borrows my watch and then tells me what time it is. Then walks off with my watch and two days later sends me a bill for the cost of the watch.” In these worse-case scenarios the consultants have, in one case, cost me an inordinate amount to time and energy to compensate for their skill deficits and, in another case, the consultant grossly underestimated the complexity of a project costing my team time, money and missed opportunities. My experiences led me to develop five principles of consulting.

  1. If you have the skills and staff capacity to do the work yourself then save yourself the money and do it yourself.
  2. Along the same lines, if you have the staff capacity but not the skills, focus on building your staff capacity rather than hiring a consultant for his or her skills.
  3. When engaging a consultant be very clear about how your performance will be improved by engaging a consultant and make sure that you tie consultant compensation to performance.
  4. Remember the axiom of fast, cheap, done correctly –choose any two. If you want the job to be done correctly, it will either take time or require additional resources to compress the timeline.
  5. If a consultant won’t enter into the vision, thinking, culture and aspirations of your organization, run the other way.


 In short, I personally believe that most agencies and teams should develop and strengthen their internal ability to design and facilitate meaningful work processes that support performance improvement. Hiring an external consultant should be reserved for those times when a team does not have the capacity or expertise to manage the processes themselves. In those cases, the consultant needs to function as a coach and mentor so that at the end of the consulting relationship, the team is closer to autonomy and self-reliance in the future. To that end, consulting agreements must clearly specify primary deliverables that include delivering the specific “products and timelines” but also should include secondary outcomes related to developing the capacity of the team. This latter competency of building capacity is an area where many consultants fall short in delivering. Building capacity works against a consultant’s “repeat business” mentality and also requires a higher degree of functioning and commitment than many consultants are willing (or able) to provide. Finally, if you do hire a consultant, it is absolutely critical that s/he not only understands but is willing to enter into your organization and become part of it. It is a myth that a facilitation and process consultant is an external neutral observer. The least effective consultants that I have seen are willfully clueless about an agency’s vision, thinking, culture and aspirations.


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