I have been using Twitter in my practice for about six months now.  My account @facilitationpro is primarily a place where I promote and cultivate the practice of information scanning and knowledge management. To stay current in the fields of performance improvement, nonprofit management and trends in philanthropy, I scan numerous websites and other online resources and as I encounter useful tools and documents, I post them  as “resources of the day.”  I also use the tool to keep abreast of the local nonprofit community (at least those using Twitter).  As virtually everyone knows by now, Twitter (and similar services) are communication platforms that limit messages to 140 characters. Of course, in trying to micro-abbreviate words, there is a hazard that the meaning of the message can be obscured or even lost entirely. However, done correctly, measuring communication to 140 characters forces one to parse down words to simplicity and clarity.   The transference of this concept to facilitation is important.  Indeed, next to creating movement, simplicity and clarity are the co-equal meta-competencies of facilitation.  While I have written before about core competencies of facilitation, I thought it might be useful to discuss the concepts of clarity and simplicity as a facilitation skill.

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In thinking about this topic, I was reminded of a time when I was called in following one of a series of meetings being conducted by a board/staff subcommittee of a mid-sized nonprofit organization.  The team had been meeting intensely for several weeks trying to create a board proposal.  I was asked, as a favor, to come in to a meeting to help assess and troubleshoot the development process of the board proposal.  The words of a frustrated staffer were something like, “The document has gone back-and-forth and round-and-round so many times that I think we are completely lost.”  Given that the team spent little time creating a facilitation process for the proposal development, such an outcome could have been predicted.  During this meeting, I spent a good hour asking simple, open-ended questions and listening a lot.  As I jotted down notes (in categories) it became clear that there was an underlying framework that the team had been developing but failed to name it and bring it to the surface.  As I sketched the framework and labeled the “moving parts” it was easily to see the layers of confusion being peeled away.  While the end of the meeting did not clarify everything, it did set the team in the right direction and when I was looped back into the conversation a while later, the proposal had much more clarity and simplicity.  So what are the principles of clarity and simplicity?

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Think about the System: Simplicity and clarity happen when a team can identify the system operating around the content at hand.  The team, referenced above, were intently focused on the concepts and words of the proposal before them.  By helping the group to step back and identifying the system, I, as the facilitator, was able to help the team rediscover not only the system but also the central core of that system.  This central core was critical because it served as the organizing “gravitational pull” of the proposal, around which all of the other pieces of the proposal orbited. In this way, the core of the system held the proposal in place and became the unifying, simple, and clear theme.

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Cut Twice then Measure Once. A second principle in finding clarity and simplicity is to take the Twitter model of 140 characters, cut it in half and then in half again. Then fit the concept to that micro space.  Going back to my illustration above, I spent most of my time with the team in listening mode.  As I listened I strained to hear the recurring words that became category headers. When words like leverage, impact, and scale became the most relevant “35 characters” of the conversation, the gravitational center became a clearer discussion of social impact.

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Think Visually: Clarity and simplicity can also come by changing the medium.  When three of four pages of dense text create complexity, it is helpful to abandon words and think visually.  Elsewhere I have written in more detail about the use of visuals in facilitation and here it is suffice to say that when used well, tools like concept mapping, metaphors and even visual sorting exercises can all help be powerful simplifiers.  Note the emphasis on “used well” as I have seen more than once, visual tools be used as magnifiers of complexity. Visual thinking should be about simplicity and clarity.

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Think Like a Designer:  While facilitators do not need to be pretend “graphic designers” it is helpful for the facilitator to explore concepts of design and design thinking as an adjunctive tool in the clarity and simplicity process.  Concepts like alignment; proximity; contrast; and white space can all be used to help move a process from complexity to simplicity.  Coming back to the nonprofit presenting their board proposal, the challenge was that the final proposal remained four pages in length and the team needed the consent of the board to move forward.  As a result, the board presentation had to become graphic, emphasizing powerful words, visuals and story to serve as a translation of the document.

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As I premised at the outset, clarity and simplicity are meta-facilitation skills that are not optional to a facilitation process.  A facilitator needs to have in his or her toolbox a range methods to help group get to the core of clarity and simplicity.  Gone are the days when agencies could use complex schematics and service delivery models to explain business operations.  The task of organizations seeking to improve performance and accelerate growth is to reduce the “noise” in order to create clarity and simplicity.  The task of facilitation is to create a process that brings clarity and simplicity to help organizations achieve success.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Elsewhere, I contend that using visuals appropriately is a core competency of a facilitator and in this post want to expand some on the purpose and functions of using visuals as a facilitation tool. Far from being the “facilitator thing to do” the effective use of visuals is critical to the facilitation process. Visual learning is a component of most experiential learning theories detailing that people learn by processing with all senses available to them. As a result, facilitators should not be in the business of “writing things down on easel pads” but should be employing learning theory in their use of visuals. In my understanding of experiential and adult learning theories, I would suggest that visuals have three primary functions in facilitation including:

Organizing, Naming and Representing: The effective use of visuals in facilitation has the purpose of getting the group into a place of shared understanding and the co-creating of ideas. To do this, a facilitator needs to use visuals to organize ideas, name common elements and represent complex issues. At the most basic level, an example might be a facilitator listing the results during brainstorming and then helping a group sort and narrow items. However the task of shared understanding and co-creation often requires access to more sophisticated visual processes.  Brainstorming and narrowing are wholly inadequate to capture complex concepts.  Other tools  such as concept mapping, story-boarding, logic models, event-planning, decision trees or other flow diagrams are necessary to meet complex needs. When a facilitator gets stuck on making and narrowing lists, s/he fails to access the wider dynamic of systems thinking that is required to move from ideas to a shared understanding and representation of those ideas.

Orienting and Navigating: The second use of visuals in facilitation is to provide a sense of orientation and navigation. Think about times that you shop online or complete an online survey or register for a new website. These days we take for granted that whenever we are completing a multi-stage online experience, there is often clear guidance somewhere on the computer screen telling us that we are “at step three of a five step process” or that we are “60% of the way through the survey”. If we get lost or stuck, help is a click away. In group facilitation it should be no different. While a printed agenda might be the most basic visual to orient a group to where they are in a process, good facilitation effectively uses visuals to mark progress through a given task. Visual learning tools that a facilitator might use to keep groups on track might include a printed organizer, visual metaphors or icons approach to mark transition points, or purposeful color coding. Orienting and navigating become even more critical when the facilitated process extends over time and multiple sessions. When a workgroup is together for 12 meetings over a period of six months, visual orienting and navigating are important facilitator functions.

Summarizing and Narrating: As I suggested in the opening paragraph, there is nothing more useless than a transcription of flipchart notes. Yet, often such transcription is appended to meeting minutes. Visual learning requires the facilitator to synthesize large amounts of information and represent it as summary and story narrative. Summarizing and narrating, discards early draft ideas (like initial brainstorm lists) and focuses instead on the shared understandings and the things that are permanent. Again, if the facilitator has been successful in visually creating shared understanding and keeping the group organized, the summary and narration might include a simple task grid to identify actions, assignments and accountabilities or as complex as creating a final storyboard.

While, anyone holding a box of markers and easel paper might be able to run an effective meeting, the use of visuals in facilitation is really about process. In an expanded view of the facilitation process, visual learning is very different than writing things down. Visual learning is based on learning theories such as Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theories mode or other experiential learning theories. In addition, the tools used to support visual learning in facilitation are also connected to theory. So, for example, Google search concept mapping or logic models and you will see that such tools are not simply drawing circles and arrows. The point is that the use of visuals in facilitation needs to be thoughtful, intentional and purposeful for groups and facilitators to be truly effective.