How to become a (professional) facilitator

How did you get interested in facilitation? For me, it was seeing a facilitator in action. It was 2008 and I had joined a weekend course on citizen activism for environmental causes. I was drawn by the topic, but then I fell in love with the way things were run and presented.

I was instantly hooked by the trainer’s use of sticky notes, whiteboard paper, and skillful questions to get us participants active and involved in learning. She had set up what is commonly known as a “Parking Lot” board, a place where ideas, topics and questions could be “parked” for further discussion. I wrote a single question on that board: “How do I get a job like yours?” 

Perhaps something similar has happened to you. You may have seen someone facilitating and thought: “That looks like something I’d like to do”. Or maybe a colleague informed you that the way you were leading a meeting or team project was “like something professional facilitators would do”. You might have read somewhere that facilitation is a growing profession, and facilitation skillsets are increasingly required in workplaces, especially when work is remote-first. So, how does one become a facilitator? 

In the next paragraphs, we’ll cover some of the most frequently asked questions about how to become a facilitator, including how and why to join facilitation training courses, what to expect from a career as a professional facilitator, and tips on how to get started. 

What backgrounds do facilitators have?

What do you need to study to become a facilitator? There is no single valid answer to this question. Very rarely, if ever, do people decide to go into facilitation early in life. I’ve met exactly one teenager who told me he wants to be a facilitator when he grows up, but then again, that is what his dad does! 

Among facilitators I know and admire there are all sorts of backgrounds: a geologist, an urban designer, an environmental engineer, a programmer, an advertising agency head, a teacher, and more. As for myself, I’m a communications major with a past in theatre and event management. Is there anything at all these people have in common? 

In terms of background, I am going to say no. Most facilitators (81.5%, according to the 2024 edition of the State of Facilitation report) have a higher education degree, but even that is not always the case. One of the best facilitators I know started touring with an improvisational theatre company at 16 and never even finished high school. 

You can come to facilitation from any background at all. Most facilitators stumble into what, in this podcast episode, Jenny Theolin and her guest Marcus Crow appropriately call The Accidental Profession. 

If you asked the world’s careers councilors in schools […] I bet none of them ever go home and say: I had a kid come to me today, 16, 17 years old, asking me about being a facilitator. I don’t think that has ever happened, anywhere in the world. My thesis is that this is an accidental profession. Everyone in it had some sort of professional accident that dropped them into in somehow.

Marcus Crow, founder of facilitation and training business 10,000 hours.

Experience and studies in other sectors can help you may help you best serve professionals in that particular field. Think, for example, of a facilitator who trained as an architect; it will be easier for her to work with urbanists and policymakers to shape a new neighborhood design, thanks to shared specialized knowledge and jargon. 

The most common pathway to facilitation is to start a different career and then, at some point, get frustrated with the way meetings are run and projects are organized, and set off on a quest to find something better. Budding facilitators start by asking questions about organizational change, or wondering how learning happens, and sooner or later arrive at sticky notes, whiteboards, and markers (or their online equivalents).

That said, if you are picking a field of study and interested in facilitation, degrees related to sociology, psychology and education will certainly come in handy. 

How do I know if I can be a facilitator? 

How can you tell if you’ve got what it takes to become a good facilitator? That’s a great question, and not an easy one. 

First of all, let’s tackle a common misconception. You do not need to be an extrovert to become a facilitator! You need to be comfortable talking in front of a room (or a screen full of people Zooming in), but you also need excellent listening skills, and the ability to be a “guide on the side” and disappear into the background when the conditions are right. 

Different people have different facilitation styles: quiet and grounded, joking and fun, tending to the group like a gardener or challenging them like a sports coach. Whatever your style, you will find clients and projects for whom it works. 

Great facilitators can appear almost invisible, but are also there to show up when needed: this is a mix of introverted and extroverted traits that excludes nobody. Co-facilitating with someone with a different personality and style is the best way to combine strengths.  

So far we’ve established there is no common background, nor any common style, to facilitators. What do facilitators have in common and how can you tell if you might want to join the club? 

Here are some indicators:

• You are a good communicator. An effective facilitator knows how to give clear instructions and rationales for a certain way of doing things, without hogging the microphone for too long. Are you generally good at communicating clearly? Do you have a natural ability to put yourself in the shoes of a beginner and explain, in simple terms, what is going on? This, like all the skills below, can be honed and cultivated, but it sure will help if you have a good starting point.
• You find yourself saying “it depends” quite a lot. This is practically a running joke in the world of workshops. It’s quite rare for a facilitator to have a clear-cut, this-not-that, answer. It all depends. If you have a natural tendency to take different points of view and see the world in scales of gray, this will help you facilitate workshops. 
• You are attracted to non-directive styles of leadership, such as “servant leadership”. Without going into a treatise on leadership styles (we have a good article about it here), let’s just say that people who are comfortable with consulting others, taking the time to allow everyone to express their opinion before taking a decision, are good facilitator material.
• You find it easy to understand different positions. Facilitators cultivate curiosity and empathy. This doesn’t mean you must agree with any position, including those far from your own values. It means you are always interested in understanding those diverging ideas, and learning more about where differences in opinion and worldview are coming from. If you like anthropology, you might like facilitation (here is another podcast recommendation: Beth Cougler Blom discussing the connections between anthropology and facilitation with Dr. Monty Badami)
• You tend to observe yourself. Exercising self-awareness is an essential meta-skill for effective facilitation. Complex spaces for dialogue will inevitably challenge you. Expert, skilled facilitators may appear imperturbable, an island of calm in a storm, but that is rarely the truth of what is going on. A mora accurate description is that they have learnt to refocus on there present moment despite being temporarily knocked off-kilter by what we label “disruptive” behaviors, or by a fleeting emotion.
• You hate waste. If time and energy wasted in futile discussions or confusing meetings drive you up the walls, this is also a great indicator that you have the motivation to drive change through facilitation.
• You enjoy working with other people. This does not mean that you are a social butterfly or the life of the party, but certainly as a facilitator you will be working with people, their particular quirks and qualities, most of the time. I often say one of my favorite things about being a facilitator is that I love being constantly surprised by the unexpected things other people do.

If we can think like anthropologists, we will have access to the most valuable resource in understanding complex experiences and diverse groups, and that resource is our humanity.

Beth Cougler Blom, host of Facilitating on Purpose

There are a couple more things I’ve personally noticed among my colleagues that may be distinctive traits of people who are drawn to facilitation, although these are personal observations, so take them with a grain of salt:

• Neither at the center of the party nor outside. My absolute favorite place to be at a social gathering is somewhere at the periphery, perhaps on a terrace overlooking the scene. I love to listen to the sounds of people having a good time, observing the dancing, the dynamics, the social groups forming and dissolving, the body language. I was surprised when I learned that at some facilitation trainings this is actually codified as the facilitator’s position: “on the balcony”. Facilitators are both inside and outside groups at the same time, so if you find yourself resonating with that position, this may be the job for you!
• Mixed backgrounds anyone? I come from a family with mixed backgrounds and so do plenty of my colleagues. My personal theory: it may be easier to get into facilitation for those with mixed family backgrounds, and for bilingual/multilingual speakers. My assumption is it is easier to hold opposing positions and views as valid, which facilitators need to know how to do in order to maintain equidistance, aka “neutrality”, if you’ve been doing it since childhood. Naturally, this is not a hard rule, there are plenty of facilitators to whom it does not apply. Having diverse interests might help gain a similar perspective (like a facilitator I’ve worked with who has degrees in both psychology and mathematics). 

What are the benefits of becoming a facilitator?

Facilitation is a growing field and, at the same time, not a fully mature or established profession yet. This has its advantages and its drawbacks. If you like security and stability, being a freelance facilitator in an ever-shifting working landscape may not really be for you. Same can be arguably said if you have the highly technical and/or scientific mindset that is best suited for work in the STEMs where there might, in fact, very well be “a right and a wrong answer”. 

While the ground under your feet may not always be stable, here are some of the benefits of becoming a professional facilitator:

• Creative work that’s never boring
• The opportunity to support many different people and teams
• It’s a meaningful career where you’ll often feel you’re making a difference
• Continuous learning (of course this is also a con: the learning never ends, nor do the moments of failure!) 
• A supportive and generous community of peers
• Autonomy and independence (if you go the freelancer route) 

I second the point made in this blog post about how learning facilitation amounts to future-proofing your work: the core skills of facilitation are not something AI is likely to replace anytime soon. (That said, AI can certainly assist your facilitation career, and to learn more about that, look no further than the AI Tinkerers’ Club, hosted by Alex Eisenchteter.) 

Cognitive, Interpersonal and Self-leadership sections [in the McKinzey study on the future world of work] read like a checklist of the exact skills facilitators learn in training.

Simon Tratnik, Product Strategist and Founder of Human1st

How to learn facilitation

Now that we’ve established that facilitation is picked up rather than studied, and that professional facilitators come from all walks of life, it’s natural to ask: but how does one go about learning facilitation?

Here are some of the many ways you can learn more about how to guide a group.

Picking facilitation up on the go

Almost 70% of respondents to SessionLab’s 2024 State of Facilitation survey stated that they learned facilitation mostly “by doing”. 

This can mean a lot of different things. It may imply watching someone else doing it, or being hurled into hosting your own workshop by random chance, with little more than a session plan to support you. These is no single pathway here. 

To pick up facilitation on the go, start by making small interventions to improve how meetings are held in your workplace or volunteer association. Ask around: what is working well in how we hold our meetings? What would you like to improve? Let everyone know you’d like to propose something new, frame your experiments as such, and ask for feedback at the end. Some of your best lessons will come from failures! 

Reflecting on practices and behaviors

You can learn a lot of facilitation skills by training yourself to observe and notice patterns of behavior, in yourself and others. Keep notes about what happens in meetings and workshops. What works well? What doesn’t? Ask yourself why people behave the way they do, take note of body language and tone of voice. You might start to notice patterns repeat themselves: these are the basic blocks of group dynamics.

One of my favorite bits of facilitation wisdom is to consider any “trouble” or “disturbance” as if it were a message, telling you something important about the group and its needs. Did that small disagreement blow up because people were tired and frustrated that a meeting scheduled to last 30 minutes had gone on for over an hour? 

You’ll be surprised how much you can learn about how to facilitate group discussions by just observing behaviors (including yours) and sitting down with your notes to reflect afterward. 

Getting experience as a volunteer

As a beginner, it may not feel safe to start experimenting with facilitation methods in the workplace. On the other hand, volunteer groups, local associations, and neighborhood committees may be ideal places to practice facilitation in a low-stakes setting. 

Look for opportunities to join a local group and ask if you could help out organizing meetings. Volunteering is a wonderful way to start learning facilitation skills! Many facilitators started in youth groups, as scouts, or in theatre companies (there is definitely some overlap between theatre skills, particularly improv, and facilitation).

Another way of looking at the overlap of volunteering and facilitation concerns volunteering within facilitation communities. The IAF (International Association of Facilitators) local chapters are volunteer-led and always looking for some help organizing online workshops or offline festivals. This is a great opportunity to pick up skills while giving back to the community and networking at the same time! 

Free resources to help you learn facilitation skills

Facilitators as a whole tend to be a helpful and generous bunch. This includes often putting out free resources and guides to help newbies, and freely sharing tips and tricks about a certain tool or methodology. 

In this article we’ve collected many such resources, including 10 of our favorite free toolkits you can download and read at your leisure. To start your reading list, I suggest going through the list of core competencies compiled by the IAF; it will give you a clear orientation of what learning facilitation entails, and what skills you should practice. 

Joining a community and learning from experienced facilitators

Facilitation is best framed as a craft. As such, it’s learned by passing on knowledge from one person to another. But how can you get in the loop and find opportunities to learn from good facilitators? 

The rise of digital tools and remote communities has enabled the creation of numerous excellent professional networks you can join, often for free. They generally include online workshop sessions and the opportunity to join or lead discussions with other professionals, more or less experienced. 

SessionLab’s friendly community hosts a calendar of events you can join to explore specific topics related to facilitation and leadership skills. Sessions are always free, online, and interactive. This is also a great place to ask questions to fellow facilitators and share stories and experiences.

Why you should join facilitation training courses

Once you’ve learned a few basics about facilitation, perhaps joined some online workshops, listened to some podcast episodes, and tried your hand out at leading a few meetings, you’ll probably start feeling the need for a facilitation training course.

A facilitation training course will help you in your career in many ways, including:

• learning about group dynamics. Training sessions are often the only place where you can pull back the curtain and learn the theoretical foundations of practices and methodologies;
• practicing in a safe context. Well-rounded training courses all include opportunities to practice, whether it is with your peers or by including hours of required practice after the course. Practice and reflection will help you hone your skills;
• raising your confidence levels. A great reason to take facilitator training courses is to become more confident and assured in your own facilitation style;
• building your CV. Starting out in the profession, it is important to show that you are putting in the work and growing your skillset. 

Joining a facilitation training course is often quite the investment, in time, money, and/or travel, but it will pay back. Most courses include peer learning, and/or personalized coaching by an expert facilitator, and will prepare you to go out into the world and lead workshops in real-world settings. 

To learn more about what courses are available and what you should keep in mind when choosing one, check out our dedicated guide to facilitation training courses. 

Do you need certification to be a facilitator?

Facilitation as a profession does not have a central, universally recognized accreditation body. There is no university degree you need to practice facilitation, nor must you register anywhere. In other words: you do not need a certificate to be a facilitator. In fact, most facilitators around the world do not have any form of written documentation testifying to their skills besides their CVs. 

Is this a good, or a bad thing? You guessed it: it depends. 

Both perspectives were covered in this conversation hosted by Myriam Hadnes in her Workshops Work podcast, discussing the topic of certification among participants in SessionLab’s Community and the NeverDoneBefore Community. 

Those who speak in favor of certification and accreditation have arguments such as:

• Training is necessary in order to improve facilitation skills beyond knowledge of individual facilitation techniques;
• Certification and accreditation can help structure the field and make it clearer for people on the outside;
• It can harm the field if people join with good intentions but no formal training;
• Certification offers more clarity to prospective clients trying to navigate a very fragmented field;
• Certification is a boost to personal confidence.

On the other side of the debate, the claim that certification is not needed includes views such as:

• Many great facilitators have no certification at all;
• A certification is no guarantee of quality;
• Certification can be an expensive barrier to entry;
• There is no objective way of evaluating what makes a good facilitator. 

Maybe we learn best from community, and on the job. But what happens to the profession if none of us follow courses and everyone believes that we can just learn it on the job, without a certification or accreditation?

Myriam Hadnes, host of Workshops Work

When discussing this topic, it’s important to make a clear distinction between certification as proof that you’ve completed a training course, and accreditation, which is the process of testing and certifying your proficiency in a certain skillset. 

Various schools and training organizations offer certification at the end of your training process. Having a certificate of this kind can be a great way to boost your confidence and prove to yourself that you have achieved a professional development milestone. It is also a good asset to add to your CV, showing prospective clients what kind of skills you’ve been working on. 

Accreditation in facilitation, as far as I know, is currently provided by two bodies: the International Association of Facilitation (IAF) and the International Institute for Facilitation (INIFAC). For more information on their programs, you can check out our summary here. 

The idea with accreditation is that you submit your work to a rigorous process of examination, often including assessors overseeing you while you facilitate a session. This is not something for beginners: accreditation may come later in your career, once you’ve got a good number of hours of workshops under your belt and want to advance your skills further.

Knowing how the accreditation process works is a good reason to start creating your portfolio from day one (more on this later). 

What professional facilitation looks like

As a professional facilitator, you can expect your time to be divided between preparation and delivery of workshops, sessions and events. In this article we discuss what types of tasks facilitators do. 

What should you expect from a career in facilitation? A lot depends on whether you go in the direction of freelance work, or if you’ll be looking at working “inhouse”, within a larger company or organization. Let’s look at those different options in turn.

Working as a freelance facilitator 

Many facilitators work as individual freelancers. In the 2023 edition of the State of Facilitation report, 97% of respondents stated they sometimes or most of the time work alone. Of the total respondents, 38% were either independent freelancers or the only facilitation professional in their company. 

This led us to wonder whether facilitation can be a “lonely” profession. The answer from the global community came in the form of discussions, articles and podcasts. The conclusion? Facilitation often happens alone, but facilitators are never lonely, being surrounded by communities of practice, reflection buddies, mentors and peers.

As a freelance facilitator you can expect all the ups and downs or a solopreneur life. There will be times of abundance and of scarcity, and it may prove hard to establish a solid client base. On the other hand, you will have autonomy, independence and freedom to pursue varied interests in many fields. Kirsty Lewis’ podcast A Facilitator’s Journey has numerous episodes dedicated to the business aspect of having a freelance facilitation career. 

After the pandemic, it is now the norm for facilitators to work both in person and remotely. You might choose to specialize in one or the other mode, but truth be told, your clients will ask you to solve a problem: it will be up to you to advise whether this is better done in an intensive in-person setting, via shorter online interventions over a period of time or (more likely) a mix of both. This means you’ll need to be up for a decent amount of travel as well as spending time at your desk! 

Working in a facilitation agency 

If you know that you prefer to work in a team, you could consider banding up with others to create a facilitation agency. Facilitation agencies operate like small consultancies: you might start off with a staff of two or three facilitators and one or two marketing and sales people to create a boutique business. This is more of an upfront investment in time and work, but if it works out for you it can create a stable income and a situation in which you might even be able to take a holiday and let the work continue without you! 

When facilitation agencies get larger commissions and contracts, it’s quite common for them to hire “associates”: freelancers who are connected to the agency, might have received training on the same methods, and are assigned to handling certain workshops or events. 

Working with sessions designed and created by someone else can be tricky. A couple of years ago I was part of a team of no less than 50 facilitators around Europe contracted by an agency to deliver online and in-person “town hall” style sessions for citizens in preparation for the EU-wide elections.

To harmonize work across such a large number of people, it was essential for the NGO to hold a series of preparatory workshops, Q&A sessions, and share a detailed session plan, almost a script, for the event. The SessionLab planner was an essential tool in this process, enabling us share sessions, add comments, and check that our timings were harmonized. 

Working as an in-house facilitator

Having a facilitator in-house is a growing trend in large companies. Inhouse facilitators run workshops for various teams, organize programs for offsites and teambuilding events and might host workshops with external stakeholders as well (think for example of a design sprint involving clients). In some companies, this combines with training roles, upskilling managers and staff in such skills as active listening, giving and receiving feedback, effective meetings or communication. 

More frequently though, you may be using facilitation skills in roles that are not called explicitly “facilitation”. Examples of such positions include project managers, community managers, event planners, and training roles in learning and development. The border between facilitation and training is permeable, and you will find many of the same skills used in both. Malia Josephine wrote a handy write-up of possible areas of focus for facilitators looking for work in her blog. 

4 tips on how to become a facilitator

As we’ve seen, there are as many different ways to start a facilitation career as there are facilitators. From my experience in the field, here are 4 tips to keep in mind as you test the waters.

Build a network

There is a lot of discussion in the facilitation community about what can help fuel a consistent string of jobs in such a fragmented market. The industry is driven by referrals and word-of-mouth, so what can you do to establish a good reputation if you are just starting out? 

In my experience, many people’s first breaks come from more experienced facilitators either asking rookies to co-facilitate or passing their contact information to clients when more run-of-the-mill, simple jobs are on the table. Taking care of professional relationships is essential in the facilitation world. Ways to start building a network include joining events and communities, and keeping in regular touch with peers you’ve taken a course with.

Cofacilitate

The State of Facilitation report points out that experienced facilitators are more likely to co-facilitate. This may have to do with the higher price tag associated to hiring more than one person, as well as with the simple fact that the more tricky situations you’ve experienced, the more likely you’ll be aware of the power of cofacilitation! 

If you’ve met an experienced facilitator whose style you like, try asking if they ever need a co-pilot. They might ask you to cofacilitate online as a “tech host”, keeping an eye on the chat and making sure all participants feel seen, heard and comfortable with the tech. In doing so, you will get comfortable with the tech yourself! 

In a live workshop, I’ll often ask less experienced co-facilitators to help me with the logistics and, once activities begin, be available to support individual participants if they need anything. An extra assistant in the room can be extremely helpful to “huddle” in breaks and discuss any spur-of-the-moment changes needed, or sit at a particularly rowdy table to help steer the discussion. 

Cofacilitation is the best way to learn facilitation on the job, and is a great relief to experienced folk: if you are a professional facilitator reading this, I urge you to check whether there is some space in your calendar to foster new professionals this way.

Create a portfolio

Creating a portfolio means keeping an orderly record of each workshop, session, event or facilitation gig you’ve been assigned to. If you’ve created the invitations and posters, add those, and if you can, add pictures of the actual event. Creating a portfolio is an important part to becoming a professional facilitator. 

Don’t be one of those people who decide to get accreditation ten years down the line and suddenly discover they’ve never kept track of their projects! The exact way you compose your portfolio depends of course on your individual style. Graphic harvesters will naturally pay more attention to their portfolio than general process facilitators, adding all sorts of visual elements to really make their collection pop. 

Your portfolio should show, at a glance, how much experience you’ve accrued, and in what sorts of settings. I’ve also found a portfolio an invaluable tool to look back to my years of work and catch trends, such as what type of client did I serve, how they found their way to me, whose problem I solved. Using SessionLab’s planner to create a knowledge base from the beginning of your career can help you easily find all your old sessions, adapt them, reuse them, and create customized printouts to add to your facilitation portfolio. 

Find your niche

You may think “facilitation” is a niche profession in and of itself but, actually, as you discover more about it you’ll inevitably find it has niches within niches. Finding your niche in facilitation may have to do with:

• What types of clients you serve. 

Facilitation skills, tools and methods are extremely flexible. Once you know how to use them, you can easily host a session about batteries for electric bicycles one day and another on water scarcity in rural areas the next (true story).

At the same time, having specialized knowledge in a certain industry can definitely improve your understanding of what is going on in the room. Eventually, you are likely to get recommended to other people who work in the same industry you’ve already served. Having a specialization in a certain topic or industry makes it easier to market, and to explain what you do. It answers the question “Ok, you facilitate. But what do you facilitate?”

If you are starting from a background in a particular field or industry, consider approaching potential clients from the same niche, and start from there. 

• What methodologies you use. 

Getting certified in a well-known framework or methodology, such as Design Thinking or Lego Serious Play, can help you get a consistent stream of jobs. It will be clearer to potential clients what you offer, and someone else will be doing part of the marketing for you.

• Where in the world you are.

Location can also be a niche. If you live in a country where languages other than English are spoken, that will be part of your specialization. Facilitators tend to travel a lot, but sometimes clients will look for someone local to the area, e.g.  in order to follow a longer-term process. Being the best professional facilitator in a certain region can help bring clients your way.

What tools will you need to facilitate group discussions?

Here are some of the things you’ll want to budget for to start a facilitation career. Disclaimer: like with any other profession, personal toolkits and tech stacks might get extremely sophisticated, but here I’ve decided to point out a few things you’ll need to begin with.

What is in a facilitator’s (physical) toolbox?

I started facilitating in Italy and in the NGO sector and as such, my background is in low-key, low-tech facilitation. I still rely on hand-drawn posters, and I like to transmit to participants or trainees the sense that meaningful conversations don’t depend on fancy tools.

While this may vary based on the setting, industry and client, but the essential facilitation tools for in-person workshops are:

• Sticky notes of varying sizes and colors. Buy the good brands: the cheap ones tend to get unglued and start fluttering around at a key moment of your brainstorming session;
• Large sheets of paper and rolls of paper tape you’ll use to stick posters to the wall (without ruining the wall);
• Markers. Facilitators can get very specific about their markers, but starting with three or four different colors will get you there. Just check that they don’t bleed through the paper;
• Some way of displaying and communicating the passing of time, whether it’s a bell, an alarm on your phone, a large-sized clock, a gong, or whatever time management device you prefer. 

For remote facilitation, all you really need is a computer, a quiet space to work in, an earset and a good video camera, but your setup is likely to get more advanced as you learn more about what is possible. A second screen is particularly useful in order to view your session from participants’ point of view. 

What is a facilitator’s tech stack? 

Software tools are becoming more and more integrated into facilitation, both online and in real life. In the 2024 State of Facilitation report we’ve called this the era of digitally-assisted facilitation. You can go through the report’s sections on tools for plenty of inspiration in this sense, as well as check out our guide to online tools for workshops and meetings. 

It’s not as easy to define what is in a facilitator’s tech stack as it is to recommend buying stacks of Post-its and boxes of Sharpies. That said, you’ll probably need:

• to get familiar with more than one tool for remote meetings. Which tool to use does not always depend on you, but often on a client’s preference, so make sure you become an advanced user of Zoom, Microsoft Teams (not a facilitator’s favorite, but often a requirement for use in large companies and universities), and Google Meet.
• You can design your sessions on pen and paper, in Microsoft Excel or in a GoogleDoc, but the only tool for session design you’ll find that fits facilitation like a glove is SessionLab. It was designed with facilitators’ needs in mind and will allow you to create sessions in minutes, move activities around without having to recalculate timing, share notes with your collaborators and clients, and more;
• Online whiteboards are a wonderful boost to remote collaboration. Mural and Miro are the market leaders and you should get very comfortable using one, the other, or both!
• Last but not least, you’ll need a software tool to help you collect information from your participants. Mentimeter, Kahoot, or GoogleForms are all possibilities that enable you to show participants quizzes and surveys before, during and after a session.

Tips for facilitating your first session

If you’ve come so far, you are well equipped with information needed to look ahead to the next couple of years in your professional facilitation career. But what about tomorrow, or the day after, when your first session begins? What should you keep in mind then? 

Here are my top 4 tips for facilitating your very first session. And before that: congratulations! We need more facilitators in the world to help create meaningful dialogue that moves groups forward. And the only real way to learn is to jump in and try.

1. Be clear about your role

Calmly and clearly set participants’ expectations. Share that you are beginning along this path and trying new things. Say a few words about why you think facilitation will help them achieve their goals. Do what you can to clarify how you will support participants, and explain why you’ve chosen certain group processes. 

Facilitation is new to a lot of people, and they may project their ideas of “teacher” or “captain” upon you. Explain that your role is to offer them new ways of doing things, not tell them what to do.

2. Use a template

Designing fully realized sessions is a rather advanced skill. Start trying your hand at holding and directing a group by using an existing template. You may need to adapt it to your needs, but at least you’ll be starting with a solid base. We’ve got a rich collection of session templates in SessionLab to help you out, including a customizable flow for workshop sessions you can fill out with content based on the specifics of your situation. 

3. Keep it simple

There are many methods and processes you can learn and introduce to groups. Learning new methodologies is a never-ending process! Don’t get lost in the abundance: the right place to start is with basic, tried-and-true processes that will make a great difference despite their apparent simplicity. A meeting can be transformed by introducing a check-in, a checkout, and a focussed conversation method such as 1-2-4-all or World Café. 

Keeping your structure simple will allow you to fully focus on the participants, practicing active listening and helping them along by reformulating and timekeeping. Keep it simple! 

4. Ask for feedback (and celebrate!) 

We can only grow our skills if we adopt a learner’s mindset. Ask participants to give you feedback at the end of your session. Collecting written feedback after the workshop is over is probably the best way to get honest responses you can then reflect on. 

Don’t just ask what you could have changed: also ask what worked well, what they enjoyed. These are your best features, those you can work on to really define your own style, offering and “facilitation signature”. Reflecting, taking notes and making plans for improvement after every facilitation session should become part of your professional routine.

A final tip: facilitation is a rewarding and exciting profession, but it is by no means easy. Make relaxing, celebrating and recharging after a session part of your routine as well!

Where to go next

Would you like to know the steps required to fully plan a facilitated workshop? Read our guide on Workshop Planning, from the initial idea all the way to reflection and followup. 

Want to learn more about what a facilitator’s challenges and practices are? Go through the data and expert contributions of the 2024 State of Facilitation report. 

Got a question to pose to experienced facilitators? Would you like some advice on how to handle your first facilitation session, or to share ideas and stories from real world settings? Join SessionLab’s facilitation community and ask a question there! 

Ready to try your hand at session design? Sign up for a free account on SessionLab, duplicate a simple template such as the Essential Workshop structure, and customize it to fit your needs! 

Deborah Rim Moiso Facilitation Content Writer

Deborah Rim Moiso is an Endorsed Facilitator with the IAF – International Association of Facilitators and former co-chair of the Italian IAF Chapter.

She is the author of a manual and deck of cards on facilitation available in Italian (Facilitiamoci!). Deborah has been working with groups since 2009 in the fields of innovation in education, citizen participation, and environmental conflicts.