The Ultimate Guide to Become a Great Facilitator

Content

Becoming a great facilitator is one of the key factors of your idea/project's success. Effective facilitation not only provides you methods and skills to plan and implement a dialogue activity (event, workshop, training, conference, online meeting, etc.) but also assists you in inspiring others around you, building your tribe and getting powerful partners and networks.     
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Learn how to build an effective facilitation process to make visible the attitudes, interests and needs of youth, to strengthen your participation on all political levels, and to impact the political decision-making.  
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Explore how to clarify your vision and mission, to which conditions you should pay attention and how to get in contact with relevant people. Study numerous methods for getting started, methods for exchanging opinions, experiences and ideas and methods for reflecting and moving forward. Understand what we consider to be useful in terms of caring for results and follow-ups.
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Additional, the playlist 'The Ultimate Guide to Become a Great Facilitator' is a great opportunity to learn about the EU Youth Dialogue, which is the dialogue with young people and youth organisations involving policy and decision-makers, as well as experts, researchers and other relevant civil society actors. The dialogue aims to support continuous joint reflection and consultation on the priorities, implementation and follow-up of European cooperation in the field of youth. Furthermore, the playlist supports you to create an activity and run a youth dialogue on the topic of your interest (for instance, Mental health, Sustainability, Participation, Non-formal learning and Inclusion).
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@The playlist 'The Ultimate Guide to Become a Great Facilitator' has been inspired and created on the basis of the 'Toolbox: Dialogue activities to implement the Youth Goals together' (Natalie Lehner and Martin Kitzberger, youth-goals.eu, © 2020 Youth Goals Lab). 

Activities to complete

Complete the following activities, earn badges and you will see your playlist progress updated

Your goals vs. Youth Goals: You are not alone!

Mandatory

45 minutes

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Time to Plan

Mandatory

1 hour

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Facilitation 101

Mandatory

30 minutes

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Methods for youth dialogue

Mandatory

1 hour 30 minutes

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Content

 How to start an activity?
If you went through previous activities on this playlist, you already have the plan for your activity ready, with all the different important aspects considered.
Now it is time to go into more practical things, like methods that are more suitable for different parts of the activity. And we start from the beginning.
So, when we’re planning a workshop, a discussion, debate, in person or online, there are some steps to take at the start. 
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Objectives at the start:
Get to know each other (names and some information about themselves) 
Explore everybody’s expectations from the activity and learn about previous experience in the topic
Make an agreement on how the group will work
Create a comfortable atmosphere in the group
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It is nice to start with short introductions that allow participants to learn each other’s names and some basic information. We usually call those activities “name games” and you can find a few examples in this video: 
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If you have time to go further with getting to know each other, you can use Passport method:
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The next thing you might want to do is explore what your participants expect and need from the activity you’ve planned. You have your objectives in mind, but people who come for your workshop or training might have a bit different ideas and it’s important to explore them at the beginning, so you can all be on a same or similar page.
In order to be able to have full and active participation of everybody, it is good to have the group agree on some ground rules or principles everybody will follow. This also positively affect the confidence and trust in the group, making people more relaxed and ready to share.
Some examples of activities for getting to know each other, exploring expectations and needs of participants, as well as setting principles of working together, you can find in this presentation.
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Exchanging opinions and ideas
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When you have a plan on how to start with your activity - let everyone feel comfortable and ready to share, your next task is to choose appropriate method for people to get to know youth goals, discus and exchange opinions. 
This part is crucial for your activity, as this is where most engagement from participants will happen and it’s also the part where the goals you set when starting to plan, will get realized. So, it’s very important to go back to the set goals, think some more on what you want young people to learn, what you want them to discuss about and how you can further use their contribution. 
When you know why you’re doing an activity, it should be easier to define the methods suitable for achieving those goals.
For exchanging opinions, you can use a simple, but effective activity - Opinion Barometer, in which participants are asked to position themselves in the space according to their opinion on certain topics. You can find more detailed description of this method here: 
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In some cases, especially when starting to discuss, you can decide not to force participants to speak about their views, but to use Silent Discussion in order to get them to think, reflect and then write their ideas on a flip chart. Here is a video explaining this method in practice: 
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If you have more time and more topics or issues you want participants to discuss, you might want to try World Café method. It is very suitable for long and deep discussions, as it gets participants to feel comfortable in a less formal atmosphere. In this video you’ll find out more about principles of this methods, the ways to set it up and use it in practice:   
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For even longer activities, even bigger events and conferences, Open Space method could be suitable. It’s principles and setting can stimulate discussions, but also motivate people to present their own ideas, lead discussions and take ownership of the process. To learn mora about this method and how to organize activity using it, this video is recommended: 
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Additional methods to use in this part of your activity you can find in this presentation. 
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Methods for youth dialogue - Reflecting, evaluating and moving forward
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And it’s time to plan for the last part of your activity. It’s always important to leave some time at the end of your workshop for one or more short activities that will be used for evaluation, reflection and closing. In this last part of your activity, it’s important to think of the following goals:
Give participants space to reflect and become aware of the main learning points achieved during the workshop;
Receive feedback from participants by using some form of evaluation;
Close the activity in positive spirit.
Additionally, you may want to leave some time for recapping the experience and checking their knowledge at the end. You can also think of including activity that will focus on thinking and planning future steps and follow up - asking participants what could they do after the workshop in order to use the knowledge and experience gained.
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When thinking about reflection, it’s very important to make distinction from evaluation. Reflection activity should deal with participants’ learning process and conclusions they had during the process. On the other hand, evaluation is done in order for participants to assess the experience and give their feedback to organizers and facilitators. Following video on reflection could help you in preparing for this phase of the  activity: 
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To learn more about possible methods for evaluation, you can watch this video:  
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There are more activities you can use in order to reflect, evaluate and close your activity, presented here.
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Resources

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Methodologist! Get this badge

The holder of this badge has been working on his/her skills for selecting methods on how to start the facilitation of an activity.
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This badge is part of the Youth Goals and the EU Youth Dialogue, which are a part of the EU Youth Strategy 2019–2027, which sets the direction of common youth policy throughout the EU. 
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The holder of this badge has worked independently at awareness/understanding/action at the importance of the selecting methods on how to start the facilitation of an activity.
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How the holder of this badge worked on these skills can be seen in the evidence in this badge. International youth workers have assessed the completed tasks.

You have to finish 1 task to get the badge

Tasks

Task no.1

Evidence verified by: one activity organiser

We looked at the objectives at the start of an activity. Please share what do you think: 
Which objective is the most important in your opinion? 
Do you have any other methods you consider are powerful to start an activity? 

Task no.2

Evidence verified by: one activity organiser

Discribe and share your favorite activity that encourage exchanging opinions and ideas. 

Task no.3

Evidence verified by: one activity member

Why do you think reflection and evaluation matter? 

Making sense of the results and follow up

Mandatory

30 minutes

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Skills

ESCO

#provide leadership

ESCO

#exert result-oriented leadership

ESCO

#personal development

#Global Youth Skill

ESCO

#lead others

ESCO

#communication

ESCO

#strategic planning

Activities: 5

Started: 6

Completed playlist: 0

Time to complete: 4 hours 15 minutes

Organisers

Network of Cities and Regions of Learning

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