Facilitators and Chairpersons

[Barry Zalph <bzalph@co.jefferson.ky.us>]

Deborah Dalton asked:

(5) What experiences have you had with facilitation of advisory groups or collaborative process groups? Has it been better or not than groups chaired by a member of the group?

(6) What role should the members of a group have in choosing the facilitator of an advisory committee?

The members of collaborative groups are stakeholders who, by definition, have a stake and a distinct point of view. A chairperson selected from the group will have a difficult time maintaining the impartiality and focus on process needed to effectively run an open and truly collaborative process. People often view a chairperson as an authority figure, and choose a chairperson accordingly as a senior, powerful, or authoritative member of the group, or simply as the most powerful person in the group who agrees with one's own general perspective. This makes it even more unlikely that a chairperson will facilitate rather than advocate and maneuver. I have experienced many more well-facilitated than well-chaired meetings and advisory or decision-making processes.

I agree strongly with the posts suggesting the selection of facilitators from outside the group. People trained and experienced as impartial intermediaries, focusing on improving communication and constructive interactions within the group, have the best likelihood of helping a collaborative process efficiently reach a mutually satisfactory set of decisions.

Facilitators need enough subject-matter expertise to recognize when key questions are not getting raised, when data or interpretations presented to the group may not be credible, or when stakeholders are getting confounded due to inadequate technical understanding. They don't need to be experts in the field, able to formulate solutions to the technical issues at hand.