Facilitation Superpower

May the God of Facilitation be with you!

Once in a while I reflect on my superpower ranges and today I would like to write a little about my superpower of facilitation.

Let’s go.

KYC — Know your customer

Using this superpower — knowing the audience a fair bit — helped me a great deal. It helps me focusing on the what/how/why my effort can be most helpful to the “customers”. Product Owner, Engineers, Designers and Quality Engineers, DevOps — each role has an in-depth knowledge in their field. Focusing on their point of view helps to glue the team well.

Feel the room

During a discussion, scrum rituals or a workshop (be it virtual, IRL or a mix) often requires me to pull out my superpower of feeling the room.

The need for a complete feedback loop💡 helps to make sure that opinions are heard and the critical concerns are addressed. We build trust this way when a safe space is created for teams to excel.

Contextual

Who is benefiting from the feature?

Why is the feature useful?

How to best make the feature intuitive and pleasurable?

What are the wins and consequences do we wish to make?

All the context must be made clear in facilitating for teams. The simplest way to start with is to write them down and share it. Allow some time for async discussion to clarify definition and doubt to allow everyone to be on the same page.

Another mode I like to start a IRL discussion / a workshop is to clearly define the outcome that we are aiming for by end of the workshop. This helps everyone to stay on track and allow everyone to solve an issue together.

Being contextual is an extremely useful superpower to help teams to the outcome!

Being present

How much is enough? When is it time to call for a decision?

My superpower of being present helps me to zoom in and out with the team. The intention here is to listen well and address them adequately and meaningfully.

Being present is also an act of being compassion.

Ok I get it, not all of them can be labeled as a superpower, could be better be a practice? But you know what I mean!

Which superpower of facilitation that you use and would like to share? I would love to chat more!

Illustrations by manypixels