The goal of any workshop is to help a group of people come up with useful outcomes, solutions, or ideas in response to a specific challenge. This requires solid collaboration, open communication, and a general willingness to get involved.
As a facilitator, it’s your job to create an environment where people feel comfortable enough to speak, share their ideas, and engage in productive dialogue.
Sounds tricky, right? And it can be—especially in groups where some people can’t stop talking while others are wishing the ground would swallow them up.
So how can you overcome communication barriers and effectively facilitate dialogue in your next workshop?
We’ve got 6 tried-and-tested techniques right here. Keep reading!
First, though, what exactly do we mean by “facilitating dialogue”?
What do we mean by “facilitating dialogue” and when do you need to do this?
Facilitating dialogue is an essential part of running a meeting or workshop.
By definition, dialogue is a back-and-forth; a conversation between two or more people, with all parties having the opportunity to not only share their own perspective, but to actively listen to the perspectives of others.
A dialogue is not a debate. It’s a productive discussion, and there’s no right or wrong. Dialogue supports open, respectful communication, and it enables you to reach valuable solutions.
That’s what workshops are all about: bringing together a diversity of perspectives and collaboratively coming up with solutions and ideas.
So, when we talk about facilitating dialogue, we’re referring to your responsibility as a workshop facilitator to ensure that communication among your participants is respectful, productive, and grounded in trust.
Effectively facilitating dialogue requires a great deal of self-awareness on your part, as well as some tried-and-tested techniques (which we’ll share with you shortly). Before we do that, let’s dive a little deeper into the role that facilitators play in fostering constructive, fruitful conversation.
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As a workshop facilitator, what role do you play in helping to break down communication barriers?
In our ultimate guide to workshop facilitation, we define the role of the facilitator as follows:
“A facilitator is a problem-solving and decision-making expert who can guide a team through a structured step-by-step process that ensures solid outcomes.”
Adding to this definition, the Nielsen Norman Group describes workshop facilitation as:
“The act of providing unobtrusive, objective guidance to a group in order to collaboratively progress towards a goal.”
As these definitions imply, facilitators don’t take part in the dialogue itself. Rather, they oversee and guide it to ensure that everyone is able to contribute, that everybody is heard, and that the conversation is moving in a productive direction.
Your role isn’t to provide expertise on the topic at hand or to influence the conversation. You’re there to make collaboration feel seamless, to spot and help break down communication barriers, to ask thoughtful questions, and to keep the group focused on a specific goal.
So how do you do that? What techniques can you employ to facilitate dialogue in your next workshop or meeting? Let’s take a look.
How To Facilitate Dialogue in Your Next Workshop or Meeting: 6 Proven Principles & Techniques
Ready to become an expert dialogue facilitator? Try these 6 simple yet effective best practices.
1. Kick off with an icebreaker
In order to facilitate dialogue, you first need to create an environment where people feel at ease with each other.
The best way to do this? Kick off your workshop with an icebreaker.
Icebreakers are quick, fun activities that get the group warmed up and help to dissolve any initial awkwardness. Icebreakers can also help your participants to get to know each other, which in turn establishes empathy and trust—two very important prerequisites for open, respectful conversation.
Some of our favorite icebreakers include:
- My First Job—a quick and fun round where people share their first job and what they learned from it.
- Pointless Questions—a far-from-pointless exercise where you get your workshop participants to answer a series of questions, not related to the workshop itself. This is a great way to set the tone for more natural conversation.
- Guess Who?—a fun activity where people have to match random facts with the relevant workshop participant.
You can learn more about how to run these exercises (and discover even more of our favorite icebreakers) in this guide: The 6 Best Icebreakers For Your Next Meeting Or Workshop.
2. Establish expectations and ground rules
Whether you do this explicitly or implicitly is up to you, but it’s important to establish clear expectations around communication.
As a facilitator, it’s your job to ensure that any and all dialogue remains respectful. This means making sure that everybody has the opportunity to speak, and feels comfortable to do so. It means discouraging people from interrupting, and making it clear that the workshop is a safe, supportive, judgment-free zone.
You can do this by clearly laying out some ground rules before the workshop begins, or you can do it reactively throughout. For example, if you notice that someone has a tendency to interrupt others, you can say something like “Please let’s all make sure that we give our full attention when someone else is speaking, and wait til they’ve finished before sharing our own thoughts.”
How you establish and communicate expectations will depend on whether or not you’re already familiar with your workshop participants and the group dynamics. Ultimately, you can decide what’s best. The main thing is that everybody feels safe, heard, and respected.
3. Practice active listening (and encourage others to do the same)
Active listening is the conscious practice of giving somebody your full and undivided attention when they’re speaking to you. Instead of simply hearing the words they’re saying, you focus on understanding the entire message they’re trying to communicate.
Another part of active listening is showing the other person that you’re present and tuned in to what they’re saying. You can convey this through non-verbal cues such as eye contact and nodding.
It might sound obvious, but active and mindful listening goes a long way when it comes to understanding other people’s perspectives and, especially important in the context of a workshop, making sure they feel heard.
As a facilitator, practice active listening at all times and encourage others to do the same. You might even share a definition of what active listening is and why it’s important to get people on board.
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4. Ask thoughtful questions
If you’re actively listening, you’ll be perfectly primed to ask the right questions and drive the dialogue forward.
Questions are a critical tool when it comes to facilitating dialogue. As a facilitator, you’re there to help the group find answers—you’re not there to convey and share your own knowledge. So, as you plan your workshop agenda, think about the kinds of questions you can ask to uncover useful perspectives and insights that will help the group.
And remember: Frame them as open questions rather than closed ones. Closed questions invite a yes/no answer (for example: “Do you think that will work?”) while open questions require and encourage exploration and elaboration (for example: “Tell me more about how you envision that solution in action” or “How so?” )
With thoughtful, well-placed questions, you can help participants to uncover their own ideas and better articulate their thoughts for the rest of the group. A productive dialogue indeed!
5. Encourage participation from all
This can be a tricky one, and it’s important to approach it with empathy and sensitivity.
It’s rare that you’ll get a group entirely made up of extraverts and confident public speakers. Usually, there are some workshop participants who can’t wait to take the stage, and others who are reluctant to speak at all.
When facilitating dialogue, you want to encourage participation without forcing it or putting people on the spot. Don’t call on certain people to speak or point out the fact that they’re not saying anything (that’s a fast-track to making people feel terribly uncomfortable and having them clam up even more).
Do make space for everyone and encourage participation from multiple participants. You can do this by saying something like “I’d love to hear from a few more people on this topic, would anyone else like to add anything?”
Once you’ve grasped the dynamics of the group (which you’ll do pretty quickly once the workshop is underway), your instinct will guide you in how to encourage and facilitate evenly-spread dialogue.
6. Facilitate, don’t dominate
When it comes to facilitating dialogue, it’s essential to understand and embrace your role as the facilitator.
You’re not there to provide training or subject knowledge, nor to influence the group in any way. Your role is exactly what it says on the tin: Facilitation.
This means asking questions, leveling out the playing field if the dialogue veers into one-way-monologue territory, and guiding your participants to come up with their own ideas and solutions.
Enter the workshop knowing exactly what your job is (and what it isn’t) and approach your role with plenty of self-awareness. Think “helpful passenger” rather than “front seat driver” and watch those dialogues flow!
Build these 6 techniques into your facilitation practice and you’ll soon become a pro at facilitating easy, natural, productive dialogue among your workshop participants.
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