8. Facilitation Skills

Many PPI activities involve working with a group which includes PPI contributors. For those contributors to have their voices heard and to have their views interact with one another and with the research team, bringing them together for meetings/events/activities is important. Bringing people together, however, is often not enough and someone needs to take responsibility for ensuring that people have time to talk, to listen and interact with one another. The person taking charge of this process is the facilitator.

‘Facilitator’ is a role and anyone, with the right skills and experience, can take on that role. They are there to guide the discussion without leading it. They encourage debate and discussion while ensuring that people can speak honestly without fear of ridicule or attack. They are mindful of disagreement and conflict and provides an opportunity for people to work through that in a respectful and constructive way.

Facilitators are focused on:

• Providing opportunities for everyone to input and that the inputs can interact with one another;
• ensuring that the process is right rather than just trying to quickly get to the product;
• remaining neutral throughout so that they don’t begin to impose their view or position on the group.

While this is a fundamentally important skill for PPI work, there are already many useful guides to facilitation to provide assistance with this skill. Facilitation, however, is a skill that is developed through practice and so researchers should seek out opportunities to practice like volunteering to facilitate a table at a conversation café.

See some questions about your readiness to facilitate in the APPLY Section.