Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

The perfect meeting facilitator sometimes seems as illusive as the unicorn and fairy dust.

But we all know what bad facilitators look and sound like: they talk too much, moving from facilitation to domination. I experienced a Johnny Takeover at a recent meeting. The problem with this type of meeting leader is that there’s no one else to rein in him or her. The participants are stuck with a facilitator whose fondness for his or her own voice and stories exceeds the interest of even the most polite attendee. Pretty soon, everyone is zoning out, and the meeting is a bust.

There’s also Joanie Steeralot, who may not overtalk but who guides the meeting with a particular (and possibly personal) agenda. This person isn’t as concerned about the task at hand as she is about the task on her own mind. Again, it’s an invitation to disengage. 

There are other stereotypical meeting facilitators: Frazzled Fran, Shy Pat, Know-It-All Norm. In all of these situations, the weaknesses of the leader threaten to spoil the meeting, leaving people frustrated, disempowered, and unwilling to waste their time for the next gathering. 

The church tends to like small-group meetings. We take the whole and break it into smaller parts so people can have the opportunity to share their opinions and to get to know fellow members. In preparing for the meetings, we spend a lot of time working on the details, times, questions, food, chair set-up, etc. But we may need to make sure we add finding and training quality facilitators to the priority list. 

Episcopal Church Foundation is committed to building leaders—from this resource of Vital Practices to its new initiative of Vital Teams. What other resources are available for facilitator training? What are you doing on a local level to train good, helpful, and healthy facilitators?