Reflection on Participatory Methods II: What it takes to be a good Facilitator?

Today’s session focuses on how to facilitate a team and what it takes to be a good facilitator. The string of interactive activities that we carry out throughout the session helps to practice the facilitator’s role in a team environment. We discussed some contents of our project plan like the objectives, means, indicators and alternatives with the help of different facilitators from different groups. The facilitators ask questions, commented and criticize our way of doing our things as they tried to help solve our problems. I was wondering why it was important to assign a facilitator form another group while it is possible to choose one among our own group members. But I felt the differences sooner rather than later when I took my sit to facilitate a neighboring group. Last session when I facilitate my own group, everything seemed went smoothly as I am used to the concepts of my own project and the people around me. But this time, as I tried to facilitate a different team, I had to struggle a bit to immerse myself in to the moment as I was a bit strange to the ideas on the table and the people in the group in comparison to my own. So, I came to understand that choosing the facilitator from another group could help the facilitator to develop the ability to quickly adapt to dfferent challenges in different environments and discuss on them with the group members to help them solve their problems.
But what should we mainly do as a facilitator and of course as a good facilitator? All of the three facilitators I witnessed on my group table showed some of the characters of a good facilitator as all managed to create a vibrant atmosphere in the group by making open ended questions and inviting everybody to discussion and commenting on our opinions. They also managed to present the process of the discussion and the outputs to the crowed. Personally I had the chance to speak to the crowd twice in today’s session. The first presentation was just to discuss the contents of the group’s project plan and the second time as a facilitator for a certain group. The first time I faced the audience, it just felt insane. The second was better as I became somewhat familiar to the faces in front of me from my first experience. I hope three and more will be fun.