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How to facilitate a workshop?
To facilitate a workshop is to see the whole workshop as a process. You start at one place and hopefully end somewhere different. For this process to take place it is important that the group functions together.
If you push the group too much, they will not join the process; on the other hand you have to be able to ask questions that make the groups’ experience move.
Don’t be afraid of conflicts or delicate issues but be very sensitive and delicate toward them. Deal with them, when they arise, without being involved in them yourself. You have to be as neutral as possible.
Don’t try to convince or push but try to include everybody’s point of view and make sure to acknowledge it.
Be more human as a facilitator. Being a more respectful and inclusive is spiritual work be it that you are religious or not. What the group will always sense is if you are truly open, then they will listen to you and be guided by you much easier. However, try not to express all your emotions because then it becomes about you when it should be about them.
Follow the group! Listen! Where is the group?
Maybe what you have planned will not work and you will have to change it. Try to have a plan B and C ready. It is more important to follow the process of the group than to deliver all that you want to share.
Make sure that as many as possible are heard!
Try to politely control the participants who speak a lot and try to make space for those who are more shy and insecure.
People learn at different paces. There is a group that moves together but there are also individuals that have a hard time catching up. You have to be aware that people adjust at different speeds.
Sometimes the group will not learn what you want them to learn, but if you have helped facilitate new reflections in the group, a lot has been accomplished.
Most importantly: Forgive yourself when things go wrong! You tried!