Facilitators are an essential part of establishing goals for an organization. They guide team members through their varied desires for the future of the company towards a solid and fleshed-out set of goals that all members can agree on. Here are some of the ways in which a facilitator can help a group to establish goals.

Leading Vision Exercises

Part of a professional facilitator’s role in establishing goals is helping the members of the team to discover what their goals are. We believe that one of the most powerful ways to do this is to encourage team members to get creative through vision exercises. There are many ways to get participants interested in vision exercises, but one way many facilitators use is similar to a guided meditation. The facilitator walks participants through a scenario and has them fill in certain bits of information either individually or as a group. Those bits of information will become the foundation for establishing their goals.

Ensure Goals Represent All They Should

Once a certified facilitator has established the basic foundation elements for the team’s goals, they must take time to make sure that the goals fully cover all of the key areas that your organization wishes to focus on. There is one simple question to ask to help team members determine whether their goals are fully comprehensive: “If the organization only achieves these goals, will it have fulfilled its mission?” If the answer is no, the facilitator will help the team to determine what elements are missing and to figure out goals for those elements.

Content Is Different from Wording

When the stakes are high, as they typically are when the future of an organization is being discussed, it can be very easy for people to get bogged down by very small details like word choice. A certified professional facilitator must carefully guide the conversation to avoid this pratfall and instead focus on the overall content of the goals. Ultimately, the specific wording for the goal will come with time; the team must first determine what the overall spirit of the goal is. Facilitators listen for team members to say things like, “A better word for that is…” and gently redirect the conversation towards something more productive.

Quality Check

Towards the end of the facilitation session, the certified master facilitator will do a quality check of the goals produced during the session. They will ask the team a series of questions about each of the goals they produced to ensure that the goals meet their needed purpose.