Facilitation: What It Is, What It Isn't

The term facilitator gets used quite a bit. But, for the purposes of this blog post, let us define — from our perspective — what a facilitator is.

The dictionary definition states that a facilitator is someone who leads or guides a group of people towards a productive outcome. There are many out there who facilitate actions through giving advice, acting as life coach, and other ways that help individuals and groups work through their problem.

Here at Creek Consulting LLC we go above and beyond that.

We guide conversations to improve communication among people and organizations. Issues like education, mental health, politics, and other topics are so complex and have so many conflicting values that a lot of people are not motivated to tackle them, so then they turn to attack each other.

Issues of ideology, morality, why people believe in the things they hold dear to their heart; these things are incredibly difficult to facilitate. Most facilitators are apprehensive and avoid these situations if they can. We have seen trained facilitators actively avoid conflict because they don’t want to deal with it

We’re not afraid.

People need to be heard. People have a reason why they believe and act the way that they do. Creek Consulting LLC is an impartial resource that prides ourselves in the fact that we can get groups with differing values to actually hold meaningful conversations. Not only do we facilitate these discussions, but we capture everything that is said and analyze it too. This information is valuable. People want to be heard and actually have someone listen to them; even if the solution isn’t what they proposed they are a part of the process. Our facilitators collect qualitative data from an incredibly vast array of different ideas. Because we aren’t afraid of conflict and debate, we can hold the conversations that need to happen and capture the ideas that need to be heard.

The kicker is that people love this idea. Communities love being heard. Even if they disagree, people respect one another. There aren’t many examples out there of people actively enjoying holding discussions with people that fundamentally disagree with them. In our types of processes, however, they do.

We facilitate conversations, but Creek Consulting is so much more than that.

We are deliberative facilitators.