The word facilitate means “to make easier”, and facilitating is a way to help people move forward together that harness contribution, connection, and equity.
Adam Kahane – Facilitating Breakthrough
Moving forward together is becoming less straightforward.
In 2025, “polarization” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. We are facing an increasingly complex world and decreasing control. We have a need to work with more people from across more divides.
In situations like this, the easy, everyday routes to getting things done—whether it’s someone in charge calling the shots or everyone just doing their own thing—are just not enough.
How could we do this differently?
There are three essential ingredients to moving forward together: contribution, connection and equity.
Facilitators can remove the obstacles to these ingredients by
- creating opportunities for participants to bring their diverse skills, ideas, and resources to the collective task.
- most people want to contribute but there are institutional, political, economic, cultural, psychological, or physical structures that prevent them from doing so
- Consequences: disempowerment, stifled creativity, energy, and growth.
- providing opportunities within the project for participants to get to know one another as persons and to work together as peers.
- people’s contributions can’t be effective if people are not connected to one another, to the situation they are addressing, or to their own thinking, feeling and motivations.
- Consequences: estrangement and weakened communication, linkages and relationships. All collaboration requires connection.
- building a democratic and respectful culture by sitting in circle, giving everyone equal opportunities in workshops, and making decisions transparently and democratically
- many people want contribution and connection to be inclusive and fair, but there are some structures that give certain people more freedom, privilege and power than others.
- Consequences of not creating opportunities for people to contribute and connect equitably will impede the collaboration.
Learn more about removing obstacles, bridging differences and moving forward together in this 20 minute presentation with Adam Kahane and Sylvia Cheuy
Pause for Reflection
- What does it feel like when you experience or observe horizontal facilitation?
- What is the impact do you experience or observe from vertical facilitation?
- What’s new you’ve learned about facilitation from this video, or the guidebook so far?
