Collective intelligence is more than just getting people to work together! Most definitions on the Internet, in our opinion, are incomplete.
“In the world of work, collective intelligence is an organization based on the ability to work together with diverse and varied profiles (employees, external collaborators, clients, and suppliers) contributing to the same project.”
Or,
“Collective intelligence is about creating an environment in which everyone feels confident and empowered to propose new ideas; it is about encouraging everyone to cooperate with the other team members, as well as to help and work together.”
Indeed, if we stop with these definitions, a simple moderator would be enough for your collective intelligence work sessions. However, in order for your sessions to be effective, you will need a facilitator.
What is the difference between a moderator and a facilitator?
In the 1990s, American companies increasingly adopted facilitation, a term that was relatively unknown in France.
Today, the term “facilitation” encompasses various forms, such as graphic facilitation and virtual facilitation. Furthermore, the fact that some meeting organizers or moderators present themselves as facilitators discredits the term facilitator and spreads a misconception about the role’s purpose. Therefore, the primary meaning of the facilitator role remains unclear in France.
What is the purpose of facilitation?
Facilitation has only one purpose: to ensure that several people work effectively together to implement the solutions they have identified to solve a problem, a malfunction, or to seize an opportunity.
The concept of facilitation itself is clear and easy to understand. The goal is to guarantee the implementation of chosen solutions, as this is the sole means of determining their effectiveness in solving the problem.
However, in order for action to take place, there must first and foremost be appropriation by the actors. And the best way to develop this appropriation is to involve stakeholders in building solutions. So let us work together with the actors concerned by the problem, the malfunction, or the opportunity to be seized so that they appropriate the solutions that they will implement themselves.
Some individuals have simplified the process by concentrating solely on the initial part of the phrase “make the actors work together.” They believe that facilitation involves encouraging individuals to express themselves, communicate with each other, share their ideas, cooperate, and trust each other. New tools have emerged that are very effective in promoting this collaboration (Klaxoon, Yellow, Miro, etc.). However, at this stage, you are not facilitating; you are animating the meeting.
The facilitation must take into account the second part of the sentence, namely, “so that they can appropriate the solutions that they will implement themselves.” This is where the facilitation adds significant value by ensuring the appropriation of the chosen solution(s) by all involved parties. Only this appropriation will guarantee the implementation of the chosen solutions. To develop appropriation, the facilitator will have to work on the meeting process (upstream, during the working session, and downstream) to ensure that the appropriation is real. Its primary tool will be listening to the participants’ body language and the team’s overall dynamics.
It already takes a certain level of facilitation experience to perceive body language and team dynamics during presencial sessions. So, having tried it in different formats, I can assure you that it is very difficult, or even impossible, to perceive the body language and dynamics of the team through a video conference session. Therefore, I have a real problem with what some call virtual facilitation.
How can I get facilitation training?
One day of training is enough to understand the theoretical approach to facilitation, but mastering it is much more difficult. Indeed, facilitation is an art, and just like any other art, it requires constant practice to enhance and grow. Practice alone will strengthen your facilitation skills, and the best starting approach is co-facilitation (groups of 7 to 12 people with 2 facilitators) or town meetings with a lead facilitator (groups of several dozen participants, managed by the lead facilitator), who will work, over shorter intervals of time, in several ad hoc subgroups, each with their own facilitator. The co-facilitation will let you practice with an experienced facilitator, allowing you to try different approaches without fear of failure. The facilitation in the town meeting format with a lead facilitator will allow you, for the second time, to practice your art in a small group while having the point-by-point support of an experienced facilitator to guide you.
In short, with the support of experienced facilitators, the deployment of collective intelligence will be effective. Your teams will develop a habit of collaborative dynamics, leading to the acceleration of problem-solving, malfunction-fixing, and opportunity-seizing solutions, precisely because these groups will have identified these solutions. Moving on to action will measure their work’s effectiveness. And if the result is still not up to your expectations, this implementation will have identified additional information (which you could not have obtained otherwise) that will improve the initial solutions.