“Should we use an internal or external facilitator?” Good question. Everyone has experienced good and not-so-good facilitators. All too frequently, the ‘poor’ experiences can be attributed to the selection of the facilitator. Break that down further, and you may discover you chose an internal facilitator when you should have hired someone from outside your organization (or an external facilitator). The next time you’re faced with this choice, rather than guess, use the twenty questions below to determine whether to use an internal or external facilitator.

Keep in mind that the topic of “change” drives the need for facilitation. Change makes many people uncomfortable. Some attribute the resistance to change to the FUD factor—Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Therefore, this article will help remove the mystique of deciding which type of facilitator will be optimal, and more importantly, why.

Internal Facilitator Defined

Internal facilitation depends on people who are part of the organization, project, or community as meeting managers. In organizations, they frequently represent middle or upper-level staff members. We refer to those with skills in guiding group discussions, activities, and consensual decision-making. Internal facilitators may or may not have substantive knowledge or expertise in the technical/content issues that are being discussed. Above all, content knowledge is not critical, although facilitators must be conversant in the terms and language.

External Facilitator Defined

External facilitation depends on people from outside the organization, frequently in the form of a ‘consultant’. Facilitators external to the organization provide meeting design, activities, and decision-making tools. They assist the group in building consensus and taking action. Hence, external facilitators should have no vested interest or bias toward supporting a specific decision.

Justification and Logic for Internal or External Facilitators

Groups need meetings that make progress, and good facilitation makes this possible. A skilled facilitator and meeting designer develop an effective process that guides the discussion to get results. Facilitators can be either internal to your group, or external. Both types have advantages and disadvantages.

What is the logic of the decision? Following the discussion below you will find a tool with 20 simple questions. Using three to five minutes to answer them will help you quickly determine if you should keep it ‘inside’ or hire someone from ‘outside.’ And when the decision is not clear, the tool makes evident the risk factors to consider. 

First, a brief discussion about twelve factors to consider.

Six Factors that Favor the Use of Internal Facilitators

Reasons for Internal Facilitator	Logic and Justification
Content Knowledge	Internal facilitators often have detailed knowledge about the issue(s) being discussed.
Context Awareness	They have knowledge of the history and context of the situation. Critically, they have knowledge and/ or relationships with many of the participants and stakeholders.
Life-cycle	Presumably, internal facilitators will still be around after the workshop and perhaps must live with any projects or initiatives that result.
Out-of-Pocket Cost	Likely less, probably much less
Quicker	Internal facilitators don’t require as much time to become familiar with the issue, context, participants, and stakeholders involved. Therefore, by balancing their workload, internal facilitators can be made available almost instantly with management support.
Respect	As a known agent, internal facilitators may be more respected than another ‘outsider’ or ‘consultant’ who may not be trusted.

 

Six Factors that Favor the Use of External Facilitators

Reasons for External Facilitators	Logic and Justification
Better Agenda Design	Professional external facilitators understand and rely on the importance of meeting design. Some call this methodology, but in a practical sense, it includes the agenda steps, activities, and tools that will be sequenced to create the deliverable, aka what DONE looks like. Additionally, experience and increased expertise working with other clients and industries create special expertise that helps bring in new ways of looking at problems and solutions.
Challenge the Moment	One strength of external facilitators is the ability to spot important insights and redirect focus to ensure that important, yet tangential issues, get explored. Therefore, external facilitators may bring a fresh perspective and new questions. They should be willing to ask difficult questions and confront commonly held assumptions.
Challenge the Status Quo	Coming from a broad range of industries, external facilitators are better skilled at challenging groupthink. They can use their external insights to challenge deep internal paradigms and assumptions. On the contrary, internal facilitators may not be willing to risk their standing within the community and be fearful of retribution
Focused Preparation	Full-time professional external facilitators know how to plan and run successful workshops to get the most out of the significant resource investment you have allocated or invested. External facilitators plan so they can deliver maximum value for the duration of the session.
Neutrality and Independence	External facilitators help participants feel like they ‘own’ the outcomes. On the contrary, internal facilitators may be perceived to lend bias, against participants, stakeholders, and decisions.
Sponsor Fully Participates	By using external facilitators, the sponsor(s) or decision-maker(s) can be fully engaged and present during discussions.

 

Scoring the Attractiveness of Using Internal or External Facilitators

Simply write to us if you prefer to receive the following as a quick and simple spreadsheet that you can modify or adapt. For example, you could weigh the questions and multiply the weights by your score to develop a weighted score. However, the simple approach suggested below will take you less than five minutes. It will generate a score that will be a positive integer between twenty and one hundred. 

Scoring Interpretation

Higher numbers incline toward favoring external facilitators while lower numbers favorably encourage the use of internal facilitators. We recommend using either the numbers one (favors internal), three (equal ranking), or five (favors external).  However, if you are stuck or need some flexibility, we’ve kept the door open for you to use the numbers two (slightly favors internal facilitators) or four (slightly favors external facilitators) if required.

Conclusion—Interpretation of Results

While not a statistically tested tool, we know the logic remains directionally correct. Smaller numbers (associated with less meeting risk) favor using internal facilitators. Hence, larger numbers (associated with greater meeting risk) favor the use of external facilitators.

Based on a sampling we conducted, scores of fifty and below favor the use of internal facilitators and also indicate less risky workshop sessions. Scores of seventy-five and above favor the use of external facilitators and also indicate more risky workshop sessions. Therefore, scoring provides a leading indication you can use to decide.

If you score between fifty and seventy-five, which direction does it favor? While it may not matter too much, look at the questions driving the scores and ask yourself which ones (s) are most important. If unable to develop clear insight, perhaps you should consider a combination with the external facilitator taking the lead, supported by an internal facilitator. Or, perhaps consider an internal facilitator taking the lead, mentored by an external facilitator.

NOTE: While the factors used are not independent variables, they all deserve consideration. For example, the scope could be narrow such as the acquisition of a single company but many stakeholders are required including finance, HR, legal, etc. Conversely, the scope could be wide such as the acquisition of a new product line but the stakeholder involvement might be restricted to customer contacts such as marketing, sales, and customer service.

“Facilitation represents an approach used by appointed individuals, which teams foster to build capacity and support practice change. Increased understanding of facilitation roles constitutes an asset in training practitioners such as organizational development experts, consultants, facilitators, and facilitation teams. It also helps decision makers become aware of the multiple roles and dynamics involved and the key competencies needed to recruit external facilitators or members of interprofessional facilitation teams.”[1]

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[1] Implementation Science, “External facilitators and interprofessional facilitation teams: a qualitative study of their roles in supporting practice change”, Received 2015 Sep 15; Accepted 2016 Jun 16, Sylvie Lessard, Céline Bareil, Lyne Lalonde, Fabie Duhamel, Eveline Hudon, Johanne Goudreau, and Lise Lévesque, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947272/

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

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In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining