Participants make up their minds about a facilitator fast. Before the first exercise, before anyone has seen your agenda design or your clever tool, they have decided whether you are someone they can trust with their time and their honesty.
That is why I think of Presence as the foundation of the INIFAC competencies. When we built the PAC³E model from a global survey of more than 450 facilitators and clients, Presence came out as competency A: Presence, Assessment, Communication, Control, Consistency, Engagement. Everything else on the list works better when the room believes you are really there.
What INIFAC means by Presence
People hear “presence” and picture a commanding stage personality. That is not what the competency describes. INIFAC breaks it into five observable behaviors:
- You project confidence in your own skills and your ability to lead the group.
- Warmth and caring. The group can tell you want them to succeed.
- You understand how your energy affects participants, and you choose a style that fits the audience and the topic.
- You adjust your own style and language to the group in front of you.
- Self-awareness. You know your strengths and your weaknesses.
Notice what is missing from the list: volume, charisma, and a polished delivery. A quiet facilitator can show all five. A dynamic one can miss most of them.
A story from my own work
Early in my career, I was brought in to facilitate a session, and everyone warned me about the room ahead of time. Most of the people there, I was told, didn’t talk. They waited for the leader to give them direction.
I walked in expecting a quiet, passive group. That is not what I saw. These were people who were afraid of saying the wrong thing. With a few exceptions, they felt the leadership team judged every comment they made, and staying silent felt a lot safer than being wrong in front of the boss.
I realized my agenda would not matter yet. In that room, people needed to feel valued before they would contribute anything. So I changed how we began. I asked the leader to open the session himself, with a heartfelt message that he truly wanted to hear from them. He did, and with that he made it a safe place to speak.
When he finished, I felt the room relax a little, but no one was convinced yet. That came a few minutes later, when I had everyone write down their answer to the first question before anyone spoke. Then people shared, one by one. They watched the leader’s face as the ideas came out, and they saw his pleasant surprise at the quality of some of them, on topics that were key to him. That was when they started to believe he meant it.
The fix was not a clever tool. I read the room, saw it was not the room I had been told about, and changed the plan. That is Presence: warmth and caring toward the people in front of you, and the willingness to adjust to the group you actually have.
The one people skip
Of the five, self-awareness is the one facilitators most often leave out of their own development. We practice techniques. We build tool kits. We rarely sit down and name the two or three habits that help us and the two or three that get in our way.
I used to be afraid of silence. When a question was met with quiet, I assumed I had asked a bad question. Now I use silence on purpose. It gives people time to think of a good answer, especially the introverts.
This is also why INIFAC’s certification process asks candidates to demonstrate Presence in practice, not just describe it. Telling us you read the room is easy. Showing us in practice, on video, what you actually did is different.
Three ways to work on it this month
- Ask for one observation. After your next session, ask a trusted participant or co-facilitator one question: “When did I seem most like myself, and when did I seem least?”
- Change one word choice. Pick a group you work with often and notice which of your phrases only make sense inside your own profession. Replace one.
- Name your opening energy on purpose. Before you walk in, decide whether this group needs you calmer, brighter, slower, or sharper than you naturally are. Then check at the first break whether it landed.
Where do you stand?
If you want a baseline, INIFAC offers a free Facilitation Skills Self Assessment that scores you against the core competencies, Presence included: https://inifac.org/facilitation-skills-self-assessment/
You can also read all 30 sub-competencies on our competencies page: https://inifac.org/facilitation-competencies/
If you are ready to have your own facilitation measured against the highest standard in the field, start here: https://inifac.org/the-certification-process/
Want to go further? Join us for a webinar on Presence on Wednesday, December 9, at 11:00 AM ET. – we are confirming this and let’s see if someone else can run it.
Next month: Assessment, the competency that happens mostly before you walk into the room.