Workforce Learning

Article: HR Consultants’ Outsider Status Opens Facilitator Roles
By: Lin Grensing-Pophal, SPHR
Issue: November 2008
Publication: SHRM

Because organizations often look for non-biased, third-party perspectives to address issues that impact their workforces, the outsider status of HR consultants provides them with opportunities. Facilitating employee focus groups, strategic planning sessions and conflict resolution situations can be enhanced by HR consultants because of their independent status.

Leila Bulling Towne, an executive coach and organizational development consultant with The Bulling Towne Group, LLC, says the most common opportunities for an HR consultant to provide facilitation services are executive offsite events such as strategic planning sessions, team development workshops or workshops that demonstrate niche knowledge such as behavioral interviewing, giving feedback or transitioning from management to leadership. In those settings, HR consultants act much like an internal director or vice president of HR, except that the consultant takes an impartial position. Being an outsider in such a setting allows the HR consultant to glean the participants’ opinions. The facilitator, who is not encumbered by having to work daily with the event’s participants, can use the participants’ opinions to guide the team toward effective, strategic decisions, she says.

While HR consultants are generally hired by organizations to produce something — a report, a plan, a training program — when it comes to facilitation, an HR consultant might not produce anything tangible. Instead they assume the role of leading a group through an interactive process.

What Companies Look For

As with any service provided, success as a facilitator requires understanding and meeting corporate needs. “A knack for quickly confirming how the challenge you will facilitate ties directly to the business is top of the list,” Bulling Towne says.

In addition, there are guidelines companies use to decide which facilitator to hire. These criteria are:

• Recommendations by other HR professionals that attest to the facilitator’s integrity
• The facilitator’s focus on strategic planning
• Whether the facilitator is locked into a particular planning model
• Whether the facilitator has experience in the specific area of HR being discussed
• Whether the facilitator is a good listener
• Whether the facilitator has the right personality for the client

Aside from specific facilitation needs within organizations, HR consultants might find that facilitation can take unique formats.

Ray Silverstein, president of PRO: President’s Resource Organization, a network of entrepreneurial peer-advisory groups in Phoenix and Chicago, says entrepreneurial isolation is one of the most challenging aspects of owning a business. PRO offers services that fill the need of entrepreneurs who might feel isolated by creating a forum in which participants can share ideas and validate decisions. Every month, the network provides members with an opportunity to pose business problems to the group and ask for suggestions, he says. “Peer group discussions prompt members to step back and take the long view, to think about their goals and plans,” he adds.

Providing Value

Not all organizations value the role of the outside facilitator, and some might consider it an unnecessary expense. In addition, some executives associate facilitation with “ice-breaking exercises that made them feel uncomfortable at some point in their careers” — linking negative baggage to the word “facilitation,” Bulling Towne says. HR consultants can overcome such resistance by helping executives understand that a skilled, professional facilitator performs services similar to an executive coach or management consultant, she suggests. Therefore, it is no surprise that many such coaches and consultants are facilitators as well, she adds.

Alice Waagen, president of Workforce Learning, LLC, in Herndon, Va., says the main value that outside facilitators provide to an organization is objectivity. Since facilitators are not part of the contracting organization, facilitators are believed to be objective third parties who can keep things on track and ensure that all voices are heard, she says.

While a prior relationship with a client can help the consultant get hired, it may also create a situation where the client expects preferential treatment, Waagen says. For the facilitation services to be successful, the consultant needs to make clear to the client that the facilitator’s role is that of impartial “traffic cop.” As “traffic cop,” the facilitator sets the meeting’s agenda, reviews it with the participants and guides the meeting. If side conversations or hidden agendas arise, the facilitator needs to verify with the group that they have consensus to go down those paths, she says.

Before the meeting, facilitators need to provide the participants with a clear statement of the meeting’s objective or goal, Waagen adds. Facilitators need to post the objective or goal and, at the beginning of the meeting, get participants to agree to it. The facilitator then needs to stick to the objective throughout the meeting as a way to guide the conversation and process. “If an individual wants to change direction in a way that would take you considerably away from the goal, bring that to the group for consensus,” she says.

In addition, the facilitator is not a content contributor or meeting participant and should not enter into discussions, or offer opinions or ideas, unless it is cleared with the group, Waagen said. To do that, a facilitator should say, “I know something about the issue you are discussing. May I put aside my facilitator role to contribute?” If the facilitator does not make that clear, the facilitator’s role and the purpose of the meeting can become confusing for the participants, she says.

Post-Facilitation Meeting

The HR consultant’s role does not end when the meeting ends. The consultant needs to follow up with the client after the session, says Bulling Towne. After the engagement, conduct an in-person debriefing session at which the consultant connects the dots for the client, she says. Go beyond the 10-minute huddle of “what worked, what didn’t work” and help the client think through how to achieve the agreements made during the workshop. By helping the client with this final step, the consultant shows capabilities of being able to “operate equally well on your feet as you do sitting at the table,” she says. “That leads to longer, deeper relationships.”

About the author
Lin Grensing-Pophal, SPHR, is a Wisconsin-based business journalist with HR consulting experience in employee communication, training and management issues. She is the author of Human Resource Essentials: Your Guide to Starting and Running the HR Function (SHRM, 2002).