Welcome to lesson four, our final lesson in this course. Okay, so now we meet our planning table and walk through some examples, we're ready to go. So, some things to think about now that you've got your full plan outlined out. The first is Practice, practice never hurt anyone, it's always a good idea to run through what you're hoping to facilitate. It shouldn't take a lot of time. And you're really going to be glad that you did it.

Some things to pay attention to timing. So how long did it actually take you to go through what you have outlined out? And does it fit in the time that you've been allotted? The other thing is to ask yourself, does it feel natural, it should feel conversational, and natural. So really pay attention to if you have too much written out, it's all too scripted, etc, right? You feel natural, and the other is to assign times each of your sections right on your planning session.

Little taters table. And if you didn't do that, go back and make sure you did. And the other thing is always give yourself more time, give yourself a cushion, because you never start on time. It's just the way it goes. And people will need some time to process what you're sharing if you're doing something where they have to fill things out or answer questions. So just think about the human process of whatever it is you're presenting to them and make sure you always give yourself more time.

Okay, so now you're in the room. I'm going to revisit the spreadsheet example here for a second. So I want you to think about whatever it is that you've outlined through the facilitators planning table as kind of your grid, right. And everyone that's in the room is are the inputs that are going to be filling in the blanks, the numbers, the data in the spreadsheet, in the various columns, and then you being the facilitator, you're doing quality control and I use that term loosely. Because you don't want to be a judgmental facilitator, and you really want everyone to feel welcome to contribute, you're really a guide to help things land in the right columns or combine cells, I think sounds similar. And always using the approach of asking a question back to the group, or the person who's contributing.

And really what you're doing is moving things around to create an organized spreadsheet that everyone agrees on. So in closing, your plan of attack for the unknown, or any of the things you might be fearing, as my colleague was, and a little pep talk, is that remember that you're always a guide when you're facilitating. And so you've got to just go with the flow. If you ever feel lost, you can ask a question back to the group. Tell me more about XYZ. How else can we say that, etc.

If things get heated and you feel like you can't reach consensus suggest coming back to something and moving forward. It's really about embracing going with that. flow and remembering that it's a dialog. So with that, that concludes facilitation 101. Hopefully I gave you enough to just on the fly, be able to quickly prep, whatever you've been asked to facilitate or share with a group. So we'll see you next time and happy good hustling.