How do you adjust your facilitation approach when time constraints are tighter than expected?

When time constraints are tighter than expected, it's crucial to adjust your facilitation approach to ensure that essential objectives are met efficiently. Here's how to adapt effectively:  Prioritize objectives  Streamline activities  Increase pace  Modify format  Delegate  Time-box rigorously  Summarize frequently  Reduce transition times  Leverage pre-work  Focus on action items  Use parking lots  Adjust energy levels  Communicate changes  Be flexible with formats  Follow-up plan By implementing these strategies, you can ensure that your facilitation remains effective and productive, even under tight time constraints.

Identify tradeoffs and share decision-making. Often times, I'll outline different versions of the sessions (whether verbally or in a quick sketch) and identify how different approaches meet the goals at hand. Having your client partner share in the trade-offs is key. If you can identify work that the client can do outside of the session to mitigate or co-own the tradeoffs, you're more likely to leave satisfied with the outcomes. (E.g. I can get us to goals A and C because it is the best use of an external facilitator, but you can get to B after our session.) Packed agendas and overextended facilitation is the norm. Part of your role as a facilitator is to educate on various pathways and realistically manage expectations.

Goal prioritization is the process of ranking goals based on their urgency. It helps you focus on the most critical tasks and avoid getting bogged down in less important works. Once you have assessed your goals' importance, urgency, and value, it's time to determine your priorities. This means deciding which tasks should be done first and ensuring they are completed on time. Break down a goal into smaller tasks, making it easier to achieve. Here are the top five things to prioritize in life: - Good health. Health is wealth! - Family and Relationships. Be social, dress well, go out with family, go out with friends and have some fun. - confidence, Self-Investment, and Self-Improvement - Money/Work - Balance of mind, body and soul

Long before your session decide what the intended outcome is meant to be and of course the purpose of the session. They might be the same, or actually conflict with each other and this is where you need to start before you can prioritise goals.

It depends on whether you knew the time was tight beforehand or not. Most people I meet that either speak, present, teach, train or facilitate tend to prepare too much content and then when in action often find that time is against them. Simplifying the process should happen BEFORE the workshop; less is always more especially when you are facilitating engagement.

Enhancing engagement takes time, and that is often underestimated by those who design such session. Dynamic facilitation is slightly different to more traditional approaches that follow an agenda. It focuses on: feeding off the energy of the group listening with purpose building upon ideas offered using tools to help visualise contributions (mind maps) adopt empathic responses Dynamic facilitation sometimes feels out of control and in the moment, but it's exciting, and incredibly good for engagement - just remember it takes longer than normal

Love using technology as most people will have their phones in the session. Menti is a favourite and doing quick polls with live visuals engage and keep interest going amongst the group

If you as a facilitator are confronted with a tighter time schedule than expected, you should definitely lower expectations and the number of planned activities. All too often the suggested timeframe is limiting the process of the group and when time is up, people are just getting in the swing of things. Remaining flexible in your schedule is essential therefore.

This goes back to point 1 about being clear regarding what is expected in terms of outcome, why session is important and the design. Very hard to adjust expectations at this point if they have been overstretched from the start.

After the session, reflect on why it was overrunning. Was it because you were being responsive to delegate needs, allowing discussion to continue on an item of real interest in the day? Was it due to something unexpected, like additional delegates or a tech failure? Or was it down to you not anticipating well enough how long things might take? Your responses to these questions will help you plan better for future sessions.

Prioritising essential content by identifying the core objectives and focusing on the most critical elements that will achieve these goals is key. Every training has a must, should and could in terms of objectives and the content they try. The duration helps determine which of these need to be trimmed. And the modifying activities to adjust to the duration can help manage time.