You have to lay aside your agenda. You have to go through a stripping down of any emotional responses to the participant's agenda. What I am hired on to do is to help promote and evolve that agenda. I can bring in ideas that are contrary, but you have to do it in a special way.

In preparation, erase the larger agenda. Get rid of the fears and opportunities. The attention has to be on assisting what is occurring. You have to know when it is right to challenge the agenda. It is correct to challenge it if it helps it to be a better agenda. It is not right to challenge it just because you disagree. If you are a participant facilitator, the rules are different because you are not being paid to facilitate it.

Once you understand why you are there, and once you are in that neutral place, you can bring out things that have come up in the reports. If you plan what you are going to say, you will get checkmated. You come up not knowing what you are going to say.

000706.Matt Taylor