Business Facilitation Practices

On this part of the AIEF website some of the most effective facilitation practices used by its members will be documented. The aim is to make these available to fellow members, potential members and small business owners. These practices may also be used by journalists and the media to highlight useful business practice.

We invite you to document (as extensively or as briefly as you prefer) your most effective experiences and practices as a business facilitator. Please use the template below as a guide.


Please copy the template, complete as many details as you can for a particular practice and forward by email to Kathy Griffiths at the AIEF Secretariat at info@aief.org.au.


Facilitation vs advising

Members of the AIEF are experts at assisting people with business decisions in order to help them get to where they want to go. The essence of good facilitation (and indeed good teaching) is to have a 'minimum need for control'. Enabling a person to learn and develop is much more empowering and useful than 'filling up the heads' of clients with knowledge that, in these modern times, is very temporary.


Six steps in facilitation:
  1. Listening: an effective enterprise facilitator is a good listener, almost like a 'business psychiatrist'. Allowing the business person time to fully articulate (download) the issue or problem without comment or interruption is crucial. The whole picture is important. Once the story is told then the facilitator needs to go back, ask questions and clarify any issues that are unclear.

  2. Questioning: There may be questions that need to be asked of the business person to complete the picture. For example, if the client’s issue is difficulty in reaching the market a question might be – 'can you describe your market for me?' The answer may well indicate a basic lack of understanding of their target market. However never be judgemental. It is all about bringing the person to self-realisation.

  3. Brainstorming and idea generation: it is important for a facilitator to not limit the range of problem solving options available to a client. Both client and facilitator will have ideas that could be tried however, to use a former US Secretary of Defense’s (Dennis Rumsfeld) words, 'you don't know what you don’t know'. There are ideas and potential solutions to a problem that may have never occurred to either you or the client. The words 'what if...' should be often heard in a conversation between an enterprise facilitator and a client. 'What if we looked at the market differently? What if you targeted a different segment of the market? What if you changed the way you are promoting the product?' Etc etc. Often the client will say 'we tried that'! Don’t let get them away with that.' What did you do and why do you think it did not work?' They also should be encouraged to have their staff contribute to the brainstorming. Staff should feel part of the team and the solution and it is good to use a white board for this and document it so that nothing is lost.

  4. Business planning: the process of building a business plan is very useful. Business planning never stops and a business plan is always 'work-in-progress'. What is valuable is to continuously work at it, update it, improve it. An effective business facilitator will endeavour to get the business enterprise owner to think about their business plan and how the current problem fits into the plan. The adage ‘working on the business’ not ‘working in the business’ is relevant here. Every business owner must think about the big picture – occasionally. You as their facilitator should help them do this. If there is no business plan under way then you should endeavour to get them to start to build one.

  5. Action: he or she came to you to get a resolve for their problem. You have listened, helped them brainstorm options and let them see the issue in the context of their business plan. Now you need to help them take action. You will have other sources of information, contacts and networks and now he or she needs a plan of action. With your help, the client needs to set out a series of steps that can be taken to try to resolve the problem or address the issue. You can suggest that after each step is taken (or milestone reached) they could communicate the outcome to you for your comment. Other ideas might occur depending on what outcomes have been reached. However you are not providing advice – you are offering a process by which they can solve their problem.

  6. Reflecting: some time later you should contact the client and check out how things are going. This would be reassuring for them but also provide valuable feed-back for you on the process you used and the effectiveness of various actions taken. It will help you improve as a facilitator.


Colin Dunn – AIEF Secretary