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Facilitation is one of, if not the, most important competency to develop for successful community engagement in Dialogue & Deliberation¹.

Facilitators play an important role in successfully carrying through Dialogue & Deliberation participation. The facilitators hold the important responsibilities of being the guide, the motivator, the questioner, the bridge builder, the clairvoyant, the peacemaker, and the taskmaster. They must be able to stay impartial, allow and prompt participants to process and engage with materials and concepts, keep the discussion moving and on task, call on all participants to take part in the discussion, encourage deeper thinking and reflection, and mediate tension and conflict—especially between participants and subject matter experts and organizers—in order to guide participants toward common ground and group decision making.

To encourage discussion, facilitators must be able to build trust with their participants and they must be alert and aware of the various dynamics at play. Including facilitators who represent and share similar backgrounds to the participants and the community may be important for ensuring participants have trust in the process and represented by those guiding the discussions (e.g., including facilitators who represent gender, racial, and ethnic diversity). In addition, facilitators must be able to build bridges across divides and help find common ground, thereby engaging diverse voices and values and creating space for people from different backgrounds to disagree and also come to mutual decisions.

While the goals for the meeting will be set by the organizers in the design and structure of the meeting, the facilitators will have the important role of meeting the goals through the discussion. In developing the Dialogue & Deliberation programming, organizers must also develop capacity for facilitating the public engagement events. This includes identifying who should serve as facilitators and, if necessary, holding trainings to prepare the facilitators for the events. Trainings and preparations should allow