There are a lot of different practices included within that definition from doing developmental intervention in regular meetings to running workshops to conducting experience-based training. It implies that facilitators can have different levels of knowledge and skill, can work on all kinds of problems and challenges, can be servant of the group in fulfilling its desire or can push the group to keep digging until they find what needs to be done or where they need to go. Most importantly, it recognizes as a real facilitator the meeting attendee who jumps up and starts writing on the chalk board the key points that are being discussed, or puts up a hand and suggests that the group focus on a single problem or find out a little about each other or agree on how they're going to make decisions, based on nothing more than an intuitive sense that something is amiss. But when you're going to call yourself a facilitator, you need to have some solid foundation from which to work, or else you'll feel like just another group leader or just another note taker. While volumes have been written and graduate degrees offered on each of these topics, the basics of facilitation are easily learned and provide a large measure of meeting improvement.
Facilitation is like playing the piano.
You can practice the piano for years, learning new skills, pieces, and exercises and gaining experience and confidence. By the same token, the basics of facilitation make a world of difference in how well groups work together. For simplicity, I will assume that you are going to facilitate a straightforward meeting or problem solving session. Interview key players looking for themes, areas of agreement and contention, working styles, and hidden agendas. This will help you gain a sense of what to expect, as well as giving you an opportunity to let the participants know what to expect.