Facilitation is a tool to enable groups to discuss and plan more effectively together.
Facilitators encourage principles of inclusion, shared understanding, full participation, and shared responsibility at community meetings, focus groups or staff team building sessions. The facilitation process within the context of group decision making empowers an organization, community or a sub-section of the community to own the process, resulting solution and outcome of implementation. It is therefore seen to produce more workable, authentic, and creative alternatives. However, groups often become frustrated with the process because participants come with their own frames of reference. They see the issues at hand from the point of view of their own lives and are often unable to bridge the gap between their own reality and that of the other participants.