Impove your creative process: the facilitator's role

At Triggers, we like to think that a creative team is like an orchestra where you have all these different individuals making different noises; all together, they can sound incredibly beautiful or utterly terrible.

So what's the element that separates a good orchestra from a bad one? Undoubtedly, you need people that know how to play their instruments, but you also need a director.

The director is what we call "the facilitator role". Does the director know to play the instruments better than his/her musicians? No. Does s/he impose how to play every single note? No. The director is someone who gives sense to the whole composition, making each instrument sound the best s/he can and coordinate with the others in a beautiful way.

That's a facilitator. In the creative world, we also have directors, although they don't deal with musical notes, but ideas and perspectives.

We found out that, when brainstorming and doing creative sessions, having someone that looks out for the direction, agenda, methods and goals can be the key. This person doesn't have to necessarily influence on the ideas, but on the process.

A facilitator would have enough general knwoledge to sense what kind of method is needed for each project, and enough empathy to stop, re-start and offer help at the right time. In that way, creative professionals can relax and do what they do best; create.

If you haven't done it yet, we encourage you to try it out. Put a facilitator in your life.