Moving From Small to Large Group Facilitation

The leap to convening groups of 100 people or more, or 1000 or more, in one place at one time can be very intimidating. But in reality, the leap is not as great as you might expect. It is important to understand some of the critical differences that require attention in the design and delivery phases. Let me explain a few of the shifts that occur when scaling events beyond a hundred or so individuals.

being there: in small groups, there is usually greater similarity in the attendees and a greater commonality in purpose in being there, in larger groups, there is usually greater diversity in participants and often completely different reasons for being there

participation: in small groups, there is usually time for everyone to speak to the entire audience; in larger groups, there is rarely this opportunity, but some can do it, and almost everyone can speak in front of a small group if that is designed into the flow

flow: smaller group facilitation can permissibly get off track in order to pursue interesting ideas or approaches; in larger groups, this can lead to wholesale process breakdowns, part of the large event can be designed to accommodate this, but the lead facilitator needs to stage the activities to create flow over time

consensus: the smaller the group, the fewer the individuals that need to align to reach consensus; in large groups, consensus looks more like a cloud of opinions that may point in a general direction than a lineup of support for a singular approach; there are a variety of consensus techniques for large groups, many that are visual

conversation: in small groups, most participants can attend to the full conversation as it occurs throughout the meeting; in large events, there are series of conversations that allows people to come together and move apart, this creates the need to summarize and capture outcomes and results along the way, think multiple cycles of divergence and convergence

technology: in small groups, more technology can generally be used with a low consequence when it fails; in larger groups, even small failures in technology can be exponentially disruptive, analog is often better than digital, and simple is often better than complex

Next week, I'll add some "recipes for success" a set of tools that I have learned honed that make the design and delivery of large scale events successful and rewarding.