Generalist World
Posts
Expert facilitator shares GOLDEN advice

Expert facilitator shares GOLDEN advice

Listen now (42 mins)

Milly Tamati
October 04, 2025

🔔 THE DOORS ARE OPEN!

40+ amazing generalists have joined our final cohort of 2025! We're accepting new members until Wednesday 7th October.

Here's what you get when you become a GW member, and here's how to access flexible payment options.

Or listen now:

Spotify // Apple

Perle is a freelance facilitator specialising in large-scale online workshops, a former Head of Communications at an international NGO, and an in-house facilitator who has designed sessions for distributed teams across multiple continents. Previously, she spent several years working with organisations operating in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Nigeria, transitioning her strategy sessions from in-person gatherings to inclusive online formats during COVID-19. Her work as a facilitator ranges from 300-person workshops with live translation in four languages to intimate team development sessions to community-building events for climate-focused organisations. Perle is also a volunteer facilitator with Work on Climate, a 30,000+ member community where she tested and refined her methodology for engaging massive online audiences.

What you'll learn:

How to design workshop experiences using the Chaos Pilots 5E model (excitement, entry, engagement, exit, extension) to guide groups from their current state to desired outcomes
Why maintaining neutrality as a facilitator—using clean questions and avoiding evaluative responses—creates psychological safety and equal participation across diverse groups
The critical distinction between transactional, emotional, and social communication layers that remote organisations must address to build genuine connection beyond their immediate teams
How "starter energy" versus "maintainer energy" defines career trajectories and why recognising your natural inclination accelerates professional fulfilment and business success
Why the first 15 minutes of any large gathering determine engagement levels and how to create comfort through active welcoming, voice activation, and multiple participation pathways
The power of testing business ideas systematically before committing, allowing energy levels and genuine interest to guide strategic decisions rather than assumptions
How simplicity and clarity in online facilitation trumps complex tools, with methods like liberating structures' "1-4-All" providing individual reflection time before group discussion
Why gathering people around cultural topics and human experiences—not just social hours—builds the emotional connections that remote teams desperately need for collaboration

Some takeaways:

Purpose precedes gathering—clarity prevents cultural damage: The most critical facilitation mistake occurs before any session begins: failing to ask why you're gathering people and what they need from the experience. Without clarity on the group's starting point and desired destination, even well-designed sessions reinforce bad culture. When participants say beforehand that "nothing will come of this," you're signalling that leadership doesn't follow through, which undermines trust across the organisation. Every gathering must have clear purpose and committed follow-through, or it actively damages organisational culture.

Remote work demands intentional emotional connection: Remote organisations typically excel at transactional communication (functional planning and execution) and surface-level social interaction (Slack banter and quick check-ins), but they struggle dramatically with emotional communication—the layer where people share feelings, vulnerabilities, and authentic human connection. While your direct colleagues may fulfill all three communication needs, relationships with the broader organisation remain shallow and transactional. Without intentional structure to facilitate deeper connection, employees can't collaborate effectively across teams or feel genuine belonging to the larger mission.

Comfort creates engagement; safety remains subjective: Creating comfort rather than safety should be the facilitator's primary goal in large group settings, because safety means different things to different people and isn't something you can guarantee. Comfort comes from clear expectations, multiple engagement pathways, and removing surprises. The facilitator's job is creating varied participation options (chat waterfalls, Mentimeter polls, breakout discussions, reflection time) so people can engage authentically while maintaining their individual comfort zones in an environment filled with competing digital distractions.

Neutrality enables authentic participation: Using clean questions—phrases like "what do you mean by that," "tell us more," or "what do you notice"—removes the facilitator's opinion from conversations and creates space for participants to position themselves authentically. Equally important is avoiding evaluative responses to contributions. Saying "amazing" or "so insightful" to one person's answer implicitly devalues others' contributions. Simply saying "thank you" maintains neutrality, preserves psychological safety, and prevents participants from self-censoring based on your reactions.

Starter energy differs fundamentally from maintainer energy: The Ikigai framework—mapping the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs—can catalyse major career transitions when applied systematically. The framework works because it forces honest assessment across all four dimensions simultaneously, revealing when a role only satisfies one or two quadrants while leaving others unfulfilled. This clarity makes difficult transitions feel necessary rather than risky, even when a current employer can't accommodate the evolution.

Systematic testing reveals sustainable business models: The first year of freelancing should be dedicated to systematic experimentation rather than immediate monetisation if financial runway permits. Testing in-person workshops revealed they were fine but didn't generate energy. Volunteering with a 30,000-member climate community to facilitate large online workshops revealed the sweet spot: massive groups, online format, high energy, meaningful impact. This approach of forming hypotheses, testing variables, and following energy signals prevents locking into business models that don't align with your strengths.

Broad methodologies solve specific pain points: Maintaining a broad toolkit across multiple facilitation methodologies (Lego Serious Play, liberating structures, authentic relating) while specialising in a specific delivery format (large online groups) creates maximum flexibility and value. Rather than becoming dogmatic about one approach, this strategy allows meeting groups where they are and addressing their specific pain points. The specialisation isn't in the method but in solving the problem: distributed teams with limited budgets who can't gather in person but need genuine connection and productivity.

AI amplifies the necessity for human facilitation: In an AI-accelerated world where individuals and small businesses can produce content at unprecedented speeds, the need for intentional human connection intensifies rather than diminishes. The technology creates efficiency but also spinning, disorientation, and depletion. Facilitators become more essential because people need help building trust, understanding themselves, and creating genuine relationships with colleagues they may never meet in person. AI amplifies the urgency for spaces where people can slow down, connect authentically, and remember why they're doing the work.

Joy fuels impact; depletion destroys it: Building impactful work requires both doing the thing you love and surrounding yourself with communities that recharge you. Operating from depletion leads to rapid burnout, especially when facing global challenges driven by unhealed trauma and systemic breakdown. The moral imperative isn't just to create your ripple effect but to protect your capacity to keep creating it. Joy, play, and spaces of refuge aren't luxuries—they're the fuel that sustains long-term impact and provides the energetic foundation to keep showing up and facilitating change.

Milly Tamati

Founder, Generalist World

📍I live, work and build from the Scottish highlands

Reply

or to participate.