"I am an IT Business Consultant, but I am also a master-level facilitator. I am asked to assist with large planning sessions often. I recently facilitated a strategic planning session with several of the technology department leaders within our organization. Everyone involved had a big personality and was used to having their ideas turn into a plan of action.

The group was ignoring the ground rules of brainstorming and was mostly focused on tearing each other's ideas down. It became evident that there was a lot of unresolved conflict within this peer group and I need to take action. I stopped the meeting and explained to them that as a facilitator, I am not a leader of the group and that I am a neutral party invested in ensuring that everyone has a safe space to discuss their ideas. I let them know that we would not be able to move forward unless they were willing to set their titles and egos aside and get back on track.

Everyone agreed to follow the ground rules so that we could get a solid list of ideas to select from. They were pleased with the list but then began to argue about how we should prioritize it. It became clear that the original plan of voting would not work as there were alliances within the group that would have made the process unfair. I developed a scorecard matrix on the fly that we could use to rate each item as a group. I shut down any lobbying and steered everyone back to an analytical approach to keep conflicts to a minimum. We focused on the data as opposed to the feelings in the room and ultimately developed a solid plan that everyone was at a consensus with.

After the meeting one of the VPs pulled me aside and complimented my facilitation skills. He said he did not want to attend the meeting initially because the cliques involved always end up fighting and ignoring the best ideas. He told me he had never seen someone ignore titles, call out poor behavior, and drive a session to a healthy and successful outcome the way I had. It was a bold move on my part, but it was the right thing to do. I am confident in my facilitation skills and I think everyone knew I respect them and had the best interests of our company in mind."