20 Tips

Tip 5: Be Prepared

The familiar real estate axiom is that the three most important things in a property are location, location and location. In community leadership--and in teaching generally--one could piggyback on this axiom and say the three most important things are preparation, preparation and preparation. There’s simply no substitute for it (as some of us have seen from witnessing an unprepared group leader or teacher.)
Facilitating a community group means you will need to give some thought to how you’ll begin the group meeting, what concepts you’ll cover, approximately how much time you’ll be devoting to each of them, some proposed answers for each topic, and a way to bring the meeting to a close. In your planning, though, don’t worry about becoming an expert on the subject matter. Great facilitation can easily happen even though you might lack expertise. But it’s unlikely to happen without some planning and preparation.