Facilitator, moderator or mediator

We’ve all been in meetings where prominent issues needed resolution, but after a couple of hours, the team made little or no progress. A neutral, third-party facilitator, moderator or mediator can help run meetings more efficiently and navigate all parties to desirable outcomes.

Jamie’s manager appointed him to lead a team of cross-functional experts for several meetings among internal auditors and data analysts for an upcoming software upgrade to improve audit quality. Jamie showed great leadership potential, but he didn’t have experience leading such a large team project. During the kickoff meeting, several points of disagreement quickly surfaced between two groups in the meetings. Jamie, in his attempt to exert his leadership, joined in the banter by offering his suggestions and counterpoints. However, four months after the meetings had concluded, the team hadn’t resolved many issues. Unfortunately, management shelved the project, and Jamie’s manager and team questioned his leadership ability.

It wasn’t Jamie’s fault

What Jamie’s bosses didn’t realize is that productive meetings are accomplished in two ways: Project leads or managers assign neutral third-party persons to “administer” the meetings, and they appoint participants to take notes of conversations, including topics and who discussed them. All too often, however, meeting leaders (like Jamie) are actively involved in discussions and trying to take notes simultaneously, which makes for unproductive meetings.

Employees are returning to work in office environments, and in-person meetings are increasing. Let’s look at how we can use neutral third parties to produce efficient, productive and outcome-driven meetings and events.

Facilitators, moderators and mediators

It’s easy to confuse the terms “facilitator,” “moderator” and “mediator.” While each role requires someone to act as a neutral third party to achieve a successful outcome, they aren’t 100% interchangeable — though there can be significant overlap depending on how we define each role and the context of the meeting or event.

Here’s the ugly truth: Many, if not most, individuals placed in any of these three resolution strategy roles have little or no prior training. Managers and other leaders thrust them into their assignments with little guidance because the leaders themselves haven’t been trained for these roles. Too many people think that anybody can be a facilitator, moderator or mediator, but the truth is that unprepared, untrained individuals charged with implementing resolution strategies can inhibit meeting milestones or objectives.

In most instances, facilitation is a tool for business environments, moderation is the option for types of panel discussions and debates, and mediation is the preferred approach to avoid litigation among parties at odds with each other. Most CFEs will find themselves in the roles of facilitator or moderator, and possibly even mediator, at some point in their careers.

Jamie should’ve been a facilitator

As the meeting leader, Jamie failed to increase the team’s effectiveness by improving its process and structure for decision-making. As a facilitator, Jamie should’ve included all participants in the discussion, ensured all voices had an opportunity to contribute and made certain that the result was a productive dialogue.

Jamie also would be responsible for determining whether the meeting addressed individual project milestones as part of the agenda. For example, Jamie could ask: “Is this milestone agenda item on track or is it delayed?” If the consensus is “delayed,” he could allow one or two minutes for discussion. If no solution arises within that time limit, Jamie could appoint individuals to pursue the issue outside of the immediate meeting and then advance to the next milestone agenda item. If the consensus is that a milestone agenda item is on track without issues, Jamie would mark it as “on track” and move on to the next agenda item without any need for discussion.

Too many people think that anybody can be a facilitator, moderator or mediator, but the truth is that unprepared, untrained individuals charged with implementing resolution strategies can inhibit meeting milestones or objectives.

As an engaging facilitator, Jamie can maintain his third-party neutrality by not participating in discussions, nor offering his opinions or insight. If he feels he can contribute more by participating in the discussions, he should ask his manager to appoint someone else as the facilitator. The facilitator’s job is to support the meeting agenda with a calm and inclusive environment for all participants and defuse any tension or arguments that may arise. He could use a flip chart or Post-it notes to capture key ideas or issues participants raise to be included in the meeting minutes. Roger Schwarz, organizational psychologist, leadership team consultant and author of “Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck and Get Results,” (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2nd edition, June 15, 2002) writes of the importance of facilitative skills “increasingly becoming a core competency for leaders, consultants, and others who work with groups.”

Moderator’s role in debate

While it’s probably uncommon for a fraud investigator to moderate a debate, the role bears brief mention here. If you’ve ever watched a debate among presidential contenders, it’s easy to see how frustrating it might be to act as the moderator. A moderator should serve as a neutral third party and champion for the audience in debates and keep participants from straying off topic from the questions raised. The moderator also holds participants to time limits (not often accomplished in presidential debates).

Moderators can ask or reframe questions to let participants fully develop their arguments or positions to maintain the discussion tempo. Nevertheless, a moderator may sometimes find it difficult to remain impartial in public forums where they must enforce various rules of conduct and decorum that either party might violate.

Moderator’s role in panels

If you’re a moderator for a conference panel discussion, you have an important function and can contribute to the session’s success. Conference attendees won’t accept 10 minutes of Q&A or an endless row of panelist speakers these days. They want more participation-driven options like a talk show or interview format, roundtable exchanges that include audience members, “coffee shop” themes and so on. Meeting planners are starting to respond to these requests, which expand and place new demands on a moderator’s role.

Traditional panel discussions hold similar responsibilities for facilitators and moderators. As a moderator, your role is to serve the panelists’ needs and help the audience get the content they need. You set the tone and pace, and keep content “inside the lines” and relevant, while ensuring the panel is lively and engaging and offers value regardless of the format.

A well-prepared moderator understands the need to balance time and format constraints with giving the audience what it came to hear. Speakers must regulate themselves on time as should audience members when participating. Ideally, the best-prepared moderators are “invisible” and don’t call attention to themselves through elaborate commentaries or extemporaneous soliloquies.

If you as a panel moderator are responsible for inviting panel participants, the size of the panel can influence your effectiveness. Large panels (generally more than five panelists) become problematic for providing detailed responses, giving panelists equal airtime, and allowing for audience participation or interaction.

Depending on the panel format, you may be responsible for ensuring panelist PowerPoint slides are properly queued. Be sure to communicate with the conference event coordinator or room monitor before the session.

Role of the mediator

The final neutral third-party resolution strategist is the mediator who oversees discussions among other parties who may be at odds with each other or have points of contention.

As a mediator, you don’t offer prescriptive guidance to any party but manage the interaction among them to arrive at a mutually agreeable resolution or settlement. You encourage constructive communication with specific linguistic techniques (what I call “weapons of persuasion and influence”) to help take the heat out of the room when parties resort to certain language patterns. The constraints inherent in spoken language patterns and rhetorical methods influence how one party thinks about a topic and how the other party hears it.

In an interview with Fraud Magazine, Don Rabon, CFE, president of Successful Interviewing Techniques, acknowledges how word choice and sentence constructions can be critical in contentious situations, especially fraud investigation interviews.

“Every word spoken by the subject is important. That ‘word’ is a subjective choice; that choice is a form of behavior. All behavior is goal-directed. In the mind of the interviewer is the question, ‘Is the goal of this individual’s linguistic behavior to tell me the truth, to deceive me or a combination of both?’” he says.

“Having a working knowledge of the salient linguistic indices lets the interviewer (or mediator) gain insight into not only what the subject is saying but also the purpose of the word selection — the subject’s communication goal.”

During their interviews, both mediators and fraud investigators often observe the language patterns shown in the table below. For example, words and labels come loaded with significance and meaning. Instead of referring to parties as “victim” and “offender,” the term “participants” eliminates the “good person/bad person” context associated with such terms. Such neutral characterizations can help enable resolutions amenable to both parties. Otherwise, the way we use language can create a collision of realities because word patterns can inhibit meaning and restrict agreeable resolution options.

Six language patterns used by parties in mediation. (Modified after “Language Patterns and Mediation,” by Georg Stratemeyer, January 2018, mediate.com.)

Role of mediation in fraud cases

Award-winning author, adjunct professor and dispute resolution mediator Jeffrey Krivis sees opportunities for mediation in cases of suspected fraud claims. (See “Mediating Suspected Fraud Cases,” by Jeffrey Krivis.) It can allow for an early evaluation, strategic exchange of information and the opportunity to engage in dialogue in a safe, non-threatening environment. It also requires complete confidentiality, enhances the probability of a settlement and can eliminate time-consuming, wasteful litigation.

Understand the money value of time

A fraud examiner trained in facilitation, moderation and mediation techniques can raise the bar for efficient meetings, high-value conference panel discussions and successful fraud mediation outcomes.

Over my 33-year career with Fortune 100 companies, academia and the federal government, I’ve facilitated many meetings, moderated and participated in panels and roundtables at a variety of conferences, and mediated disputes between employees. (I won’t include the year I worked as a nightclub bouncer during college.) The lesson I learned early on was that not all meetings need a neutral third-party expeditor. But for those that do, the results can be impressive when overseen and guided by someone who understands how the right language strategies get faster results and increase the money value of time.

Donn LeVie Jr., CFE, is a Fraud Magazine staff writer and a presenter and leadership positioning/influence strategist at ACFE Global Fraud Conferences since 2010. He’s president of Donn LeVie Jr. STRATEGIES, LLC, where he leads programs and speaks on executive influence techniques and situational-influence strategies. His website is donnleviejrstrategies.com. Contact him at donn@donnleviejrstrategies.com.