Design Is More Important Than Facilitation

June 2, 2026
by Eugene Eric Kim

Last month, Genevieve Smith posted some wonderful musings entitled, “What even is facilitation?” Her questions (and responses) are important, because they call out some misconceptions about what a good meeting actually entails, which can lead to… well, bad meetings.

I’ve long had this Zen image in my head of what a perfectly designed, perfectly facilitated meeting looks like:

I ring a bell to signify the start of the meeting, and at the end of the meeting, I ring it again to bring things to a close. In between, I don’t say a word. The participants feel each other’s presence and energy, mine included, and everything that needs to happen happens. There is this flow state carrying all of us along, generated by the participants themselves and the environment. We not only achieve everything we set out to do, but everyone feels heard and valued and alive.

I always have this picture in mind when I design a meeting, even if the gathering ends up looking very different. It’s less about how the meeting looks and more about how it feels to participate in it.

The closest I came to designing a meeting that actually resembled this image was in 2014. I was helping the Garfield Foundation build the field for practitioners interested in building and facilitating networks. As part of that, I got to design and facilitate a peer learning workshop for other facilitators and consultants. I wanted to create a space for my colleagues to learn from each other, but I also wanted to challenge our preconceptions about what a good meeting looked like and whether meetings were even necessary.

We held the workshop in a large, open experimental theater space in the basement of a downtown San Francisco building. At first, I was disappointed in the space’s lack of natural light, but I decided to lean into its intended purpose and use the metaphor of playwriting as the organizing principle for our meeting.

When people arrived, they greeted each other and mixed informally as usual. When the meeting started, I and my associates walked around the room and gave everyone an envelope with a letter inside without saying a word. I had written a “love letter” to each of the participants, explaining why I was happy they were there, and mentioning someone else in the room whom I wanted them to meet. In the letter, I asked people to find that other person and get to know them.

At first, people were surprised. Some chuckled at the unconventional opening, especially the ones who knew me. Several people, especially those were new to the group, told me later they were moved by the personal letter and that they felt welcome and more comfortable than they would have if they had to introduce themselves to the full group while sitting in a circle.

It didn’t stop there. When the moment felt right, I and my associates again walked around and handed new instructions to the participants. We asked pairs to form larger groups and to introduce their partners to others. We gave people “playbooks” — binders with templates where people could capture the story of the work they were doing — and we asked people to start filling them out for themselves and each other. Eventually, we had people capture themes and questions or just make art on a huge communal sheet of butcher paper.

That whole morning, I never said a word. I walked around the room, eavesdropping on conversations here and there, peeking at people’s playbooks, and enjoying the beautiful images that were beginning to engulf us. I often moved to the side and just listened to the group hum. I had worked out rough times for the exercises beforehand, but I didn’t look at my watch. I was clear about what I had hoped the group to achieve, and I made new moves when it felt right, but I mostly just let them work.

Finally, I rang a bell, got the group in a circle, and said, “Hello!” Everybody laughed. The rest of the meeting looked a little bit more “traditional” (at least for how I usually design), but when participants shared their reflections on the day, it was clear that I had made my points about meeting design and facilitation loud and clear.

Many years ago, my colleague, Todd Johnston, reminded me that the word, “facilitate,” has its roots in the Latin “facilis,” which means “to make things easier to do.” Remembering this etymology can shift our preconceptions about what good facilitation actually looks like. It’s rarely about having a charismatic person in the center of the room, entertaining the group with their wit and effortlessly guiding them through the agenda. Good facilitation actually starts well before the meeting.

We can’t make things easier for a group if it’s not clear what it’s trying to do in the first place. After goal clarity comes design, including whether or not a full-group meeting is even merited. If it is, then how we design it — the process, the physical environment, whom we invite and how, what happens before and after the meeting, etc. — can have significantly more impact than the skill of the faciltator during the meeting itself.

A surprising amount of physics and biology go into good design. A theater- or classroom-style room is not conducive to a participatory discussion. If you have participants sitting down all day or if you feed them a carb-heavy lunch (or nothing at all), then it’s going to be hard to keep everyone engaged and emotionally regulated. Motivated participants and skilled facilitators can fight and even overcome these obstacles, but why handicap yourself when it’s easier and more effective to address them before the meeting even happens?

Good design is more than just logistics. What questions will help unlock the group? How will you capture what the group discusses — insights, breakthroughs, decisions, etc.? What are the existing relationships in the room, and how do they impact trust and action?

A few years ago, I co-designed a large retreat that was facilitated almost entirely by junior staff at the organization. They did a far better job than I would have, not because they were more skilled, but because of the strong relationships they had with other staff members. Participants saw their own people facilitating, which made them more enthusiastic and invested in the conversations and which boosted the energy of the meeting as a whole.

In my Power and Love for Managers training, we spend a lot of time discussing how design helps foster the culture we’re trying to create. If you want your people to offer open and honest feedback, how is your design supporting this? Are you having regular one-on-ones with reports? Are you sending materials several days in advance so that people have a chance to study and think? Are you allocating plenty of space for discussion, or are you asking for feedback in the last five minutes of a crammed meeting?

Don’t get me wrong. Facilitation in the room — whether via an internal or external facilitator — is an important skill, one that I encourage folks to practice. However, good design plays a much larger role in the success of an engagement. If you really want to learn from great facilitators, pay attention to the time and care they invest in the meeting’s design, not just what they do in the room.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS