The Harvard Business Review recently published an article on “super-facilitators”—those rare individuals who transform a group into something more than the sum of its parts. The idea is compelling: empathy, communication, and balance of participation can create genuine collective intelligence.
But there’s a gap in the story. In leadership teams and boards, the challenge is not only how to facilitate, but who should take up that role. And here the theory collides with practice.
1. When the facilitator is from within
It seems efficient when someone on the team takes the facilitator’s role. Yet the paradox is inescapable:
- They are both referee and player. A CHRO who facilitates a strategy discussion remains the CHRO, with all the interests, risks, and pressures that come with the role.
- Others sense this and adjust their candor accordingly. Even unspoken, self-censorship creeps in.
- Internal facilitation can work for lighter, everyday practices—keeping rhythm, ensuring turn-taking—but rarely for the deeper conversations where stakes are high.
2. When the facilitator is external
An outsider—a coach, advisor, or non-executive—changes the dynamic profoundly.
- Without direct stakes in outcomes, they create the conditions for candor and trust.
- Yet neutrality also carries risk: they may be dismissed as “not knowing the business,” or the team may become dependent on them.
- The real value of outsiders lies not in permanent mediation but in enabling a different kind of dialogue, which the team can then sustain.
Foto: Brad Walls – as published by Harvard Business Review
3. Boards and C-suites: a special case
Boards and executive teams sit at the sharp edge of this dilemma.
- Boards. Chairs are expected to facilitate. But they also wield authority over succession, remuneration, and appointments. Members know this, and often self-censor. Many boards now rotate facilitation or involve external partners at key evaluation moments.
- Executive teams. The myth of the CEO as facilitator persists. But CEOs are by definition stakeholders. Even when they acknowledge their interests, the imbalance remains. Sometimes CHROs or strategy directors step in, but their own stakes distort the process too.
4. The deeper truth
Facilitation from within is never fully neutral. Declaring bias helps—it reduces suspicion—but it cannot erase the structural reality. Psychological safety remains partial as long as power and accountability are in play.
The stronger path is not to choose between internal and external, but to embrace a dual model:
- External facilitation at inflection points—strategy resets, crises, board evaluations—where neutrality and depth are crucial.
- Internal facilitation habits for the everyday—rotating chairs, deliberate turn-taking, explicit surfacing of assumptions—so that collective intelligence becomes embedded in the team’s DNA.
5. Beyond reducing hidden agendas
The role of facilitation is not to reduce hidden agendas—it is to create the structure where agendas can be surfaced, tested, and integrated without fear. That is what makes dialogue both courageous and productive.
When this dual approach is in place, teams stop being collections of individuals negotiating their own risks. They start to function as superorganisms: capable of insight and action that none of them could achieve alone.