The facilitation glossary.

Accessibility floor

The things on by default in every session: captions, materials sent in advance, five seconds of wait time after a question. Nobody should have to disclose anything to get them.

Accommodation

An adjustment that lets a participant take part on equal terms. Plan for the common ones by default so nobody has to disclose to get them.

Activity ratio

Proportion of session time where participants are doing rather than receiving. Below about a third, expect a recorded module to perform the same.

Advance organiser

A short framing given before new material so learners know where it will fit. Doing it costs ninety seconds and raises how much of the session survives the week.

Agenda decay

The gap between the agenda you published and the session you actually ran. Some decay is responsive facilitation. Past about a third, you built the wrong agenda.

AI disclosure

Telling participants where AI was used in producing materials or running the session. Increasingly expected and cheap to do.

Air time

Share of talking measured across the room rather than felt. Facilitators reliably underestimate their own and overestimate the quiet participant's.

Alignment

Whether the objective, the activity and the assessment are actually measuring the same thing. Most courses fail here quietly.

Alt text

A text description of an image for people who cannot see it. Required on anything carrying meaning, and pointless on decoration.

Anchor question

The single question a session is built to answer. If the opening question and the closing question are not related to it, the session has drifted.

Andragogy

The study of how adults learn. Its practical core: adults need to know why, bring experience worth using, and want to apply it now.

Annotation

Participant marking directly on shared content. The lowest-friction participation tool in most platforms and the most underused.

Attention spend

The idea that a room gives away attention in the opening and cannot get it back. Openings spend attention on purpose rather than requesting it later.

Attestation

A participant's recorded confirmation that they completed and understood the training. Evidence, not learning.

Audit trail

The record proving training happened, who attended and what was covered. The thing regulators actually ask for.

Backchannel

Chat, DMs and side threads running underneath the session. Ignoring it does not make it stop; it makes you the only person not in it.

Backward design

Starting from the outcome, then the evidence, then the activities. The discipline that keeps sessions from becoming content tours.

Behavior statement

One sentence naming what is different on Monday. The first box of the session plan and the most common thing missing.

Behaviour change

Measured difference in what people do afterward. Level three of the standard evaluation model and the first level anyone outside training cares about.

Blended learning

A program combining live and self-directed elements deliberately, rather than a live session with homework attached.

Bloom's taxonomy

A hierarchy of cognitive demand from recall up to creation. Useful mostly as a check that your verbs match your ambition.

Breakout brief

The instruction a small group carries into a breakout room. Written, visible and timed, or the group spends its first two minutes reconstructing it.

Breakout drift

Small groups sliding off the task once the facilitator is not present. Almost always a symptom of a weak breakout brief.

Breakout of three

The working group size for live sessions. Two becomes an interview, five rebuilds the silence you were escaping.

Bridge

The sentence that connects what just finished to what starts next. Sessions rarely fail on content and frequently fail on the joins.

Cadence

The rhythm of activity changes across a session. A room can hold roughly twelve to fifteen minutes of one mode before it needs a different one.

Call and response

Prompting for a short, low-cost answer from everyone at once, usually into chat. Cheapest way to test whether a room is still with you.

Camera norm

The stated expectation about cameras. A norm you announce is fair; a norm you imply is a trap.

Camera-off learner

A participant who contributes without being visible. Designed for rather than corrected.

Capability framework

The map of skills an organisation says it needs. Useful when it drives budget and decorative when it does not.

Captions

Synchronised text of what is being said. Used by far more people than those who need them, which is the argument for making them default.

Chat storm

Deliberately asking the whole room to answer in chat at the same moment, so nobody is first and nobody is exposed.

Check-in date

The day, set before the session runs, when you look at whether the behavior changed. Usually thirty days out.

Chunking

Breaking material into pieces small enough to hold in working memory.

Close

Decisions, owners and dates on screen before anybody leaves. Written live, not after.

Co-facilitator

A second facilitator holding part of the content and part of the room. Different from a co-host, who holds the controls.

Cognitive accessibility

Design choices that reduce unnecessary processing demand: plain language, predictable structure, one idea at a time.

Cognitive load

The total mental demand on a learner at a moment. Three kinds: the material itself, the way it is presented, and the effort of building understanding. Only the second is fully yours to cut.

Cohort

A group moving through a program together. The retention mechanism most self-paced products lack.

Cohort cap

The maximum number of people in a live program. Twelve here, so everybody facilitates in front of the group.

Co-host

A second person holding platform controls. Different from a co-facilitator, who holds part of the content.

Cold call

Asking a named person to answer without warning. Useful in a safe room, damaging in an unsafe one.

Cold open

Starting on the substance with no preamble, housekeeping or introductions. Buys attention at the cost of orientation, so it needs the housekeeping later rather than never.

Colour contrast

The measured difference between text and its background. A design question with a pass or fail answer, not a taste question.

Completion rate

Proportion of enrolled learners who finished. The easiest metric to export and the weakest evidence of anything.

Compliance training

Training an organisation is required to run. Distinct from training it chooses to run, and usually designed as though completion were the goal.

Connection budget

The bandwidth and device reality of the room. Design for the worst connection present, not the average one.

Contracting

The explicit agreement at the top of a session about what participation will look like. The most skipped five minutes in facilitation.

Control group

A comparable group that did not receive the training. The difference between a claim and a finding.

Corrective conversation

Feedback that requires something to change. One of the three conversations every new manager will face in the first year.

Curriculum map

The view across a program showing what is taught where and what is assumed already known.

Dead air

Silence the facilitator has not chosen. Distinct from wait time, which is silence the facilitator is holding on purpose.

Debrief

The structured conversation after an activity where the learning is actually extracted. An activity without a debrief is an anecdote.

Deliverable

What a breakout group must produce. Groups told to discuss produce small talk; groups with a deliverable produce work.

Detractor

A participant actively working against the session. Rarer than facilitators fear, and usually carrying a real grievance nobody has answered.

Disclosure

When a participant reveals something about their own situation, often about conduct. Handled by protecting the person first and the agenda second.

Dominant voice

The participant absorbing a disproportionate share of air time. Manage the structure, not the person.

Dual attention

The facilitator's split between running content and reading the room. The thing that makes a co-facilitator worth the cost.

Dual-channel participation

Running voice and chat as equally legitimate ways to contribute, rather than treating chat as overflow.

Enabling objective

A sub-skill a learner needs before the terminal objective is reachable.

Evaluation, four levels

Reaction, learning, behaviour, results. Most organisations measure the first and report it as the fourth.

Experiential learning

Learning through a cycle of doing, reflecting, generalising and applying.

Facilitation

Making it easier for a group to do its thinking. Distinct from teaching, which transfers content, and from chairing, which manages process.

Facilitator certification

A process confirming someone can deliver a given program to standard. The mechanism behind train the trainer.

Facilitator guide

The run document for delivering a session: timings, prompts, transitions and contingencies. Distinct from slides.

Facilitator neutrality

Holding the process without steering the content. Genuine in a decision workshop and dishonest in a training session, where you do have a position.

Facilitator notes

The written guide that lets somebody other than the author run the session. What separates material from a deck.

Fatigue silence

A room that has stopped because it is spent. Fixed by ending early, not by pushing.

First six minutes

The window in which a session is won or lost.

Fishbowl

A small group discussing while the rest observe, with a mechanism to swap in. Good for modelling a hard conversation.

Floor

Who currently has permission to speak. Managing the floor is most of what separates a facilitator from a presenter.

Formative assessment

A check during learning used to adjust delivery. Cheap, frequent and mostly informal.

Forming, storming, norming, performing

A stage model of group development. Useful as a reminder that friction in a new group is expected rather than a delivery failure.

Gallery walk

Participants circulating between posted work and responding to it.

Ground rules

Behaviour agreed at the start. Stronger when the room writes them and weaker when the deck does.

Groupthink

Convergence on an answer because dissent feels costly. The direct product of a room with no psychological safety.

Handoff

The point where material becomes runnable by somebody else. The goal of every build program here.

Handover

The moment control passes between co-facilitators. Rehearse it or the room will watch two people negotiate in real time.

Hard stop

An end time that cannot move. Say it at the start; a room that knows the boundary gives you more inside it.

Holding the frame

Keeping the session inside its stated purpose when a participant pulls toward a different one.

Human in the loop

A design where a person reviews or approves AI output before it reaches anyone. The minimum standard for anything carrying legal or personnel consequences.

Hybrid gap

The distance between the in-person experience and the remote one in the same session. Closed by designing for the screen first.

Hybrid tax

The extra facilitation load created when part of the room is in person and part is remote. Real, consistent and routinely unbudgeted.

In-room proxy

A person physically present whose job is to represent remote participants' contributions. The cheapest fix for the hybrid tax.

Instructional designer

The person who builds the learning, distinct from the person who delivers it. In small organisations they are the same person and the design suffers.

Intake question

The question in the invitation asking what would make the session work for each person. Gets you accommodation information without requiring disclosure.

Interactive training

The standard California uses for required harassment prevention training. A recording can meet the statute and still teach nobody.

Interactive training requirement

A legal standard in several jurisdictions requiring that mandated training allow questions and responses, which rules out an unattended video.

Intervention

Any deliberate move to change what the room is doing. The lightest intervention that works is the right one.

Jigsaw

Groups each learn one piece, then regroup so every new group contains one expert in each piece.

Keep It Real GPT

An AI assistant I am building on my own material, launching January 1, 2027. [Urban term]

Keyboard navigable

Operable without a mouse. The fastest accessibility check you can run on your own materials.

Kirkpatrick model

The four level evaluation framework in common use. Useful as a ladder, misused as a checklist.

Landing

The last three minutes, where the session is turned into something the participant can act on. Cut content before you cut the landing.

Latency gap

The delay between speaking and being heard. Half a second is enough to make remote participants lose every interruption contest.

Leading indicator

A measure that moves before the outcome does. Useful because the outcome usually arrives after the budget decision.

Learned helplessness

What repeated training on things a person cannot change actually produces.

Learning and development

The organisational function responsible for building capability. Abbreviated L&D.

Learning experience platform

A system organising learning content around the learner rather than the catalogue.

Learning management system

The system of record for enrolment, completion and compliance reporting. Built for administration, not for learning.

Learning objective

What the participant will be able to do afterward, stated with an observable verb. If you cannot see it happen, it is not an objective.

Lightning round

Fixed very short contributions from everyone in sequence.

Live cohort

A program run in real time with the same group across multiple sessions. Finishes at 85% to 96% against 10% to 20% for self-paced.

Live transcript

A running text record produced during the session, distinct from captions in that it persists.

Mandate calendar

The schedule of what training is legally due, for whom and by when. The single document that prevents most compliance failures.

Material

Slides, notes, timing and handouts together. A deck alone is not material.

Microlearning

Short standalone units built for a single narrow skill. Effective for reinforcement and weak as a primary vehicle for anything relational.

Mixed-experience room

A group spanning wide differences in prior knowledge. The most common live facilitation problem and the least often designed for.

Mode change

Switching between presenting, discussion, small group, individual work or practice. The main tool against attention decay.

Moderator

Someone managing a discussion's process without responsibility for its learning outcome.

Motivation, extrinsic

Doing it because of a consequence attached from outside. Gets completion.

Motivation, intrinsic

Doing it because the thing itself is worth doing. Gets transfer.

Needs analysis

The work of establishing whether training is the right intervention at all. Frequently concludes that it is not, which is why it gets skipped.

Net promoter score

A single likelihood-to-recommend question. Measures sentiment, not learning, and should never be reported as the latter.

Office hours

Open unstructured time attached to a program where participants bring their own situations.

Onboarding

The structured first period in a new role. The highest-leverage training window an organisation has and the most commonly wasted.

One page plan

The five box plan I fill out before building any session: behavior, opening, participation, close, check.

Open loop

A question raised early and deliberately left unanswered until later in the session.

Opening act

The first thing every participant does, in writing, within three minutes.

Parking lot

A visible place to put questions that matter but do not belong now. Only works if you return to it.

Participation design

The deliberate set of routes by which a person can contribute. Chat, poll, writing, small rooms, voice.

Pass it on

The obligation at the center of this work: knowledge is only useful if the person holding it teaches somebody else. [Urban term]

Peer instruction

Participants teaching one another a point they have just learned. Exposes misunderstanding faster than any facilitator question.

Performance gap

The distance between current and required performance. Training only closes the part caused by capability.

Platform floor

The minimum set of platform features a session design depends on. Establish it before designing, not during delivery.

Power distance

The felt gap between senior and junior participants in a room. Determines who will speak honestly and who will not.

Practice loop

Attempt, feedback, second attempt. A session without the second attempt has taught awareness rather than skill.

Practice run

A participant facilitating a real segment in front of the cohort. The thing that actually produces change.

Pre-brief

The short alignment with sponsors or co-facilitators before a session. Cheapest hour in the whole engagement.

Prior knowledge

What the room already holds. Ignoring it insults experienced participants and strands new ones.

Producer

A second person watching chat, time and tech during a session. The highest return addition to any large or hybrid room.

Prompt

The exact wording of a question given to a room or a breakout. Vague prompts are the single most common cause of a silent breakout.

Prompt library

A maintained set of tested prompts for recurring tasks. What turns individual AI use into an organisational capability.

Psychological exit

A participant who is still present and no longer participating. Recoverable in the first ten minutes and rarely after thirty.

Psychological safety

The shared belief that speaking up carries no punishment. Built by what happens to the first person who risks it.

Rank in the room

Who holds authority among the participants. Seniority in the room changes the session more than anything on the agenda.

Read the room

Inferring state from participation, chat, pace of response and faces where visible. A skill, not an instinct.

Recording consent

Permission to record a session, captured before recording starts. Rules vary by jurisdiction and by who is in the room.

Recovery

Getting a session back after something has gone wrong. Covered directly in the Where Sessions Break program.

Recurrence interval

How often a mandated training must repeat. Commonly two years for harassment prevention and annual for several safety and security topics.

Reduced rate

The published 25% off seats and 15% off private sessions for nonprofits, schools and public agencies. No application.

Reporting path

Who receives a complaint and how fast, written down before a session that might produce one.

Rescue question

A prepared question that restarts a stalled room. Every facilitator should carry three.

Reskilling

Building capability for a different role. Distinct from upskilling, which deepens the current one.

Retention period

How long a recording and its chat log are kept. Decided before the session, not after a request for it.

Retrieval practice

Making learners pull information from memory rather than re-read it. Uncomfortable and unusually effective.

Retrospective

A structured look back at how work went, aimed at changing how the next round runs.

Return on investment

Financial benefit against total cost. Only 16% of organisations measuring AI success use it, which is roughly the pattern across training generally.

Role play

Practising an exchange in character. The most avoided and most effective activity for conversational skills.

Round robin

Going person by person for a short contribution. Safe and inclusive up to about eight people, and deadly above twelve.

Runway

The time between a participant joining and the session actually starting. Wasted runway sets the tone for the rest.

Safety silence

A room not speaking because speaking has a cost. Fixed by removing attribution, never by cold calling.

Scaffolding

Support deliberately provided early and deliberately removed later.

Scenario

A realistic situation participants work inside. The closer it sits to their actual Tuesday, the more transfer you get.

Scholarship seat

One of two free seats in every cohort for urban professionals paying out of pocket. [Urban term]

SCORM

A long-standing technical standard for packaging e-learning so a learning management system can track it.

Screen reader

Software that reads interface and content aloud. Tests whether your structure is real or only visual.

Screen share fatigue

Attention loss caused by long unbroken periods of shared slides. Breaking the share is itself a mode change.

Second screen

The device a participant is working on while nominally in your session. Assume it exists and design so the session wins.

Self-efficacy

A person's belief they can do the thing. Often the actual blocker when a skills gap is diagnosed.

Sequencing

The order activities run in. Two identical sessions in different orders produce very different outcomes.

Session plan

The one page that holds objective, behaviour, opening, beats and close.

Session shape

The reusable structure underneath onboarding, policy rollout and skills training. Learned once, used everywhere.

Signposting

Telling the room where you are in the session and what comes next. Costs seconds and prevents the drift that makes people open another tab.

Silent start

Opening with individual written work before any discussion. Produces better contributions than asking a cold room to talk.

Simulation

An exercise reproducing the conditions of real performance closely enough that the decisions feel real.

Smile sheet

A post-session satisfaction survey. Measures enjoyment, not change, and does not protect a budget.

Social learning

Learning by watching and working with others. The reason a live cohort finishes and a solo module does not.

Spaced practice

Spreading practice across time rather than massing it. Beats a single long session on retention, reliably.

Sponsor

The person who funded the session and owns the outcome. Their absence from the room changes what the room believes about the session.

Spotlight

Pinning one video feed for everyone. Useful for demonstrations and corrosive when overused.

Storyboard

A visual sequence of a session or module before anything is built.

Structure-first response

Redirecting a dominant participant by naming a rule about the session rather than correcting the person.

Subject matter expert

The person who holds the knowledge but not necessarily the ability to teach it. Abbreviated SME.

Summative assessment

A check at the end used to judge whether the objective was met.

Supervisor knowledge

The principle that once a supervisor knows, the employer knows. The reason manager training carries legal weight.

Supervisor training

Mandated training carrying a higher requirement for people who manage others. In California, two hours against one for other employees.

Synthetic practice partner

An AI standing in as the other party in a role play. Useful for volume and reps, and no substitute for a real person's reaction.

Table read

Walking a group through a document line by line together, used when shared interpretation matters more than speed.

Terminal objective

The capability the whole session or program exists to produce.

Think, pair, share

Individual thought, then pairs, then the room. The default structure for getting a quiet group talking.

Time to competence

How long from training to independent performance. The most persuasive training metric in operational settings.

Train the trainer

A program that leaves an organization able to run the session itself. Pays off at roughly three sessions a year.

Trainer

Someone delivering content with responsibility for a capability outcome.

Transfer

Whether the skill shows up in the job. The only measure of training that survives contact with a budget review.

Turn taking

The pattern of who speaks after whom. Left alone it concentrates; managed it distributes.

Unconference

An agenda built by participants at the start of the session rather than in advance.

Unwritten rule

How things actually work here, learned in hallways by people with networks and by mistakes by people without. [Urban term]

Upskilling

Deepening capability in a current role.

Urban corporation

An urban organization incorporated as a C or S corporation. Used only where incorporation changes the advice. [Urban term]

Urban organization

Any employer built by or for the people the system reads last, growing on its own revenue: startups, minority-owned businesses and nonprofits of 10 to 150 people. [Urban term]

Urban professional

A first-generation or underrepresented professional who earned their seat on merit and is negotiating for what that seat is worth, without an inherited playbook. [Urban term]

Vendor-led training

Training delivered by an outside provider. Buys expertise and speed, and needs internal reinforcement or it evaporates.

Virtual whiteboard

A shared canvas for simultaneous input. Excellent for divergence and poor for decisions.

Wait time

The silence a facilitator holds after asking a question. Two seconds filters the room to the fastest talkers; five changes who answers.

Waiting room

A holding state before admission. Worth using for confidential sessions and worth skipping for everything else.

Week one tasks

The five things a new hire must be able to do without help by Friday. The real content of onboarding.

Worked example

A fully demonstrated solution shown before learners attempt their own. Reduces load and speeds early skill more than discovery does.

Workshop

A working session that produces an artefact. If nothing is produced, it was a meeting with activities in it.

Zone of proximal development

The band between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with help. The only band where teaching does anything.

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