The facilitator is whoever is hosting the session — typically a member who isn't playing one of the five roles, or the host on a rotating basis. Your job is to hold the container: protect the time, keep the room honest, and make the debrief land. The Consulting Team does the consulting; you make it possible.
Before the Session
- Confirm the Client has completed the Brief Template in advance — ideally the night before. If they haven't, block 15 minutes before the session starts for them to fill it in on paper. A brief written in the moment tends to be vague; a brief prepared the night before is three times better.
- Set up a whiteboard or large paper at the front. The session needs a visible working space — the issue tree, findings, and storyboard all go on the board. If there's no whiteboard, flipchart paper taped to a wall works.
- Print or display the Agenda Card and Role Cards. Display the agenda where the Scribe can call time against it.
- Brief new members before the session starts — not during. Walk them through the format (5 minutes, verbally) so they know what's coming before the Client speaks.
Opening the Session
- Frame the purpose. This is a low-stakes practice room. Nothing said here leaves the room. The debrief is candid by design, and that's a feature, not a bug.
- Introduce the roles — especially if there are new members. Go around the room and confirm who is playing what.
- Name the "Would I hire?" round explicitly. Don't surprise people with it at the end — they need to know it's coming to engage honestly throughout the session. "At the end, everyone in this room, including the Client, will answer one question: Would I put this team in front of my actual client? We do this because it's the most useful feedback we can give each other."
- Set the Client up. "You have about 10 minutes. Use the brief you prepared. The team will listen without interrupting, and then they'll have a few minutes for clarifying questions."
During the Work Phase
- Stay out of the team's process. If they're heading in a direction you'd push back on, let the Skeptic do their job. Your role is to protect the time and the conditions, not to intervene in the analysis.
- Watch the clock. The most common failure mode is running out of time for the recommendation. If the team is still in analysis at minute 65, say so: "Team — you're at 65 minutes. Five minutes to synthesis. What's the recommendation?"
- If the team is completely stuck, you can pause and ask: "Does the Client want to give the team a hint?" — but use this sparingly. Some productive struggle is developmental. Teams that never get stuck never learn to get unstuck.
- The Scribe should be calling the midpoint check-in at minute 45. If they forget, call it yourself. This beat prevents the team from arriving at synthesis with no shared understanding of what they've found.
The Recommendation Presentation
- Hold the Client to genuine engagement. They should receive the recommendation as if it matters — not perform politeness. If the Client looks like they're being polite rather than engaged, ask them afterward: "Was there anything you were thinking but didn't say?"
- Enforce the time. The team has 10 minutes. If they're still building context at minute 8, intervene: "What's the recommendation?" That intervention is itself a useful piece of feedback for the debrief.
- Watch for the mystery novel structure. If the team is walking through their analysis rather than leading with the answer, name it in the debrief — not in the moment.
Running the Debrief
The debrief is the highest-value 15 minutes of the session. Protect it with the same rigor you'd protect the analysis.
- Start with the Client's response. Not the team's self-assessment. The Client's view anchors the conversation in what actually mattered for the real problem. "Client — before the team reflects, what's your honest reaction? Was this the right question? Was the recommendation useful?"
- Push for specificity. "That was pretty good" is not useful feedback. "The hypothesis was sharp but the recommendation tried to cover too many options at once — it needed a clear 'do this first'" is feedback someone can act on. If someone is being vague, ask: "Can you be more specific about the moment where that happened?"
- Create space for the Skeptic and Scribe — these roles are easy to overlook in debrief conversations, where attention tends to flow toward the Lead Consultant. Ask them specifically: "Skeptic — was there a moment where you wanted to push harder but didn't? What was it?"
The “Would I Hire?” Round
- Go around the room. Everyone answers, including the Client and any observers. No one gets to pass.
- The question is specific: would you put this team in front of your actual client — a real engagement, real stakes? Not "were they nice" or "did they work hard."
- Model candor yourself. If the facilitator hedges, the room hedges. If you're running the round and you think the honest answer is "not yet," say so and say why. The discomfort of an honest "not yet" is the entire point — it's what makes the session worth repeating until the answer changes.
- After the round, invite one developmental observation from anyone who said "not yet" or "conditionally": "What specifically would need to change?" This is the feedback the team can actually work with.
Common Failure Modes
The team skips the reframe.
They accept the Client's question as given and miss that it's the wrong one. Intervention: at minute 10, ask out loud: "Team — before you start working, is this the right question?"
The analysis never lands.
The team generates interesting findings but can't synthesize them into a recommendation. The Lead Consultant needs to force the issue at minute 60: "Given everything we know, what's our recommendation — even if it's provisional?" Intervention: if the Lead Consultant isn't doing this, ask: "Lead Consultant — what's your hypothesis right now?"
The debrief stays polite.
Everyone says "that was great" and no one learns anything. Intervention: ask a specific, edged question: "What would have made this recommendation harder to argue with?" or "If you were the Client taking this to your board, what would you have changed?"
The Skeptic goes silent.
Either they ran out of things to push on, or they weren't willing to create friction. Both are worth naming. Intervention: mid-session, check in: "Skeptic — what's the assumption you're most worried about?" After the session, ask them in the debrief: "Was there a moment where you held back? What was it?"
The Client holds back.
They gave the team a sanitized version of the problem or withheld context that would have changed the analysis. Intervention: in the debrief, ask: "If this had been your real situation, is there anything you would have told the team that you didn't?" This is a question about the brief, not a criticism of the Client.
Closing Well
- End by asking: what is each person taking away? One sentence per person. Not "it was great" — something specific they learned or noticed about their own consulting instincts.
- Confirm the next session. Note the date, who is playing Client, and who is playing which role. Rotating roles is the whole point — if the same person is always Lead Consultant, the session is missing its developmental purpose.
- The session is over when people feel they got better at something — not just when the clock ran out.