How to Handle People Who Won’t Participate

What To Do When Someone Refuses to Join In

the Lazy Facilitator Episode 22

Okay, so someone in your program doesn’t want to participate.

And here’s what many program leaders and facilitators do. They push, they cajole, or worse, they single people out, and it almost always makes things worse.

As a self-described lazy facilitator, this is what I do.

Honour their choice.

You can’t force anyone to participate anyway, and honestly, trying to will only deepen their resistance and make you look unprofessional.

And this is important. Honouring someone’s choice does not excuse you from your professional responsibility to influence their decision.

So here’s what I do instead (click play below…)

I make the start of my program so ridiculously fun, so genuinely engaging, that sitting on the sidelines becomes the harder option.

In other words, I make the choice to join in more valuable than the decision to sit out.

And let’s be honest here…

It’s really hard to look cool sitting out when everyone around you is laughing and having a great time.