One of the hardest parts of facilitating futures work is knowing when not to move the group on.
There’s often pressure, explicit or implicit, to reach clarity quickly. To summarise. To decide. To produce something tangible that justifies the time spent. But some of the most important moments in futures work happen when the group stays with uncertainty a little longer than feels comfortable.
This might look like allowing silence after a challenging question. Or resisting the urge to synthesise too quickly when tensions surface. Or letting multiple, contradictory futures sit alongside each other without resolving them.
In those moments, uncertainty isn’t a failure of the process. It is the process.
Good facilitation helps groups build tolerance for that discomfort. It creates permission to say “I don’t know yet” or “I’m not sure how to think about this”. It slows things down just enough for deeper sense-making to happen. This isn’t about avoiding decisions. It’s about making them more consciously, with a clearer view of what’s at stake and what’s being assumed.
I’ve noticed that when groups are rushed out of uncertainty too quickly, they often circle back to it later, usually in less constructive ways. Staying a little longer can make all the difference. The challenge, of course, is making the case for this flexibility with stakeholders seeking more tangible outcomes. But that’s a story for another day.