Peoples knowledge and experience underpin their behaviour.  If you ask someone for advice on hammers and their knowledge base is nails, it’s likely their counsel, although obstensively about hammers will derive from the nails perspective.

Of course there is great opportunity to be had through leveraging peoples diverse backgrounds ( what they know and have done) but it is not easy.

The effort required to extract everyones best behaviour and integrate it with everyone elses is not trivial.  My own experience is the results more than justify the effort.

Facilitation

Facilitation covers any activity you undertake that makes tasks for others easy.  In this case the task is to bring diverse knowledge and subjective assessments together in a cohesive whole.

The critical skill is to facilite the interaction without appearing to do so.  The facilitator needs to be independent and willing to focus on the goal and making the task of getting to it easier.

This requires a deft touch.  In a sense, you are leading a group down a path, however if you become perceived as a leader or trying to lead your facilitation effectiveness is suddenly greatly diminished.

True facilitators are neutral.

Guide

Your goal is to guide others interractions to the best conclusion possible.  To do this you must not participate.  Agreement or disagreement with the discussion is your nemisis.  Your only objective is a positve high quality result.

The participants knowledge and experience, bound together in a cohesive way is all you need to obtain the objective.