Book excerpt: Have you ever been in a training and marveled at how quickly the time flew by? Genuinely enjoyed a meeting you were expecting to dread? Learned something powerful about a topic you thought wouldn't engage you? Experienced an intimate, vulnerable, transformative moment with a group of total strangers?Then you've witnessed the magic of facilitation.Like all magic tricks - though they seem to defy reason when you're spectating for the first time - once the secrets of facilitation are unveiled to you, you'll look back with a bland obviousness. Of course that's how it's done. In this book, co-authors and social justice facilitators Sam Killermann and Meg Bolger teach you how to perform the favorite tricks they keep up their sleeve. It's the learning they've accumulated from thousands of hours of facilitating, debriefing, challenging, and failing; it's the lessons from their mentors, channeled through their experience; it's the magician's secrets, revealed to the public, because it's about time folks have the privilege of looking behind the curtain of facilitation and thinking of course that's how it's done. This book is highlights 11 key concepts every facilitator should know, that most facilitators don't even know they should know. They are sometimes-tiny things that show up huge in facilitation. It's a book for facilitators of all stripes, goals, backgrounds, and settings - and the digestible, enjoyable, actionable lessons would benefit anyone who is responsible for engaging a group of people in learning.