Schuman S. - The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation (2005)(en)

eye, in no time becomes a jumble of unspoken judgments, wishes, energies, and frustrated impulses. Every statement anybody makes is a focal point for new, invisible subgroups. On the surface, we have a board, committee, or task force doing what it always does. Under the surface, each person is aligning with, distancing from, or ignoring every statement anybody else makes. These subgroups form and re-form from moment to moment. If a meeting were a cartoon panel, you would see little cloudlike balloons over each person’s head with unspoken statements like, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.” Or, “I’d never say anything like that out loud.” Or, “This is a huge distraction.” Or “I’m glad she had the guts to speak up.”

Rarely do people say these thoughts aloud. Many people sit on ideas, feelings, or views that might violate a group’s norms (unwritten rules). Nearly anybody who has ever talked up in a meeting knows the psychic risks of going against the group. When somebody heeds the impulse to do that, tension rises. Some people manage their discomfort by waiting, indeed expecting, the leader to do something. Others ask challenging questions. Others patiently explain how the “deviant” missed the point. Still others practice a firm, friendly coercion toward their own view. In twenty-first-century meetings, such archetypal behavior no longer serves us.

A central job for us in managing meetings is to interrupt this behavior. The practice is simple, easy, fast, and effective. We interrupt potentially divisive behavior by helping people form what we call functional subgroups. We use the adjective functional here to suggest “contributing to growth,” not to describe people’s jobs. These subgroups transcend the stereotypical, potentially stultifying subgroups that form and re-form in people’s heads. We owe our insights into the power of functional subgrouping to Yvonne Agazarian (1997) and her innovative systemscentered group theory. In her way of working, people continually differentiate their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. This builds the capacity of the whole group for increasingly rich integrations.

When We Intervene with a “Who Else?” Question

So long as each person has a home in a functional subgroup that includes at least one other person, a large group will stay connected and working on its task. Our minimal job is helping people experience functional differences when stereotypes might prevail. If we do this job right, group members take care of the rest. That is our core theory. The practice is stunningly simple. We act when we hear people make statements so emotionally charged that they put themselves at risk of being isolated or labeled. Such statements can be as simple as, “I don’t agree,” and as complex as,

“I’m bored, and unless we get to the point, I’m leaving.” Or, “This is not working. Why don’t you tell us what we should do?”

We judge a statement’s impact by the extent to which tension rises in us and in the group. Sometimes people confront the statement head on, raising the group’s anxiety by several degrees. Sometimes they change the subject. Either way, the statement functions like the proverbial elephant in the room: nobody knows what to do with it, so they pretend it is not there. At such moments, we neither ignore nor escalate the impact. Instead, we invite an informal subgroup to support the apparently deviant group member. This is the least intervention that will permit people to keep working without having to deny their own or anyone else’s feelings:

Group member: I don’t agree with what’s being said here.

Facilitator: Who else doesn’t agree with something that’s been said?

Group member: I’m bored, and unless we get to the point, I’m leaving.

Facilitator: Are there others feeling bored?

When the content includes negative comments about another subgroup, we seek a subgroup for the emotion, not the judgment about others—for example:

Group member: I am so sick of businesspeople thinking only of their bottom line.

Facilitator: Is anyone else frustrated that another group has concerns different from theirs? [Note that we don’t say, “Who else is frustrated with the business group?” Our question is intended to head off the potential isolation of the person stereotyping the business group.]

Nearly always one or more people will acknowledge that they have the same or a closely related issue. Oddly enough, it takes only one other to form a subgroup, validate a person’s right to his or her opinion, and keep the meeting on track. As people learn that there is a subgroup for every issue that matters to them, they are more likely to join the conversation, add to the spectrum of views, and create a more complete and realistic portrait of the issue. Note that we do not organize subgroups. We discover what already exists. So long as each person who takes a risk has an ally, the group will continue to work. A person who knows he or she has support is more likely to listen to other views. Moreover, people with allies are less likely to cave in to group pressure (Asch, 1952).

Most of the time, all we need to keep a group on track is a show of hands and a supporting comment or example from other group members. Sometimes we run several meetings in a row without having to resort to another step. In rare cases, people become deeply polarized and stuck. In those instances, we draw on another insight from Agazarian: when people talk with others who are ostensibly similar, they nearly always discover differences. When they can listen in on conversations among those they consider different, they nearly always find similarities. People who make these finer distinctions develop a more grounded sense of what is possible. They can suspend for the time being their stereotypes and projections and get on with the business at hand.

In a business meeting, people split over what they believed were the principles underlying effective decisions in their company. Fact-based decision making ranked high for one vociferous participant. A vice president hesitantly noted that feelings and intuition often entered into decisions. The first speaker was surprised by this and heatedly defended the centrality of facts. We asked her to pause for a moment and find out who else shared her view. Several raised their hands. Next, we asked who believed intuition and feelings entered in. More hands went up. People had considerable passion for their positions.

Two functional subgroups had become visible. Rather than confront their differences, we asked each subgroup to explore their feelings among themselves while the other subgroup listened. Members of both soon found differences in their apparent similarities. One woman, for example, admitted that to stay fact based, she had to struggle to keep feelings and intuition out. On the other side, one man said, “Of course, I pay attention to data, and I also use information that is not based on hard numbers.” The subgroups integrated their views by validating each other’s stand under certain conditions. People later said they appreciated hearing the other subgroup’s thought processes. They were astonished that no confrontation was necessary. The whole exchange took less than ten minutes.

Even in meetings lasting two or three days, we will ask a “Who else?” question only once or twice and sometimes not at all. We attribute this to the fact that we seek from the start to validate all views and every person’s experience. Even rarer

is the occasion—maybe once every year or two—that one of us will ask a “Who else?” question and be greeted by silence, even after waiting an interminable twenty seconds or so. In that case, there is nothing for us to do but see whether we can authentically join the person who has gone out on a limb:

Participant: This has been a big waste of time for me.

Facilitator: I’ve had moments here when I thought I was wasting my time too.

Listening for the Integrating Statement

How do we know that groups are ready to move from one topic to the next or to move toward action? One clue is when a whole spectrum is on the table and people start recycling earlier statements. Perhaps the most dependable sign that a group has all it needs to move on is what we call an integrating statement. In groups polarized by either-or conversations, the rising tension can be a debilitating meeting stopper. An integrating statement takes the form of a both-and comment, recognizing that each side of a polarity has validity. During a meeting on affordable housing, for example, one subgroup fought for more low-cost housing. Another equated low cost with high density in single-family neighborhoods. As the issue heated up toward confrontation and before either of us could say anything, a group member said, “There are some people here who want low-cost housing for all, others who say they fear high rises. We don’t have to resolve this in order to treat these as two legitimate goals to be considered in our plan.” Tension drained away as people released themselves to the creative work that followed. Fortunately, we find many natural integrators in groups we work with. Moreover, in a pinch, we can always say, “We hear two points of view, A and B. What would you like to do with these?” When all else fails, we consult group members on what they want to do.

To summarize, we manage fight, flight, dependency, avoidance, scapegoating, and other dysfunctional behaviors indirectly by creating conditions under which functional subgroups can form. So long as we encourage functional differentiation and interrupt stereotypical differentiation, we enable a group to integrate its many parts and do richer, more complex work.

MANAGING OURSELVES

Waiting, asking instead of telling, shutting up when a group is working, finding subgroups when tension is high, consulting the group when we are not sure what to do, are relatively simple acts. Anybody should be able to learn them. Yet it has

taken each of us years of self-discovery to get to a place where we can confidently work this way. We grew up with high expectations for ourselves, having internalized the need to do things right and look good. We also learned group dynamics in that heady time when the meeting management tool kit expanded exponentially. Anything that could be done in groups, from force-field analysis to fingerpainting, would be done, if for no other reason than to see what happens. If you got a new diagnostic concept in those years, it would be a shame not to use it. Perfectionism wed to infinite techniques can be an exhausting combination. Perhaps the most valuable step we have taken for untangling ourselves from this selfmade morass was learning to internalize John and Joyce Weir’s philosophy of self-management. We have also spent a good deal of time practicing the Weirs’ theory and method for owning our own projections and separating ourselves from the projections people make on us. Their system calls for recognizing how we filter our experiences through a murky amalgam of genes, gender, age, history, fears, hopes, ethnicity, parentage, birthplace, health, and a thousand other factors. What starts with the neutral evidence of our senses—sight, smell, hearing, touch, and so on—becomes a filtered set of unique beliefs, judgments, and assumptions that we call our reality. Each of us acts as if this reality, constructed entirely in our own heads, is the only real one.

Our filters are as unique as fingerprints. We dredge the characteristics we impute to others from the depths of our own psyches. When we label a person as resistant, passive-aggressive, or rebellious, when we identify groups as overly dependent, lazy, or in denial, we are projecting parts of us on others to reduce our own discomfort. If we are so good at what we do, why don’t they live up to our expectations? Whatever labels we put on others must be parts of us. Were they not, how could we recognize them in others? We have come to accept that the world is the way it is. Each of us makes up his or her own version. We make up percepts to maximize our comfort and minimize our pain. Each of us has a reality no other can share. Knowing this makes it easier to help people differentiate their views and avoid imposing ours, whether as conceptual models, interpretations, or prescriptions for change.

Inevitably, we have had to confront our own projections on authority. Every meeting includes authority figures. Bosses and chairpeople represent one kind, experts another. Facilitators are considered experts, else why would we be there? How we wear the cloak of the authority that others invest us with has profound impact on a group. In new groups, some people—filtering a lifetime of experiences—move

naturally to dependency on the leader. Others—also filtering like mad—automat- ically challenge the leader’s authority. Faced with uncertainty, the most mature among us can regress to childhood fantasies that the leader will make everything okay, or conversely, that the leader represents a threat to be resisted.

We have come to expect these authority projections. We recognize them in ourselves. We know they come our way each time we stand in front of a group. Our practice is to do whatever we can to minimize them, so we never pretend we have no authority. We repeat the meeting’s goals at the start and differentiate our roles from the group members’. We ask people to share leadership and self-manage their small groups. We try to avoid doing anything for people that they could readily do for themselves. We keep our instructions to a minimum. We ask people if they are ready to move. We check out our assumptions and judgments with the group before acting on them. When somebody lobs an annoying projection at us, we do our best to pause, breathe, and avoid acting defensively. We do not interpret people’s motives or statements or judge the relevance of somebody’s comments. When people are in dialogue, we stay out. When people risk becoming scapegoats, we find them subgroups. If people start to fight, we ask them to differentiate their positions. Above all, we seek to shift attention away from us and on to the task. Sometimes none of this is enough. When all else fails, we default to our most secure position: we consult the group. The less we intervene, the more compliments we get. “I really appreciated the way you guys let us do the work” is for us a practical validation of our theory and a great payoff for self-restraint.

Christine Hogan

Difference just is. It is a fact of life.

Distefano and Maznevski (2000)

The purpose of this chapter is to assist facilitators to prepare and facilitate workshops and training sessions where participants come from diverse cultural backgrounds. It provides a selection of tools and a checklist for designing workshops, models, strategic devices, and processes that have proved helpful in designing workshops, presentations, and conferences for multicultural groups. In addition, it provides some sources so that readers can follow up on specific

points of interest.

Participants from different cultures have different perspectives and implicit ground rules for interaction. Culture is a set of values, beliefs, and assumptions

that influence our thoughts, perceptions, behaviors, and customs. These assumptions are implicit and taken for granted, much like breathing. The advances in the human genome research tell us that out of the thirty thousand known genes in the human body, we are similar to other races across the planet in 99 percent of these; that is, genetically we have much in common. It is wise, however, to assume differences in values and behaviors until similarities emerge (Adler, 1997). Many of us are hybrids of many different cultures through studying, living, and traveling abroad. Every group has a culture, and no group has any one culture (G. BrensonLazán, e-mail to the author, Dec. 14, 2003).

Throughout history and in all cultures, there have been wise people with outstanding communication, mediation, and facilitation skills. The roots of facilitation have their origins in the helping professions—for example, teaching, counseling, social work, and development work. Elements of facilitation permeate history and different cultures (Hogan, 2002). For example, Socrates encouraged people to question ideas; shamans used talking sticks and talking stones to encourage people to speak the truth from the heart; holy leaders and sages like Gautama Buddha, Muhammad, Christ, Lao-tzu, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, and Swami Vivekananda used, among other techniques, storytelling, questioning, metaphors, and self-reflection to engage people in changing their mind-sets and psychological states in order to encourage new ways of thinking about their lives (Chakraborty, 1998). The Inca people in South America built an empire of 13 million in just one hundred years due partly to the Mitimaes, facilitators of “agro teamwork” (G. Brenson-Lazán, e-mail to the author, Dec. 14, 2003).

Participants from different cultures have different perceptions about the roles of facilitators, facilitation processes, and desirable behavioral norms in workshops (Verghese, 2003). Just because some processes may be unknown to people from some cultures does not mean these processes are not useful. Extra care may be needed to build trust and give clear verbal and written explanations of why you are using a process and the ground rules.

If the cultural background of the facilitator is different from that of the group members, there may some impact on group norms. For example, Lawrence Philbrook (personal communication to the author, Nov. 30, 2003) observed that some Chinese facilitators working with Chinese groups in Taiwan had to work much harder to get participants to interact than some Western facilitators did. He reasoned that Chinese participants returned to their usual “respect for teachers” norm, whereas they expected something different to happen with Western facilitators.

DIVERSITY CHECKLIST FOR WORKSHOP DESIGN

The cultural composition of a group is one aspect of diversity. The checklist in Exhibit 16.1 contains questions for facilitators to think about when planning and evaluating workshops with regard to the gender, race, age, disability, sexual orientation, and cultural background of participants. It is not necessary to address all of these points, but it is useful to be aware that they exist and check through them from time to time as a reminder of issues that may need attention. A rule of thumb that is useful to remember is that “no one facilitative process or technique will work in all cultures or with all groups” (G. Brenson-Lazán, e-mail to the author, Dec. 14, 2003).

Exhibit 16.1

Diversity Checklist for Workshop Design

1.Workshop Design

•Consider the participants’ gender, cultural background, learning, thinking and communicating styles, age range, health and disability status, English language proficiency, values, and past experiences.

•Who should be invited? For community-based workshops, identify the formal and informal leaders and power holders.

•Check workshop dates and religious calendars. For example, religious festivals like Ramadan, when Muslim participants are fasting, may have an impact on attendance and energy levels.

•Check prayer times. In many cultures, it is useful to have meetings after prayers, when everyone is already together.

•Contact participants in advance (perhaps by e-mail) to ascertain cultural and dietary needs or concerns.

•Include opportunities for a positive engagement with people from other cultures, practices, and life expectations.

•Seek assistance in workshop design from facilitators or cultural advisers who are knowledgeable about the culture you will be working with.

•Include examples and readings that reflect a diversity of perspectives.

•Check the metaphors and teaching stories you will use. For example, attributes of animals vary across cultures. If you use an exercise in which you ask individuals to identify with certain animals, remember that dogs are regarded as unclean in some Muslim societies, as food in many parts of China, and as pets and working animals in many Western societies. Cows are regarded as holy by Hindus. A white elephant is considered very positively in Thailand and Lao PDR, but in many Western societies, “white elephant” refers to something of little or no value that nobody wants.

•Check the visuals to ensure they are inclusive, that is, include examples of people from the different ethnic groups in the workshops.

•Think about warm-up activities. Is physical touch involved? For some groups, touching or close proximity to members of the opposite sex may be embarrassing, so you may wish to use single-sex groups for some activities.

•Think about ground rules that will include all groups—for example, “Your comfort in the workshops is important so please make your needs known,” and invite participants to discuss ways in which they may value differences.

•Cater to a range of learning styles and leftand right-brain activities by mixing group processes (such as using different turn-taking procedures), modes (verbal, written, picture, story), and size of groups (such as pairs, triads, up to a maximum of seven people; Gardenswartz, Rowe, Digh, and Bennett, 2003). For example, explain and negotiate ground rules verbally, and display them on flip charts.

•Check your nonverbal communication. For example, what are appropriate dress codes? What are the attitudes of participants to sitting on the floor? Some groups are more at ease sitting on mats on the floor, whereas others regard the floor as unclean or unsuitable because of their clothing or status. Some older people or people with back trouble may find the floor uncomfortable.

This is not an exhaustive list, but illustrates the sorts of things that are useful in terms of learning about the cultural practices and preferences of the people you will be working with. Don’t be overly confident. Be prepared for surprises.

2.Content

•Acknowledge the diversity of knowledge and experience of participants.

•Help participants to map their different perspectives. (See the suggestions later in this chapter.)

•Use examples, case studies, and stories that are free of negative stereotypes or assumptions.

•Use participants’ examples, case studies, and stories as a basis for discussion.

•Examine the implications of diversity as part of the organizational issues being examined.

•Encourage participants to recognize and understand different ways of knowing and perceiving the world.