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

Facilitators Celebrate Significant Milestones in the Group’s Journey

Birthdays, awards, anniversaries, task completions, payday, winning (or losing) an account—virtually anything can be the basis for a celebration. The point is not so much to have fun as it is to dramatize the significance of the actions that are taking place. People occasionally need to pause in their work and acknowledge their significance. It is like taking a drink from a fountain when you are very thirsty. Celebrations help the group to remember why it is there. And they help group members to appreciate both their task and their colleagues. In ensuring that celebrations take place, the facilitator is the profound clown for the group.

Facilitators Models Authentic Selfhood for the Group

The facilitator plays the role of a model of personal authenticity. He avoids defensiveness even when attacked, listens for the depth of decisions that need to be faced, and speaks only from personal experience, preferring to remain silent rather than giving ungrounded advice. She rejoices in the successes of the group and, by the intensity of her engagement, seems to be of having the time of her life.

This role modeling may involve playing roles that do not come naturally. Facilitation is not about “just being yourself ” in front of a group; it is about assisting a group to be its best. If that means hiding particular moods that one has at the moment for the sake of the group, then so be it. In that sense, the facilitator is an accomplished actor improvising in response to the group’s need. (See Chapter Seventeen.)

The facilitator can exhibit a variety of behaviors that address the group’s emergent needs. One may be serious, probing the depths of unknown puzzles. One may be glad-handed, setting at ease those who are reluctant to participate. One may be distant, causing the group to reflect on its own insights. Or one may be close, sharing one’s learning in ways that illuminate the present situation of participants. Since the facilitator has nothing to win or lose, he is totally free to do what is required by the situation to help the group achieve its potential. The facilitator is the profound role model for the group.

WHAT FACILITATORS ARE

We have spoken about what facilitators know and what facilitators do. Now we go further inside to explore how facilitators “be.”

Facilitators Are Filled with Wonder

Facilitators, perhaps because of their close contact with groups of people, are in constant wonder at the complexity of social life. Nothing seems without potential awesomeness. Every person, every comment, every method, every organization is a window into the profound mystery that pervades all that is. So facilitators exude appreciation, even while doing fierce battle with the forces that block a group’s potential. Strangely, that same appreciation can become an infectious epidemic capable of transforming a workplace into a place of meaning.

Facilitators Are People of Paravocation

The particular work at hand is done with energy, creativity, and enthusiasm, but the real work of the facilitator goes beyond the particular. The facilitator, no less than the spiritual leader, is in the business of mediating between ultimate values and particular situations. Specifically, the facilitator brings the organization, group, and individual into encounter with the profound dimension of life and brings ultimate values down to the practical level. That is what it is all about. Everything else is just the specific assignment within which the facilitator operates.

Facilitators Are Purveyors of Group Absolution

The new physics and chaos theory have made it plain that simple causation is an outmoded category (Gleick, 1987; Herbert, 1985; Senge, 1990; see also Chapter Fourteen). Relations are so complex that no simple cause can be identified for anything. This means that everyone may be blamed for anything, so there is no point to grudges and nothing to gain by pretending righteousness. Blame is not a relevant category for the facilitator, so she lives as though forgiven of character defects, mistakes, weaknesses, and ignorance—not without regrets or apologies, but without the crippling effect of lingering guilt and fears of reprisal. More important, she brings this stance to the group, where it becomes a catalyst of humility and gratitude.

Facilitators Are Agents of Social Change at a Group, Organizational, and Societal Scale

Meaning is the contribution of a particular task to a larger context that the meaning seeker values (Epps, 2003). Facilitation is a meaningful profession, because it contributes far beyond the particular sessions one is conducting.

First, it contributes to the participants by according them respect and honor for their contributions. Sessions are designed to elicit contributions, and the very assumption that people have something to contribute can be deeply honoring. This is often enough to elicit profound and lasting commitment toward a project that participants have helped to develop.

Second, facilitation contributes to the organization it serves. It does this in part by achieving the task-related objectives for which it was designed. In a deeper sense, facilitation demonstrates a new and different style of operation. Organizations are currently undergoing a transition away from the pyramid style of operation, but the new style has not yet appeared. Facilitated sessions provide a clue that a new mode is possible that allows people of great diversity to work together effectively. At a time when organizations are under suspicion of violating trust of the public and corporate governance is a major issue, occasions that demonstrate effective group operation are welcome portents of a positive future.

Third, facilitation contributes to the social context. By demonstrating the possibility of groups of great diversity working together effectively, facilitation offers an alternative to conflict as a means of making decisions. In a time when political, legal, and economic systems are all based on conflict, facilitation provides a different way to proceed.

Facilitation makes a contribution far beyond satisfying a client’s expectations. It is a meaningful profession with great significance, noble purpose, and genuine professionalism. Facilitators are confident in their field while taking every opportunity to heighten their competence.

CONCLUSION

Facilitation can be an exhausting role to play. It involves one’s beliefs, one’s actions, and one’s being in bringing the group to its full potential. It is helpful to understand the larger contribution of facilitation to society because at the conclusion of a well-facilitated session, in which the facilitator reached the limit of her ability, the group’s response is likely to be, “We did it ourselves!” That is when the facilitator has done well.

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Exhibit 32.1

Nonviolent Communication: An Explanation

Nonviolent communication (NVC) is a process of communication created by Marshall Rosenberg (1999) based on principles of nonviolence and compassion. NVC aims to contribute to connection and understanding and to support compassionate expression and listening even in times of conflict, so that everyone’s needs can be attended to. NVC consists of four components:

Observations: Description of what one sees or hears without any added interpretations, translating evaluative terms into descriptive ones. For example, instead of saying, “She’s dishonest,” one could say, “She told me she was okay with what I said, yet Paul told me she said she wasn’t.”

Feelings: One’s inner emotions rather than any story or thoughts about what others are doing. For example, instead of saying, “I feel manipulated,” which includes an interpretation of another’s behavior, one could say, “I feel uncomfortable” or “I feel irritated.”

Needs: Feelings are caused by needs, which are universal, ongoing, and independent of other people’s actions—for example, “I feel uncomfortable because I need direct communication” rather than “I feel uncomfortable because you are being dishonest.”

Requests: Effective requests are doable, immediate, and stated in positive action language, that is, what we want instead of what we do not want— for example, “Would you be willing to come back tonight at the time we’ve agreed?” rather than, “Would you make sure not to be late again?” By definition, when we make requests we are open to hearing a no, taking it as an opportunity for further dialogue.

TRANSPARENCY AND NEUTRALITY

Joan is called to facilitate a meeting between two teachers and a class of ninth graders in a church. For almost two hours, her attempts to connect with the class and invite them to express what is in their hearts do not elicit any productive responses. Instead, at any moment, three to five students are talking at once about other things, and the teachers are sitting quietly in the corner. At some point, Joan asks everyone to take turns and express what is alive in them: what they are feeling and what needs of theirs are met or not. The first few students make statements such as, “I

am really tired, and I need some sleep,” or “I am bored, and I need to have more fun.” When Joan’s turn arrives, she says, “I am deeply disappointed, because I so much want to contribute to creating safety and space for you to tell us what’s really going on in this class.” Within a minute or two, the floodgates open, and for the remainder of their time together, students express their concerns and mistrust about the class and the teachers.

As seen in the story above and other examples in this chapter (taken from reallife experiences), transparent facilitation, when practiced effectively, can affirm our essential human bond with a group. By expressing her frustration and care, Joan communicated to the students just how much their experiences mattered to her. Prior to hearing from her, students’ experience of life in school could lead them to be suspicious of adults rather than trust that adults would care. They likely did not often notice the essential humanity of the adults who interacted with them. Joan’s words conveyed to them in a visceral way that their suffering counted and that she had a human response to their behavior in the class.

Sharing our feelings, however, does not always produce the results we may hope for:

Andy is substituting for the group’s usual facilitator, who is older and more experienced but is ill that evening. He invites the group to engage in a personal reflection activity and then share what they discover with the group. The purpose of the exercise is to practice connecting with and articulating one’s feelings and needs. Andy feels mild tension and anxiety about his role as substitute facilitator and as part of the exercise chooses to explore and then share these feelings with the group. Later, members of the group express concern about Andy’s competence and level of confidence. Participants’ concerns arose despite the fact that Andy himself was quite comfortable. Neither having these feelings nor sharing them with the group interfered with his confidence.

How can we make sense of the difference between Joan’s sharing, which contributed to safety and connection, and the loss of trust experienced by Andy’s group participants? For many of us, the apparent unpredictability of such differences and the level of risk associated with sharing ourselves in a group result in opting for caution and even restraint regarding self-disclosure.

Apparent unpredictability and risk are not the only factors leading us at times to refrain from self-disclosure. Having feelings and expressing them are often seen as nonneutral. Since neutrality is considered a core value in the profession (Webne-Behrman, 1998; Rees, 2001), maintaining neutrality is seen as inconsistent with transparency. In addition, even where no explicit philosophical objection exists about transparency, we may nonetheless avoid disclosing our own experience when we are not skilled at staying present when feelings are up, or at maintaining openness to different outcomes, both important skills necessary for transparent facilitation.

However, even when we choose not to disclose ourselves, what appear to be neutral and objective statements often hide within them expressions of self. For example, Harry Webne-Behrman (1998) describes a moment in a facilitation session as follows: “Rachel [the facilitator] affirmed how important this discussion was for the group. She added encouragement for how they were dealing with their disagreement, to which several others added brief nods of support” (p. 156). Webne-Behrman does not describe Rachel’s encouragement as sharing of self, but rather as simply providing feedback to the group. Yet Rachel is taking on the role of authority by deciding what is important. When we express our own impressions and evaluations as if they are pure observations, we consciously or unconsciously disguise the fact that we are expressing our own subjective perceptions and experience.

More recently, the injunction of nondisclosure has been tempered with a growing recognition of the importance and value of transparency in facilitation. Such recognition appears prominently in the context of facilitating participatory processes, as in the collection of articles edited by Shirley A. White (1999). But such references also appear in books designed for more mainstream organizational settings. For example, Glenn Kiser (1998) makes a number of references to the significance of self-disclosure.

Yet despite the growing interest in transparent facilitation, its increased use has not yet yielded a systematic analysis of the value and risks of disclosing oneself in a group or specific guidelines for how to bring oneself into the situation. Thus, for example, Kiser’s idea that “used with sufficient forethought, personal disclosure can be a powerful tool for unsticking things” (1998, p. 84) does not aid the reader with what “forethought” would include, what would make it “sufficient,” and how it can support “unsticking things.”

The art of self-disclosure does not lend itself to hard and fast rules and therefore requires considerable skill and consciousness. Before risking self-disclosure, it is essential to consider elements such as the group’s purpose and the capacity of the group to contain expressions from a facilitator.

At the same time, most decision points about whether and how to reveal ourselves to the group do not announce themselves ahead of time. Therefore, a thorough understanding of our relationship to ourselves and the group moment by moment (rather than “once and for all”) is also necessary. Indeed, transparent facilitation presupposes a high degree of awareness of our inner experience, a level of self-connection, or conscious awareness of our feelings and needs.

In my own and others’ practice of facilitation, I have found the process of NVC to be an invaluable tool for guiding my decision-making process while facilitating. The tools of NVC allow me to quickly assess what is going on inside me, what I am feeling, what is important to me right now, and what my long-term goals and needs might be. In addition, NVC consists of specific communication skills that form a foundation for transparent facilitation. Thus, NVC skills support both my decision-making process about transparency and my choice of how to go about it.

CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESS: KNOW THE MOMENT

Adding transparency to the range of options available to us requires ongoing, quick decision making before choosing what to say and while speaking. Several factors combine to increase the likelihood that sharing ourselves with the group will be productive: clarity about how transparency will contribute to the group, selfknowledge about our capacity to maintain the dual focus on ourselves and the group, monitoring the group’s ability to handle our transparency, and ongoing assessment about when to stop.

Clarity of Purpose

Having clarity about what we are trying to achieve or create by revealing an aspect of ourselves to a group is key to successful integration of such expressions with group facilitation. The more rigorously we examine our motivation in speaking, the more likely we are to support the group process rather than hinder it.

If we have not clearly identified the purpose of sharing a part of ourselves, we run the risk of acting on our needs instead of first connecting with our needs and

then making conscious choices about what we want to do. To illustrate this point, we will explore Andy’s choice in one of the stories that opened this chapter. What would be his purpose in taking full part as a participant in a group exercise and sharing his feelings as part of his participation? If he is not clear about how doing so will contribute to the group, he could explore what needs he is trying to meet and whether those needs are ones he wants to act on while facilitating. As facilitators, we cannot rest with a casual choice like the one Andy made, because in the absence of clarity of purpose, participants may interpret unconscious needs in us even if those needs are not there.

As facilitators, we bring many needs and intentions to our work. Intrinsic to the process of facilitation is a desire to contribute to the group. As facilitators, we might contribute process guidance that helps the group build safety, provide insight and experience that contribute to meaning, and offer suggestions and structures that promote the possibility of resolution and movement in a group. Without wanting to contribute, we will be unlikely to mobilize the heart and skill required to proceed with the task at hand.

We have other needs that can seriously undermine the process if they are not met during facilitation. One key need we have as facilitators is that of selfconnection. Without knowing our own inner experience moment by moment, we lose some of our capacity to make choices about facilitation. Kiser reminds us that “the ability to be aware of what is happening both around you and inside you is the primary means by which you determine the appropriate intervention and measure your progress” (1998, 24).

By self-connection, I mean the capacity to be aware of our feelings in each moment and of how the many thoughts, evaluations, and judgments that occupy our consciousness are manifestations of our deeper needs. Being able to notice when a judgment arises and through self-empathy (that is, listening to our own feelings and needs and establishing inner clarity and connection to ground out choice of action) to discover and connect with the feelings and needs that give rise to it is a key entry point into making choices, moment by moment, about our next actions while facilitating. For example, if we think that someone in the group is being “domineering,” we are likely to react rather than respond—that is, likely to make a statement to the group coming out of unaware judgment or frustration rather than conscious choice about what would most contribute to the group. In contrast, if we do inquire into the feelings and needs underneath the judgment and engage in a moment of self-empathy, we make room to recognize and own our