Employing Differences, Episode 146: What can a facilitator say?

Paul: 0:08

Welcome to Employing about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: 0:14

I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:16

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:18

Each episode we start with a us. This week's question is,"What can a facilitator say?"

Paul: 0:27

So, longtime listeners to the both do a lot of facilitative work. Sometimes for groups that we are brought in to help with, sometimes for groups that we are part of. And that's actually one of the things we want to explore a little bit here today, because acting as a facilitator, you are in a special role that affects how what you say lands. And so oftentimes, as a facilitator, you want to be careful about what it is that you say. I mean, any time you're in a meeting in a group, you probably want to be careful about what it is that you say. You want it to actually be helpful and useful, ideally. But in particular, when you're in a facilitator role, it can be useful to think about that, and not just say everything that pops into the speech bubble over your head. And so we wanted to explore a little bit here today about considerations that are useful to keep in mind when you're a facilitator. About how do you decide what ideas that come into your head that you choose to let out of your mouth. What can help you figure out what you can and can't say, or should and shouldn't say? I always hate using those words, but occasionally they pop up. So we want to really explore today about the impact that you can have as a facilitator and how you might decide what things you decide to say or you decide not to.

Karen: 1:44

Yeah, I've seen people go in And we probably all experienced this, but I think it might be a nice place to start, to sort of name what goes wrong when you go way in one way or the other. So, one extreme we would like to avoid is the facilitator says whatever occurs to them, that they think might be useful to the group or helpful or, you know, that speech bubble that you're talking about. If it came into my mind, it comes out my mouth. And what ends up happening there is that because they're the facilitator, they get to talk as much as they want. They don't have to wait to be called on, and they end up with their views dominating the meeting. And really directing what happens in a way that is not the intent. I mean, that may be true if you're the CEO and facilitator, and you are wanting to be the dominant role in the room. But we're going to assume here that you're a facilitator who's supposed to be facilitating a relatively egalitarian group environment. And in that case, ending up with your views weigh heavily in the group is a fair disaster. And people are mostly in the groups I'm aware of, that I work with, fairly aware of that. And so they do the opposite thing. Which is, they say, "I have to be completely unbiased. I can't ever say anything that I think I can't ever make any kind of proposal." And, you know, and they may be sitting there with the best, most relevant idea in the room, and they don't say it, because I'm being the facilitator and I can't let my voice out. And often even around things like, "Should we extend the meeting?" Or, "I think it would be more useful to have this conversation a different way", which is very facilitator territory. But even that feels too dictatorial because they're trying so hard not to have their bias come out. And of course the danger there is that you lose a lot of good ideas, you lose a lot of potential interaction. And in fact, you lose a lot of the role of the facilitator if they don't even do the facilitation stuff. So, those are the extremes I think we'd like to avoid. So I'll toss it back to you, Paul, to start talking about what's that happy medium in the middle?

Paul: 3:47

Mm hmm. Well, and where I want something that you, you said that I don't think always happens, which is the- "Well, you know, I say everything that comes into my brain because, you know, I think it will help the group". I actually, I think that's a useful filter. Like, "Will this actually help the group?" And I think oftentimes when we have the over participative dominating facilitator, I think it's actually because they're not thinking about "Is this idea going to help the group?" And I think that's often the filter that I try to apply. A lot of my thinking about this comes from Miki Kashtan, and she has a wonderful book called The Highest Common Denominator. Where she talks about, you know, it can be very useful to be transparent as a facilitator, about what's going on. But you have to ask, "Am I doing that in service of the group, that there may be things that come up?" And I go, "Yeah, but that's not actually going to help the group move towards its goals, if I say that right now." But on the other hand, me withholding it, may also not help the group move towards its goals. And so yeah, your point around things like, "I think, it seems to me like the energy level in the room is flagging." That's a way of being transparent. I'm noticing a thing- I'm bringing, I'm giving voice to that, to the group. And because I may be the only one who notices that. Everybody else may think it's just them. But then I think what can be really useful to do is to validate that. Like to say, "You know, I'm wondering if it would be useful to take a ten minute break right now" and just see what kind of response that gets. So I think it can be useful. The place that I often start with that, of like, "Can I say this thing" or "Should I say this thing" is "Can I say it in such a way that I am owning it", that "It's like my experience. I'm noticing this thing." And then also "Can I hand it back to the group?" So now, it just becomes more information for the group to work with. And, "Is it something that I think is actually in service of the group moving towards its goals?"

Karen: 5:49

Yeah, and I'm going to take that space for facilitators, which is, you talked about you may be the only- the facilitator may be the only one in the room seeing a thing. I think it's even more important when everyone in the room, or almost everyone in the room, is seeing it, and the facilitator is the only one willing to say it. So, "It seems to me that two or three people are speaking a lot and possibly even using a word like dominating the conversation, and we're not hearing from others." And again, that check, does that feel you know, "Does that feel like what others are hearing?" Or, you know, or a proposed direction of, you know, "So, I'm going to ask anyone who's spoken in the last 10 minutes not to speak and see what else we hear", that kind of thing. And of course, there's a possibility that one of the people who's been domineering is going to come up to you after the meeting and say, "That was a horrible, nasty thing that you said about me and you outed me in front of the community" and whatever. And this is why it's that fear, is why we don't say the hard things. But in fact, if we don't say them, it doesn't make them not true. It just makes them not possible to deal with. And so as a facilitator, when we're seeing patterns, including patterns of non-productive, or worse, damaging behavior, being willing to call that, not in a put-down-y kind of way, you know, I wouldn't want to be saying, "Paul, you're talking too much again. You know, this is not going to be helpful." But if we can find gentle ways, but where we really do bring that truth into the conversation, it's so important. And I think it's completely legit for facilitators to speak in those ways.

Paul: 7:32

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And again, pattern of interaction right now actually helping the group move forward?" "Is it stuck?" You're commenting more on the pattern necessarily than anything else. But I do think there's also a piece of like, sometimes as a facilitator, you do have a piece of content knowledge that it's missing, right? And recognize that, like we've talked before about, you know, about influence and recognizing what sort of footprint you have. I think you do have to ask, like, "Is withholding this information actually in the service of the group?" And for me that's often a place of asking, "Am I wanting to add this because this is my preferred solution?" Or because I think, you know, or is it "I actually think that this would be useful to the group and they just don't seem to be aware of it, or they don't know about this thing." And so sometimes that can be a useful place to ask a question."I've encountered this kind of thing before. I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with" whatever that particular piece of information is. Or "Do people have access to that?" And getting curious about that. As a way of introducing it, rather than insisting, right? Saying, "I think we should do this thing". Is there a way that you can- again, any time, I think, as a facilitator, you are, you're doing something like that, you're bringing some of your own perspective to it. And this is true. Whether or not you're facilitating a group that you're not part of, or a group that you are. I think one of the useful things to do is to, as quickly as possible, hand it back to the group. Let them react and respond to whatever it is that you've put in there. That's one of the ways to avoid that dominating and domineering. That it becomes a piece of information that's in the common pool forever we don't want to work with, and then let them work with it.

Karen: 9:17

Yeah. And I will offer another a facilitator, I may speak for 5 minutes or more at the front end of a conversation providing context. And the thing here is I'm not making the case for this thing or that thing. I'm providing the context of'how did we get where we are?' And of course, the way in which I do that could sway opinions. I mean, there is power in that. So you have to be thoughtful about that. And it's not so much that I don't wish to sway opinions, it's that I want to be balanced in the information. So, if I have information that would lean towards A and I have information that would lean towards B, I don't just choose half of it. But if the information that exists, if you actually knew all of the information, that leans towards A, I don't have to come up with other stuff that makes B look like a good idea, right? So, where I want to stay is I want to make sure if I'm in that context setting, that I'm not saying anything that someone's likely to disagree with. So if I say, you know, "These are the three events that happened that got us to this place, I want to make sure I'm saying things that we all agree those things happened". And we're not going to get somebody saying, "But, wait." But they're very often things that some people in the room aren't aware of. Like, or that weren't putting the pieces together, or weren't seeing how one thing led to the next. And if you can create that sort of timeline or backstory, everybody starts with a common context. And that's not stepping over in my mind. That's actually providing the information that's needed. And even if there is, you know, a presenter who's trying to advocate for a particular proposal who could have given all of that, there's so much more likely to do it in a biased way. And if people are already in opposition, they're not, they're going to listen, in a very biased way. So, it can be super useful for the facilitator to get everybody on some common ground before we start.

Paul: 11:08

Yeah, and I think that's a about it. Also as a facilitator, it's like, "Well, I could say this", "Am I the right person to say this?" And sometimes the answer is no. Like, that really should be coming from someone else in the group. You know, "We should be hearing from that's that over here." But if sometimes it is, yeah, actually, again, for the group's goals to help us get there, "I am the right person to say that thing". And that's where, particularly when I've been brought in as a facilitator, and I'm working with a group. You know, I've got a sponsor, I've got someone who really owns the meeting, and so I'm working with a board, there's a chair. And so, it's really the chair's session, the chairs' meeting. We actually need to be clear about what are the things that it's right for the chair to be doing, and it's right for me to be doing. And I think that's another important piece, is recognizing if this thing needs to be said, "Am I the right person to say it?" And sometimes the answer is absolutely yes.

Karen: 12:05

And some of that's going to relationship, how trusting a relationship you have with the chair, and frankly, with everybody in the meeting. So, if you're part of a community that where you've really paid attention to everybody, everyone feels heard going in. You know, if I'm going into a contentious meeting as a facilitator and I know there are a couple of strong voices, I really want to talk to them ahead of the meeting. I don't want them to be surprised. You know, "I'm going to give this context in advance". I don't want them to be caught off guard by the fact that I'm going to do that. And generally, then part of what I've done is develop some trust, so that I have some range for doing the job of the facilitator, with less likelihood that they're going to react to it in a defensive or antagonized kind of way. That will get them out of their better self and in a more reactive space. So, if we can have that trust, which I think we've talked about before, of how important it is to have that trust back and forth between the facilitator and the group. We can do more of these kinds of things. Where we're bringing our ideas and our intelligence, and our knowledge, into the room in a way that really does move the group forward.

Paul: 13:19

So really, to track where we've about this question of 'what can a facilitator say?' Recognizing that anything that a facilitator does say is going to have an impact. That's going to matter more in some ways than it was someone not in that role necessarily saying it. So, how do we avoid the two sort of traps, the two ends of the spectrum of, "I say absolutely nothing and don't contribute even when I know that there's something that would be useful", or "How do I avoid saying way too much and having my opinion dominate what is actually happening there?" And so we've suggested a couple of things to keep in mind when you're trying to decide whether or not these words should come out of your mouth. One of them is, "Am I saying this because it actually helps the group, or am I saying, wanting to say it, because it's something that's super important to me" or "it's my opinion, or it's my favorite thing", things like that. But is this really helping the group move forward? Is this about process? Am I commenting on the patterns that I'm noticing the group falling into? Because those are almost always fair game. As a facilitator, if I'm noticing that the patterns in the way that the group is working is not helping the group move forward towards its goals, it's usually useful to say something about that. In a way that the group can hear, in a way that isn't shutting people down, it isn't demeaning. And also, when there are pieces of content that you notice, or you have some expertise or some information that you can introduce those, but you want to quickly hand that conversation back over to the group. Sometimes there are things that it absolutely makes sense for you as a facilitator to say, particularly around things like setting context. Making sure that people understand 'how did we get to the point that we're at here'. When you do that, you want to be doing that in as sort of factual a way as you can. Where you're laying out things that people aren't going to disagree with or argue about. Like, "This is what happened..." because that means you're least likely to inject your bias into the situation. And recognize when there are things that need to be said, but that you aren't the right person to say them. Where there is someone else who really should be saying this. Figuring out how you can involve them so that they're actually saying those things, and getting those things out there. And always being aware of what your relationship with the group is. Because you have a lot more latitude to say things, the more trust that you have with the group. And also recognizing how, when you participate, that's going to impact the trust that you have with the group.

Karen: 15:48

That's going to do it for us Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 15:51

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.