Employing Differences, Episode 83: What is a facilitator?

Paul: 0:08

Welcome to Employing Differences, conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: 0:14

I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:15

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:17

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "What is a facilitator?"

Paul: 0:27

I think Karen and I both get asked this question a lot, because we do a lot of this type of work. And I think we may have different but overlapping answers to this question. So we're going to kind of explore today how each of us sees how we act as a facilitator, what sort of the practice of facilitation is, how it shows up in the in the work that we do, and how it shows up and makes a difference for the people that we work with. So my standard answer to"What is a facilitator" is a facilitator is someone who makes decisions about structure and process, and is trusted to do so by the group to help them achieve their goals. As a facilitator, when I'm wearing that hat and this is where it gets messy, because I'm not always wearing that hat when I'm wearing that hat, I'm making decisions that I think are going to help the group to get to where they want to go. I'm making decisions about how we're going to do things, what we're going to do, what's the structure or the process that we're going to use for stuff. And I'm not living in the content of what they're doing. I'm holding that, I'm creating a space that I think will make it easier. Because facilitate comes from the Latin word meaning to make easier. And so a facilitator is someone who makes the process easier, so that maybe helps a group get to a decision sooner than they would have otherwise, smoother than they would have otherwise, helps them hear voices they might not have heard in the group otherwise anything about their their group process that helps them to achieve their goals in an easier fashion. But importantly, as a facilitator, I don't own those goals. Those goals are owned by the group. I might have opinions about those goals, but those opinions are often not relevant. So that is my pat answer of what is a facilitator? I'm curious, Karen, when you get asked, what is a facilitator, what do you say?

Karen: 2:30

Yeah, and there are like five different directions I'm inclined to go with this, so we'll see where we get to with them. So I'll start with just my my answer: As a facilitator, my first job is holding space. Creating space in which ideas flow, in which people can do the things that they want to do. And I'm intrigued by your frame of making decisions, essentially about how the space is held, I would say, like the process, the structures that we're going to use to have that space. And it's not a language that I've used for it, but I think it's really appropriate, with one caveat, which is make decisions, and you said, and the group trusts. When the group trust isn't there, which, frankly, is at least as often as not that it's partially there, I would say, I think there's some amount of group trust, but very often not complete trust, for all kinds of reasons that aren't necessarily about the facilitator that that gets a little more dynamic, and you have to do more sort of building trust and checking in. I think one of the places that I see facilitators go wrong, is that they take on the role of facilitator and assume that the trust comes with it. And so they make decisions about structure and process this is what we're going to do this is the topic, we're talking about that off topic, any number of other things and what happens is group members who don't trust, whether for valid reasons or not, resist that. And so then you get this competition going between the facilitator and group members. And my feel about that is that the group wins, because the space belongs to the group. So my job as a facilitator is maybe to make decisions, I think of it maybe a little more as having a plan, offering a structure, and then being open to feedback about that. So when I'm facilitating there's a lot of, "This is what I'm planning to do. Does that work for everyone?" And we're not going to go through a huge process of decision making about that, but if someone has some concern about it, then we will pause and figure out that concern. I've certainly had cases where a group said, "Nope nope, we don't want to do that." I can think of an example where where I said, "Okay, I hear that you don't want to do that and these are the reasons. And I wonder if you'd be willing to just give it a try anyway? I think it's gonna work out well for you." And the group said,"Okay." And I can think of an example where the group said,"Nope, we don't want to do that." And they did something that in my mind was not a good use of their time and just kept them sort of spinning in the mess they were in for another hour and a half. But clearly, they needed to do that spinning to be ready for the next step. As facilitator, I don't have universal-no-matter-what authority. I have as much authority as stays present and trusted in the room. Anyone in the room can begin to rescind that authority at any time, and I have to be responsive to that. So I think facilitation is very much about holding space, and yes, making decisions, or at least making plans and having structures available. But also, it's very interactive and relational back and forth with the group and not constant.

Paul: 6:03

The trust building is absolutely a part of that relationality. So often, sometimes the decisions that I'm making when I'm working with a group early on are, "I'm going to decide to do a thing, I'm just going to say something." Because fundamentally, that's all I actually get to decide, is what I'm going to do I'm often doing things early on that are designed to build trust both in me and in each other. And in the process. It is rare that I do something too weird with a group in the first session. Something that's out of their norm. Because ultimately, one of the other views that I have about the job of facilitator, is thinking about this systemically, your system is perfectly optimized to give you the results you're getting. Whatever process that is that you use, the culture that is there, all the things that you normally structure, the way you structure your discussions, and stuff like that all of that contributes to the result you're getting. Oftentimes, when people bring in a facilitator, it's because they want to get different results. They're like,"We want to do something different." And so that means that you actually need to behave differently. You need to have a different structure. You need to have a different process. And so they want that, but that's also uncomfortable, because they're not used to it. It's different. And so my I often see my job is sort of nudging their process, or their structure, or the way that they're working, the way that they're making decisions, the way they're engaging with each other, in more useful directions. But if I push too hard or too far, then it's not going to take. And so I think that's where some of that sort of back and forth that you brought up comes in. I need to be aware of what's going on and helping them sort of build confidence and trust in this different way of interacting. And so I tend to ease into that. And that's a style thing, where I will often come in very gently, and do some things that are maybe similar to what they've been doing before or stuff that doesn't seem too far out of out of their norm. And then just see how the system responds. How do the people respond to that? What what is my degree of comfort with pushing a little further? Can we go faster with this? Do we need to slow down and do some more trust building? Again, it's not just them trusting me? It's also them trusting each other and trusting whatever it is that I'm introducing into that. So I think that, yeah, decisions aren't ironclad. I'm re-making decisions as a facilitator all the time. "I decided I was going to invite them to do this thing. And hmm, that that's not doing what I thought it was going to do. Do I just stay with that? Or do I try to nudge in a different direction?" So there's constant decision making that's going on.

Karen: 9:03

Yeah. And I think that discomfort piece that you're pointing to of shift and change, which often is when a facilitator comes in... I think it's really essential to think about. It's one of a number of factors. Another sort of error that I find in amateur facilitators, a member of the group facilitating the meeting, is the belief that what the facilitator is, is the person who stands at the front of the room and directs traffic. They call on people and they say,"This is the next thing on the agenda, and oops, we're out of time for that." And that, to me, is more like directing traffic than actually facilitating. A facilitator, in my mind, thinks about what is the objective? What is the thing we're hoping is going to get accomplished with this chunk of the meeting? And what is the structure that we could use that makes it more likely or most likely for us to get there? And then stacks a number of those objectives, probably one after another, in some form or fashion, into a whole meeting that's cohesive. Because each thing affects the thing after it, and each thing affects the mood of the room and the energy in the room and what people's capacities are. So there's all these factors that you think about, including what's familiar or unfamiliar. Sometimes as a facilitator, I'm like, "Oh, there's this great thing, you know, we could use a Miro board, or we could use a this or that," and then I think about the group and I'm like,"Yep, the skill isn't there for that. Okay, so what's a different way?" So there's all of these factors that come into play. And I think of it as an art form, that that there is way more artistry than just operations involved in getting a meeting to work well. And that a big part of that is planning with all of these different factors and all the human-ness and then holding that plan loosely enough to stay in relationship with the group and more importantly, have the group stay in relationship with one another. So that's the sort of broad role for me is to plan and then implement, but to really be thinking about all these different elements of a meeting, and hold those artfully together in a space that actually works.

Paul: 11:22

Several years ago, I was in southwest Alaska, we were on a small boat cruise. So it was like 70 passengers, a very small boat. And at the beginning of the week, the the head guide said, "So you've seen the itinerary. This is the plan from which we will deviate." And it very much was. And he said, "We will deviate according to whales, whim, and whether, depending on what we encounter." But yeah, we have a plan as a facilitator, and then we're in the moment continually assessing, "Is this plan still useful? Not just are we on plan or not, but is the plan still useful? Being able to sort of shift and jump around in sort of as we need to, as we're noticing what's useful in the group. And I think the other piece of noticing what's useful in the group is you talked about, "My job is often to hold space." But sometimes I also need to play traffic cop. Sometimes we recognize that the group either needs to be more expansive they need to hear more of what's going on, they need to have some more room to play, to explore, to get through some of these things and sometimes they need to move, and whatever their current tendency is isn't to do the thing that we perceive as useful. So again, this is that idea of making decisions about structure and process to help the group achieve its goals. And we as a facilitator need to be ready to go out of what's comfortable for us. I've absolutely been in those situations where it's like I am very comfortable opening up the space and holding it and letting people explore and trusting them to get to where they need to go, I'm working with a group right now where we actually have a very structured approach, because that's what's useful. Because that group would have a tendency to just kind of explore all over the place, and not get to where they need to go in the time that they need to get there. And so it's very interesting for me, because I have to land in a different spot on my comfort level, in terms of being directive or reflective or expansive. And so the other thing is that we have to manage ourselves as facilitators. So we're not just paying attention to what's going on in the group, about where they are going, and is what they're currently doing helping them to get to where they want to go or or do they need to nudge but also noticing what's going on in us as we're working with them that's coming up. In a lot of ways, that is the the hard inner job of a facilitator that we often don't see. We see the person who's helping put together the agenda, or who is holding that space and capturing things on the whiteboard or whatever it is. We don't see all of the inner process that they're going through, which may include things like, "Well, I think that's a terrible idea. I'm still writing it down." You're still capturing it. Making those decisions moment to moment about what is it that I'm going to say, what is it I'm going to do? What's coming up in me? And sometimes tapping into that and being able to say, "You know, actually, I can't not say something about this. I'm noticing a thing that I think is actually useful for the group to hear." Because it is information about the way that they are working and how it is unlikely to actually achieve their goal, based on the experience that I have, or the way that I've seed. So sometimes I do want to share that. So always making those moment to moment decisions about, "Am I gonna say anything about that or not?" And I think it's the inner work of the facilitator that is the harder piece, often.

Karen: 15:18

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And harder for facilitators to see, frankly. That we don't quite notice what's going on inside us. And I know for me, one of the things that's dicey for me is that I have really good skills for holding space. My Imago training got me there, and I can slow everything down and get people really listening, that kind of thing. And I was born with pretty good skills for pushing a group. For saying, "This is the direction we need to go," and getting them to move in that way. But the blending of the two, or the discerning which of those faces is going to be useful and a lot of it for me is getting really clear that my job is to push a process perhaps that will help the group move the content the way the group wants to move it. So if what I'm seeing is, "Yikes, this process is not working. We're not going to get to the decisions that we need to get to." Or there are some minority voices that are raising really important things and not being heard, or any number of things like that around process, then I may need to step in more strongly and say, "Hey, this is a thing that I'm seeing." This is a place where the group is going astray in a certain way. I was facilitating a meeting last night where a couple of members were sort of saying, "Well, you know, what we're contributing, we're not sure if it aligns with the group. And we really want to leave the group. If us leaving the group would serve the group, that's what we'd want to do." And I'm sitting with knowing that nobody in the group wants that to happen. But nobody has the data to go that direction. I ended up pointing out the values they weren't naming that were so important to the group. And then the rest of the group sort of went, "Yeah, that." So some of it is sort of knowing the group, knowing where they want to go, and mostly holding process, but part of that process can be naming content that I have heard in the group, but it's not showing up in this moment where it's useful, that kind of thing. So it's this really slippery slope of, "Where is push, where is hold, where is stay away from content, where is bring content to the fore?" For me, the trick has been, if I can remind myself of my firmly held belief, which is, "Given good process, the group will make the right decision for the group, even if it's a different decision than I thought or a different place than I thought it would go." So if I can stay solidly in, "What this group needs is good process, and that's my job to offer, and that's what I'm trying to hold," I can dabble in content pretty reliably. And the minute that I let myself start thinking I know more than the group, boy, am I in trouble.

Paul: 18:22

What that really points at and every facilitator I've ever talked to, this is true of they see and love structure and process. That is the way that they see groups interact, the way that they work with groups. They get frustrated by groups that don't use good structure or process because they can't not see it. And I think it's very easy as a facilitator and easy as someone who lives in that world to forget that not everybody does. Right?

Karen: 18:59

I want them to so much.

Paul: 19:02

It would all be so much easier if everybody did. But if people did, they wouldn't be bringing us in. We are there to help with structure and process, because we can see it and they don't. And actually the other piece of that is that when we live in the content too much, even if we are normally trained to be able to see structure and process, we start to lose our view of it. So it might be that the group would be perfectly capable, someone in the group would be perfectly capable of facilitating if they didn't have to be in the content, but for whatever reason they need to be there. So I think we have to have a lot of awareness of the fact that we are seeing these things or we are aware of these things that people in the group aren't around structure and process either because they they aren't naturally inclined to do that, they aren't trained to do that or because they are so deep in the content, which is where they need to be that they just aren't noticing these things. So we're noticing stuff and we're aware of stuff that we have to be very... It can be easy to not be approachable about that. It can be easy to sort of fall into that technical language, to talk about structure and process, because we love it. Getting together with facilitators is always fun because we actually get to geek out about this stuff. But normal people don't and don't care about it and don't see it. And I think we have to have a level of awareness of that. And so that's another part of that sort of self-management, as we're working with a group is actually being able to translate the stuff that we're seeing into things that make sense or are relevant. And not overshare around our viewpoint on process.

Karen: 20:52

Yeah, yeah. So I think our joint definition of facilitation is around guiding, planning for and making some decisions about the process and structures that a group will use, to make decisions to serve their own goals. And that it is a very dynamic role, where you might change your decisions. You might rearrange your thinking. Where there's an art to it, where it's really bringing in intuition and instinct as much as sort of learned skills and principles. And that, in the moment, it's maintaining the relationship both between the facilitator and the group members and amongst the group members themselves. And if we can do all of that, we can sort of dip in and out of content where we need to while really focusing on holding the process and structure. And fundamentally holding the respect of the group that says, "The group will make the very best decision they can, if good process is followed." And so that keeps me in my lane, as a facilitator, that I'm in the process, and I'm really fundamentally trusting the group.

Paul: 22:01

Yeah, and they're trusting me. Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 22:08

And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.