Lately I've been wrestling with some health issues related to my dance with multiple myeloma, which brings into sharper focus my mortality. In consequence, I've been thinking a good deal the last month about how to wrap things up, how to hand off, and what I still want to say in this forum. Today's entry falls into this last bucket.
I've been a professional facilitator since 1987—about half my life. So what, after all these years, do I think I'm really good at as a facilitator of groups who desire inclusive outcomes? To be clear, I'm not talking about things I alone can do; just the things I can do consistently at a high level, and which I hope are both useful and aspirational.
In no particular order, here's my list—all of which are learnable:
1. I'm fluent in the language of numbers
Math has always come easily for me, and it took quite a while to understand that that's relatively rare. That is, many people zone out when numbers enter the conversation. They may not understand which numbers are important, or how to display them to illuminate an issue. Most groups defer to those who claim facility with numbers and hope for the best. Thus, it's an advantage that I can wade into numbers and sort out what's happening in short order.
While not every issue has a significant financial component, many do, and I can ride the waves.
2. I'm good in a storm
By which I mean I don't lose my center in the midst of high reactivity. If anything, the moment slows down for me when people go into emotional distress. (For one thing, I don't have to guess what's going on; upset people are going to tell me.) The leverage point here is that I don't get tense when someone else gets tense. Emotional reactions are normal (part of the range of human response) and I've learned to treat them as data and energy, both of which can be highly beneficial—if you learn to see them that way and how to work with them constructively.
When groups do not have an understanding about working with emotions, or any agreement about how to do it, there tends to be considerable nervousness about how to proceed in the presence of high reactivity, accompanied by a strong vibe that expressing upset is immature and inappropriate (we were having a civil conversation until you erupted).
3. Pinning down details
While this tends to be a non-sexy mop-up phase of working an issue, I'm diligent about who will do what, by when, with what resources, in collaboration with whom, and with what expectations around reporting along the way. When implementation details are left unspecified, you often have to come back later. and clean up the ends you left loose. Inefficient.
4. Finding suitable homes for orphans and loose ends
It's not at all unusual for something to surface in the context of working an issue that is beyond what you agreed to address. While it may be appropriate to tackle at the group level, you may not have time to deal with it in the moment. Perhaps it's an expansion of the topic at hand, or maybe it's something tangential. In either case, I don't let the group go there—unless it makes an explicit decision to do so—and I'm good at seeing that such items are assigned a shepherd so that the topic comes back in an orderly way.
5. Adept at separating wheat from chaff (or signal from noise, choose your metaphor)
There is an art to sussing out which pieces of information or viewpoints are crucial to a consideration, or might become serviceable bridge planks connecting people who see an issue differently. Some of this is discarding repetitive or off-center statements; some of it is noticing when there is an energetic surge in the room when someone offers something potent.
This shows up in tight summaries, and the ability to highlight leverage points when a group struggles to find the balance point among strongly held differences. It is not necessary to include all input in a summary, so long as you include the key pieces, which helps participants feel heard and establishes forward momentum, from which workable solutions can be build.
6. Extracting all the product possible in the last 5 minutes of a consideration
This is a special application of the last point—understanding what's possible toward the end of the time allotted to work an issue. Often there is potential agreement that is in the air but not yet widely seen or made explicit—product that will dissipate if not identified and validated in the moment—product which will have to be reassembled later, brick by brick.
Many times this is partial product rather than final solutions, but it all counts and helps people feel good about having participated in the meeting.
7. Constantly shifting the lens through which I experience a meeting
This has at least three components: I'm tracking a) ideas, b) energy, and c) time. I am not doing these things simultaneously, but sequentially, over and over—without drawing the group's attention to where my focus is at any given moment.
The sum of these assessments helps me determine what is the best use of the group's time in the moment, and is constantly shifting.
8. Ability to work fluently with both ideas and energy
As a subset of the previous point, I purposefully attempt to ride both horses whenever I facilitate, weighing such disparate factors as where is the conversation going, who haven't we heard from, do I detect tension or boredom in the group, is the group engaged or listless, which ideas seem to have landed mostly strongly, where is there resistance to the main thrust of the conversation, and what does it mean?
In particular, I have a facility for working with the non-rational, as well as the rational, which can be a significant aid in participants feeling that I am present for what they have to contribute, and will be an ally in their views being accurately understood.
9. My energetic range of engagement
While my default mode is up-tempo and high energy, I am able to slow down and soften my approach when I sense that shift is called for (say, when a person is in tears, or sharing something vulnerable with the group). I am much more effective as a facilitator when I'm able to bring my energy into alignment with that of the speaker, and that calls for range.
10. Understanding the myriad ways in which groups of people will necessarily contain considerable diversity, and the power of offering a variety of on-ramps into conversations
While most cooperative groups include a commitment to diversity among their common values, few have actually talked through what that means. For the most part they are thinking about not discriminating on the basis of factors protected by Fair Housing laws (ethnicity, race, religious preference, sexual orientation, gender, age, and the like). But diversity shows up in many more ways than that (for example, high structure/low structure, risk tolerant/risk averse, fast thinkers/slow thinkers, introverts/extroverts, people who love speaking in front of 30 people/those who are scared to death of public speaking).
When groups fail to understand that such diversity is present, they tend to default into operating in ways that are most comfortable to those with the strongest voices (or those who were there first), with the unintended consequence that others feel marginalized and unwelcome—which is rarely intentional, or helpful.
Aware of this dynamic (and the tendency for it being a blind spot) I'll conduct my work with a variety of formats, greatly increasing the likelihood that there will be something for everyone.
11. Information is concentrated in resistance
I try to be sensitive to signs of resistance in the group, as it almost always indicates a tender spot that needs to be understood in order to solve the issue at hand. Instead of being irritated by resistance, I get curious about it. What does the reaction mean relative to the topic? How does the reaction give me clues about how to build bridge to that person?
12. The potency of passionate neutrality
Many hold a model of the facilitator as someone who is dispassionate—who never loses their cool, and is always even-tempered. I'm not that guy. I figure if I'm going to ask meeting participants to show up with their whole selves, then I need to do so as well. This does not mean that I take sides (a facilitator non-no), but it does mean that I laugh, cheer, and express frustration. I'm human and I think it's a misstep to try to be an automaton. You need to be real.
13. Why and how to integrate heart work with head work in the same meeting
While there is increasing awareness among cooperative groups that room needs to be made for working emotionally, in many groups this translates to designating certain meetings as "heart circles" where reactions are explored but no decisions are made.
While this is better than never making space for emotional sharing at all, it's my belief that people are complicated all the time and groups are better served by allowing the widest possible range of human input all the time (rather than insisting that it be translated into rational statements in order to be seriously considered). Yes, this is a challenge—but so is group living. Operating as if rational input is the only kind that's legitimate means cutting yourself off from emotional, intuitive, spiritual, and kinesthetic knowing. How smart is that?
Over the course of my career as a facilitator I've learned when and how to offer ways to access these different kinds of knowing.
14. Can hit the curve
While it's always a good idea to have a clear plan for how to work an issue, sometimes, in the course of a meeting you encounter surprises. Now what? You have to be able to see that something unanticipated has occurred, assess its impact on your plan, and decide on the spot whether to continue with the path you'd laid out or start off-roading. This calls for courage, as the plan represents a safety net for some facilitators and they may be loath to give it up—even when it isn't working—because it's too scary to go off-script.
15. Can see the bridge before others
Most of us have been raised in competitive culture, one consequence of which is a conditioned psychological imperative to be able to identify one's personal contribution in any given situation—as it satisfies the need to see how we are unique. Thus, we tend to look for differences before we look for similarities when responding to the ideas of others.
Because I'm aware of this dynamic, I've worked hard to train myself to undo this conditioning, and to look for common ground before I look for ways in which ideas don't fit together well. As expectations have a profound impact on what you find, I tend to see solutions sooner than others, simply because that's what I'm looking for.
16. Fearlessness
While there's no question but that I sometimes get things wrong (perhaps I frame a conversation poorly, struggle to connect accurately with an isolated speaker, or push someone beyond their capacity), I am always going to try—excepting only when I see no hope of how my stepping in can be helpful‚ either because I have no clarity about how to connect with a person, or because I experience someone as completely barricaded against my observations and insights.
That said, if I sense a way to name what's happening that has heretofore not been articulated, I am always going to try to offer that picture to the group.
17. Weaving
I've come to understand that I have an unusually large RAM (random access memory in IT parlance), which allows me to recall on Sunday afternoon what someone said Friday evening, demonstrating that I'm paying close attention to what people are saying, and am constantly looking for ways to put together elements from different speakers—both to reduce complexity to something more manageable, and to establish a broad foundation for potential solutions.
Understandably, people love it when the facilitator remembers what they said. To be clear, it's not a matter of my taking sides—it's a matter of my remembering and valuing their input. They don't have to repeat their view, or defend their turf, because I won't leave them behind.
18. Reports
This may seem like a mundane thing, but the standard for reports is actually quite low and there's an art to writing summaries that are pithy. yet complete and accessible. And I'm good at it. There was a time when I was essentially crafting a report (or a handout, or blog entry, or article for publication) nearly every day, and I honed my skills through years of practice.
As a facilitation trainer, I commit to giving students detailed reports of my observations about their efforts facilitating meetings that I have observed. It takes me about as much time to craft those reports as it does to observe the meetings, but it's an irreplaceable element of what I offer as a teacher and professional facilitator.
19. Giving and receiving constructive feedback
One of the (many) areas in which cooperative culture strives to be different from mainstream culture, is when it comes to feedback. Because the mainstream models are generally atrocious, most of us come to community living with little understanding about how to do this cleanly. That's the bad news.
The good news is that it can be learned—and is well worth doing. As a trainer, it's imperative that I walk my talk on this, which means being willing to listen carefully to critical feedback with maximal openness and minimal defensiveness. To be sure, this isn't always easy, but it's important.
20. Ability to walk in another's shoes
When it's clear that someone is sharing from a depth of conviction, I try to feel into how the situation looks to that person, the better to "get" where they are coming from. When I do this well, and am able to demonstrate that level of understanding when reflecting back what they said, the speaker relaxes—because they have been understood—satisfying an almost universal human desire.
21. Ability to speak plainly and accessibly
As you can probably intuit from this blog, there is a fair amount of my speaking and writing, and I work hard at expressing myself in ways that are concise, memorable, and easy to understand. I do this by using plain language (not pedantic), employing apt metaphors, avoiding the passive voice, and not ducking the hard stuff. It's a dance, but I can hear the music.