Swimming in Liminal Waters

Over the course of my 35-year career as a group process professional, I've gradually been developing a deeper appreciation for working intuitively—trusting my sense of what to do in a given situation, even if a rational explanation is out of reach in the moment of choice.

I recently experienced a profound expansion of what is possible in this realm when given the unusual opportunity to work with a group for nine days straight—in person, no less. The group had been around for decades but found itself in a very deep hole, with major unresolved interpersonal tensions, low trust, and no willingness to work on relationship repair. Ugh.

Each day my work partner and I would discuss what we'd try to do with the group to evoke the positives and ameliorate the negatives. It was tough sledding, and many of my ordinary tools were off the table. So we had to wing it. 

When I work with a client, my habit is to clear my calendar for the duration of the work cycle, and fully immerse myself in their reality. When doing so, I elevate my energy and enhance my focus. Essentially, I'm all in. 

Historically, the outer limit of my direct work with a client is limited to 48 hours (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon). Rarely, that has stretched to three or four days. So nine days represented entirely new territory.

The problem wasn't figuring out where to help (there was no end of things in that category); it was figuring out how to sequence the engagement such that we drew out as much poison as possible, and sensitively gave them every chance to find a path forward that would allow the community to continue forward without placing anyone adrift on an ice floe.  

When working over a weekend it's fairly common for me to go to bed at night with an open question about how to proceed the next day and have the answer emerge from my sleep cycle. That is, I awake with clarity about how to proceed that I didn't have when I closed my eyes the night before. In fact, this has happened frequently enough that I've come to trust it—even though I don't understand how it works—and is part of how I've developed my intuitive muscles.

What was eye-opening about my recent gig-in-residence was that I did this every night for nine days.

What's more, there was an echo of this when I crafted my after-action summary of what was accomplished, my analysis, and the work remaining. Three times I went to bed thinking about how best to frame what I had to say… and three times I woke up in the morning with surety about how to proceed.

As a facilitation trainer, for a long time I have emphasized what I style "riding two horses," by which I mean paying attention to what is said, as well as the energy with which it is conveyed and received. Now I've come to embrace the additional nuance of developing and learning to trust one's intuition—inspirations about how to understand and engage that operate below the rational level. It's a different kind of knowing, yet no less potent.

As a facilitator, intuition is about developing sufficient confidence to commit to an action without knowing what it will engender, because it feels right. To be sure, this is not about taking wild guesses, nor is it reading horoscopes. My sense of the right way to focus a conversation, or to frame a question, is substantially informed by a wealth of real world experiences with groups in struggle. The dynamic image I hold around this is committing my weight forward to take a step without knowing where the floor is, trusting that it will be there when my foot comes down.

We humans are such fascinating and nuanced creatures. What a blast I'm having exploring new rooms in the house that is my life.

Key Facilitative Skills: Projecting Curioisty

As a professional facilitator for more than three decades, I've had ample opportunity to observe which skills make the most difference. As a facilitation trainer the past 15 years, I've collected plenty of data about which lessons have been the most challenging for students to digest. Taken all together, I've decided to assemble a series of blog posts on the facilitation skills I consider to be both the hardest to master and the most potent for producing productive meetings. They will all bear the header Key Facilitation Skills and it's a distillation of where I believe the heavy lifting is done.

Here are the headlines of what I'll cover in this series:

I. Riding Two Horses: Content and Energy
II. Working Constructively with Emotions 
III. Managing the Obstreperous
IV. Developing Range: Holding the Reins Only as Tightly as the Horses Require
V. Semipermeable Membranes: Welcoming Passion While Limiting Aggression
VI. Creating Durable Containers for Hard Conversations
VII. Walking the Feedback Talk
VIII. Sis Boom Bang
IX. Projecting Curiosity in the Presence of Disagreement
X. Distinguishing Weird (But Benign) from Seductive (Yet Dangerous)
XI. Eliciting Proposals that Sing
XII. Becoming Multi-tongued
XIII. Not Leaving Product on the Table
XIV. Sequencing Issues Productively
XV. Trusting the Force   

• • •

Projecting Curiosity in the Presence of Disagreement 
One of the most pivotal moments in group dynamics is the point of disagreement—when someone first expresses a significantly different viewpoint than another's, and the outcome matters. Most of us have been conditioned to respond to this as the opening bell of a fight. But it doesn't have to go like that.

You need to keep context in mind. In cooperative culture you want what's best for the group, and the pathway to get there is not the same as in competitive culture—where the survivor of a battle over individual preferences is thought to produce the best outcome. In cooperative culture it shouldn't matter where an idea comes from; it only matters whether it's worthwhile. It shouldn't matter how much others are persuaded by your thinking; only whether we're collectively finding the best solutions.

In competitive culture, we strive to win the debate. The theory is that good ideas will outlast poor ones, and testing ideas against each other is how we expose weaknesses and demonstrate an idea's staying power (if you can't knock it down, it must be good). In competitive culture you're hoping that your idea will prevail. In cooperative culture you turn that on its head—you go into a meeting hoping someone will change your mind—that your thinking can be improved upon. This is a radical shift, and not always easy to access in the dynamic moment.

That's where the facilitator's skill can save the day. It's their job to gently, yet firmly remind people to be open of different viewpoints. If group members feel it's unsafe to voice alternate thinking, they will hesitate to do so, undercutting the foundational premise of cooperative culture—that the group does its best work when all relevant views have been heard and considered.

I'm not saying that everyone will say brilliant things. I'm saying that you want the least possible barriers to members contributing their input on any given topic (because you never know where brilliancy will come from).

So what makes this hard? Partly it's competitive conditioning (feeling threatened and argumentative when someone's ideas diverge from ours), but it's more complicated than that. Sometimes there will be problems with the delivery—which the speaker may or may not be aware of. Even assuming that the speaker is doing the best they can (which isn't always the case) what's comfortable and familiar to the speaker may be irritating and off-putting to the listener. If the delivery is freighted with aggression or sarcasm, it can be very difficult to respond with openness.

And yet, it still serves us best to try.

Working Distress and Disagreement
In the instance where a divergent view is expressed with a froth of attitude (typically the most challenging version of disagreement), it generally works best for the facilitator to start by acknowledging the substance of the speaker's point of view—refraining from commenting on the edge to their delivery until later. Why?

It works like this: when people express themselves aggressively it signals upset. When people are upset they don't listen well. When you can establish that you've heard an upset person's viewpoint and why they're upset, they tend to deescalate (become less upset). Consequently their hearing improves, they become less rigid, and it's easier to have a constructive conversation—all of which are desirable.

To be clear, I am not condoning aggression. Rather, I'm trying to make the case for how to engage with it effectively. You can still hold someone accountable for being aggressive (or sarcastic), just not right away.

Multiple On Ramps
Because meetings are not uniformly accessible to all folks, it's prudent for facilitators to provide a variety of ways to engage. Some people take more time to know their mind and to be ready to speak than others. Some are more comfortable speaking in front of the whole group than others. Some are more articulate in writing; some more eloquent orally. By mixing up formats, and extending to meeting participants a variety of ways to engage, it's much more likely that everyone will have been given something with which they are comfortable. 

Good facilitators think about this and prepare options ahead of time.

Power and Love

Saturday morning Susan and I arose early (no small thing on a weekend, when sleeping in is a treasured option) to catch the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Aside from the breathtaking pageantry on a gorgeous day in jolly old England—labeled "crackers" by a British commentator, whatever that is—and an incredible array of hats (a milliner's wet dream), I was impressed by the homily delivered by Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. He's based in the US but crossed the pond for the chance at 16 minutes at the lectern in front of the British royals, the BBC, and all three major American television networks. (Though apparently he'd only been offered five minutes, he seized the time, and made the most of it.)

In an impassioned delivery, Curry's spoke about the power of love—certainly a topical theme for a wedding. While Curry made the case for how anything is possible if we trust in love, I was struck by how Adam Kahane harnessed the same horses to plow a different field in Collaborating with the Enemy, a book I read earlier in the week. While I was favorably impressed by Curry's admonitions about how powerful love can be in a marriage, I want to focus this essay on Kahane's work about the marriage of power and love.

Jacob Corvidae, a friend of mine who used to live at Dancing Rabbit (and currently resides in Boulder CO, where he works with Kahane) recommended the book. Kahane's work has special appeal for me because we both work with groups, trying to help them solve problems collaboratively—without asking anyone to shift their core values or alter their personality.

—Setting Kahane's Table
To better understand Kahane's concepts, here are his definitions for three key terms:

o  Power (per theologian Paul Tillich): the drive of everything living to realize itself.

o  Love (also per Tillich): the drive toward the unity of the separated.

o  Holon (per Arthur Koestler): something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.  

While "holon" is a new term for me and I define "power" differently (I think of it as influence: the ability to get others to agree with something or to do something), I want to present Kahane's thinking in his terms. [The italicized segments that follow are quoted from the book.]

Kahane contends that every person and group possesses both of these drives—power and love—and that it is always a mistake (unbalanced) to employ only one. Per Martin Luther King, Jr, "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic."
  
With respect to group dynamics, Kahane believes that effective collaboration requires three kinds of stretches, all of which challenge conventional wisdom:

—The First Stretch: to Embrace Conflict and Connection
His foundational idea is that there is more than one whole. Having worked in the field of group dynamics for three decades I agree with him. It is sobering how much trouble I have getting people unstuck because of their belief that there is a single whole (a single reality) which they are aligned with and which those in opposition to them are not. (Why move toward others when you are closer to the truth?) Commonly enough, both sides of a disagreement have a similar idea about their being only a single whole and each feels righteous about their perspective being the one that's correct. Effectively, neither side is motivated to work with the views of others, resulting in a stalemate.

Things can proceed much more fluidly if you accept the notion that there are multiple wholes. You have one, and those who see the same situation differently have another. The more wholes you can include in  your awareness, the better chance you have to build robust responses (ones without holes).
 Kahane further believes that in complex situations that are not amenable to imposed solutions, we need to be able to both fight and talk; to both assert and engage. The key to being able to work with multiple wholes is being able to work with both power and love.

This challenges my thinking that fighting is antithetical to collaboration. While I have always been in favor of not ducking hard issues and of getting disagreements out in the open—and I am fully aware of the constructive potential of conflict—I have mostly experienced fighting as destructive, rather than a sign that someone has reached the limits of how far they can stretch to include another's whole. 

To be clear, Kahane's claim is nuanced. The use of power can be a constructive element to the extent that assertion is generative. Once you encounter resistance, continued pressing slides into being destructive and is no longer healthy. Going the other way, the generative side of love of engagement. But once it starts to engender capitulation, is crosses into the anaerobic breeding ground of manipulation. Kahane makes the case that fighting and talking are the two complementary poles of collaboration, and that going to too far toward either is ineffective. You need both.

Further, it's important to differentiate between problems that can be solved, and polarities that cannot be solved but only managed.
 
—The Second Stretch: to Experiment a Way Forward
Kahane describes four ways of talking and listening:

a) DownloadingHere I listen from within myself and my story. I am deaf to other stories; I hear only what confirms my own story ("I knew that already"). The talking associated with downloading is telling: I say what I always say, because I think that my story is either the only true one or the only one that is safe or polite to tell. I assert that there is only one whole (for example, one objective or team or strategy) and ignore or suppress others. Downloading is the typical behavior of experts, fundamentalists, dictators, and people who are arrogant, angry, or afraid.

b) Debating
Here I listen from the outside, factually and objectively, like a judge in a debate or a courtroom ("This is correct and that is incorrect"). The talking associated with debating is a clash of ideas: each person says what he or she thinks, and some ideas and people win and others lose. This mode is more open than downloading because people are now expressing their different views and are aware that these are their views and not the truth ("In my opinion… ").  

c) Dialoging
Here I listen to others as if from inside them, empathetically and subjectively ("I hear where you are coming from"). The talking associated with dialoging is self-reflective ("In my experience… "). This mode opens up new possibilities because now we are working with multiple living holons, each expressing its power and love.

d) Presencing
Here I listen not from within myself or another, paying attention just to one specific idea or person, but from the larger system ("What I am noticing here and now is… "). When I am in a group that is presencing, it is as if the boundaries between people have disappeared, so that when one person talks, he or she is articulating something for the whole group or system, and when I listen, it is as if to the whole group or system. 

All four of these modes are legitimate and useful. It's not that we need to employ only one mode, but rather that we need to be able to move fluently and fluidly among them. 

According to organizational theorist Karl Weick: People find their way forward not necessarily because they have a good map or plan. Instead it is because they "begin to act, they generate tangible outcomes in some context, and this helps them discover what is occurring, what needs to be explained, and what should be done next." They don't need to have a clear vision or goal; they only need to have some shared sense of the challenge or problematic situation they are trying to overcome. Collaborative teams typically make progress not be carefully executing an excellent plan to achieve agreed objectives, but by acting and learning from this acting. 

—The Third Stretch: to Step into the Game 
We have to take action; not just watch and wait for the perfect moment when all stars are aligned. The way I frame this concept is that there will be times when you need to commit your weight forward without knowing where the ground is, trusting that firm footing will appear where you need it when your foot comes down.

The question about collaborating that I am asked most frequently is, "How can we get them to… ?" But in non-hierarchical, non-controlled collaboration, you cannot get anyone to do anything. We blame and "enemyfy" others, both to defend and define ourselves. We see ourselves self-centeredly as the protagonist at the center of the drama of what is going on around us, so when we experience a challenge, we react as if it is a personal attack against which we must defend ourselves. We are frightened of being hurt, so we separate and shield ourselves by asserting that we are right and others are wrong. We fear that if we collaborate with those others, we will become contaminated or compromised—that we will betray what we stand for and who we are.

The problem with "enemyfying" is not that we never have enemies: we often face people and situations that present us with difficulties and dangers. Moreover, any effort we make to effect change in the world will create discomfort, resistance, and opposition. The real problem with "enemyfying" is that it distracts and unbalances us. We cannot avoid others whom we find challenging, so we need to focus simply on deciding, given these challenges, what we ourselves will do next.

If you're not part of the problem, the can't be part of the solution. Playing it safe (staying above the fray) is not good enough.

Self-centeredness means that we arrogantly overestimate the correctness and value of our own perspectives and actions, and we underestimate those of others. This impedes collaboration because it distorts our understanding of the situation we are in and what we need to do, and it creates conflicts with the others we are discounting.

The essence of the third stretch is assuming responsibility for the role that we ourselves are playing in the situation we are trying to change, and therefore for what we need to do differently in order for the situation to change. This stretch is challenging because it requires us to take the risk of engaging fully in the situation and so being changed or hurt by it. It requires us to be willing to sacrifice some of what feels known, familiar, comfortable, and safe. "In a ham omelet," the quip goes, "the chicken is involved but the pig is committed." Stretch collaboration requires us to be pigs rather than merely chickens.

When we notice ourselves blaming others—focusing on what they are doing and what we hope or demand that they do differently—we need to bring our attention back to what we ourselves are doing and what we need to do differently. Sometimes what we need to do is to try to influence others—but now we are taking responsibility for, and willing to change, our part in the situation that we are all part of. Whenever we find ourselves distracted by others, we need to come back to the simple question, what must we do next? 

• • •

So how does this map onto my understanding of group dynamics? Seen through the lens of Robert Moore's seminal on male archetypes, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, I have struggled over the entirety of my adult life with a tendency to be too often the Warrior (who is overly fond of assertion) and not enough the Lover (who extends empathy). Now Kahane invites me to see the collaborative potential when the Warrior and Lover are balanced in one body. This shift in my thinking is both liberating and enlightening.

I am also aligned with the concept of letting go of control and working with what emerges. Skilled facilitation, I've discovered over my career, is not so much about about steering and delivering solutions, as it is about: 

• Creating a resilient container (stout enough to hold the energy and safe enough that vulnerability blossoms);

• Asking the right questions;

• Bringing your whole self to the task;

• Paying attention to what's happening; and

• Articulating what the group reveals about itself. 

It's an art form.

Teaching from the Edge

This past weekend I was conducting a facilitation training in North Carolina and my co-trainer, María Silvia, shared with the class that she's teaching "at the edge of what she knows"—by which she meant she often goes into a situation not sure of her footing; where she doesn't know ahead what will occur or how she'll respond. She confessed that there have been times in the class where she felt she had nothing new to say on a given subject, and that it's highly uncomfortable to be in that place (why am I teaching if I don't have more to offer?).

I've been reflecting on that dynamic and believe there's something inspiring about it. I used to believe that, as an instructor or as a facilitator, the ideal was to be calm and confident. Now I think almost the reverse—to the point where I see it as a bad sign if I'm too relaxed or too sure of myself. Now I believe it's better to be somewhat on edge and unclear where the floor is.

Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating going into a meeting or a classroom unprepared or unfocused. Rather, I am advocating being loose (not tight) and open to the unknown. While I am not anti-planning, there is a danger of falling in love with your script and missing clues that it isn't working (to defend your investment in creating it). These days I prepare for facilitation or teaching with an outline of what I want to do, yet prepared to go off road based on emerging needs. The most important thing I do is to take time to become centered and clear-headed.

In this way I see facilitation as more of an art form than a science. When I am at my best I rely heavily on my intuition (which is generously informed by three decades of experience in the field). While I am prepared to offer all manner of analysis about facilitation dynamics, in the end, I have come to believe that my most effective teaching is done in the occasional moments when something potent happens—and you never know ahead when those moments will occur. I think of it as teaching improvisation, which turns out to be something that María is very good at it. It has more to do with paying attention and pattern recognition, than with pontificating or proselytizing.

• • •

If you're with me so far—seeing the benefit to operating on the edge of one's knowledge—it necessarily leads to a couple of milestone questions that I've had to wrestle with in the course of developing my career—questions that I believe all professionals must address, though perhaps it's more challenging when there is no accreditation program against which to measure one's proficiency:

Question #1: When Am I Solid Enough to Hang Out a Shingle?
To be in integrity with clients you need to have a certain amount of confidence (or chutzpah) that you can ring the bell if hired. There are a lot of sub-questions embedded in this:

•  Do I love the work or is it just a job? On a more subtle level, if your answer is "yes," why do you love the work? Because you like being in the spotlight? Because you like being the hero? Because you like being in charge? Because you want to help people in need? Because you want to build cooperative culture?

•  Do I know enough to be able to consistently handle a sufficient range of group issues that I can be a full-service facilitator? Or should you limit what you tell the world you can do?

•  How well do I know the literature (and the emerging thinking) in my field?

•  How open am I to evaluating what I encounter in my work to deepen my understanding of group dynamics, adjusting my thinking as appropriate? This may sound obvious but tweaking means reworking materials and revising approaches, sometimes undoing what you had previously thought. It can even be embarrassing.

•  Am I quick enough on my feet to be able to assess developments in the dynamic moment, and make effective choices on the fly? Sometimes there are awkward surprises and sometimes the planned focus or activity is ineffective. Now what? You may be expected to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Can you make good choices in those moments? It's not nearly good enough to be able to articulate an hour later what you should have done.

•  Can I break down what I've done (especially when it works) so that clients can learn to do it themselves?

•  How well can I road map where we are at any given moment and articulate my thinking behind that choice (where are we, where are we going, and why)?

•  Am I OK face planting in front of an audience? Anyone who facilitates regularly will occasionally have bad days (or at least bad moments). If it's excruciating for you to be criticized in public, or to see the meeting you were running fall apart in the last 15 minutes, please know going in that this will sometimes be your fate, and I don't care how good you are. Events are never wholly in your control. If can't pick yourself up off the ground and get back on the horse, don't ride horses.

•  How open am I to receiving critical feedback about my work? Hint: if that door is closed you can't very well expect others to listen to what you have to give them—never mind how accurate and insightful it may be. 

•  How accomplished am I at being able to shift perspectives and see things through the eyes of others (to the point where they regularly acknowledge that you both understand their point and its meaning)? This is a bread and butter skill when trying to bridge differences among strongly held viewpoints. Professionals need to be able to do this heavy lifting.

•  Can I function well in the presence of strong emotions? Can you create sufficient safety for people to articulate their feelings and a strong enough container that the examination doesn't devolve into isolation, accusations, and defensiveness? Heaven help you if you can't.

Question #2: Can I Teach What I Know?
Or perhaps more accurately, do people learn what I teach? This is an additional layer, in much the same way that having a product or service for which there is demand is not the same as having a viable business. I may know something well enough to be able to able to ply my craft as a facilitator, yet may not be effective as an instructor. Here are some sub-questions:

•  Do I want to teach? (Hint: if your heart is not in it, students will sense that and it will undercut your efficacy.)

•  How flexible can I be in how I teach, to cover the breadth of learning styles that I'm likely to encounter?

•  Can I move easily (and accurately) between the specific and the general? If you teach principally from principles, it will prove to be too heady for some. If you teach solely from specifics, the lessons may prove to be too narrow in their application. You need, I believe, to be able to move from one side of the street to the other. 

•  Can I teach groups where there is a significant range of accomplishment among the students (can I bring the novices along without boring the experienced; can I challenge the accomplished without overwhelming the tyros)?

•  How accurately can I describe what skills I can teach? If someone becomes your student, in what detail can you tell them what they'll learn?

• • •

As you can see, thoughtful facilitators need to grapple with a plethora of edgy questions. My advice is to learn to get comfortable with being on the edge of your discomfort.

The Art of Facilitating: Fishing at Deep Water

The art of facilitation is analogous to a set of nested Russian dolls: it's as many-layered as an onion.

Casual observers may not notice that meeting facilitators—especially skilled ones—are doing anything more than managing hand-to-mouth dynamics, such as: 
—Coming up with a clever opening. 
—Making sure everyone has good sight lines to the white board.
—Deciding who's going to speak next.
—Determining when it's time to move to a new topic.
—Otherwise coping with what's unfolding in plain sight. 
But there's a good deal more to it than that. Good facilitators are expected to work at subtle levels, too. Here's a dozen examples of what I mean:

o  Looking ahead of the curve
Projecting where the current conversation is heading and discerning whether they (or the group) will be glad to arrive there. If it looks like a dead end (or worse, a train wreck), it's probably time to tack now, before they hit the shoal water. When executed with aplomb, most group members may not even be aware that there was any danger.

o  Busting ghosts
Is there a presence that's alive in the room even though the person triggering it isn't there? (perhaps the influence of a dead founder, whose charismatic and powerful persona continues to guide conversations from the grave; maybe it's fear of potential retribution by a bully who is on vacation but is bound to find out if anyone speaks critically of them). First you must sense what's happening; then you must decide what to do about it. Is it better to exorcise (calling the ghost out) or exercise (restraint by not dignifying the threat with the group's collective attention)?

o  Feeling the undertowThough similar to the previous point, this is about an energy that is pervading the conversation, rather than a person. Some may be aware of it; others may not. Is it a fair wind or foul? When the facilitator chooses to surface an unnamed undercurrent, it is not a magic act, or someone playing with planchette; it's just someone paying close attention.

o  Describing the interesting case
In discussing policy proposals it is often illuminating to think of examples that it might apply to, thereby grounding the consideration. However, not all hypotheticals are created equal. It is generally not a good idea to craft agreements designed to cope with rare exceptions. It's better to bring forward a representative example to showcase a proposal's strengths, and/or expose its liabilities. How will things play it in the situations you are most likely to actually face?

o  Sussing out when to be direct Many groups fall into the habit of working indirectly—mainly because they are not confident of handling tension well and are afraid that directness will lead to reactivity. When does cutting to the chase help illuminate the key dynamic; when does it lead to brittleness that inhibits creativity and short circuits compassion? In my experience most people prefer their medicine straight, and don't require a sugar coating—so long as it's not delivered with bitterness, salty language, or a sour attitude.

o  Reading the energetic tea leaves
Skilled facilitators need to be able to work with the energy in the room as well as with the content of the conversation. It is not enough that they can guide the group to an agreement; it needs to be a decision with which there is high resonance. If participants feel run over or bullied into alignment, the implementation is likely to suck (because their hearts will not be in it).

o  Noticing mismatches between content and energy
If you're handling the preceding point well, you'll notice when the conversation is out of alignment with the energy (say, for example, the group is working inexorably toward agreement, yet there are half a dozen folks sitting with crossed arms and scowls on their faces; or perhaps when the conversation is lost in the weeds and everyone's chuckling and having a good time). If the energy does not match the rhetoric, then that becomes the thing to talk about.

o  Knowing when to slow down and when to speed up
In a typical two-hour meeting there may be two or three moments that are pivotal to the outcome; moments when a crucial difference is illuminated and the group can either find a way to thread the needle (and manifest the joy of an inclusive solution), or it can devolve into cantankerous discord with each side bunkering in. It's generally a good idea to slow things down at delicate moments (say when a surprising thin gets said, or when a person gets vulnerable), and to pick up the pace when slogging through portions where there is no new information.

o  Following the energy more closely than the clock
While a good facilitator does their level best to end meetings on time, the prime directive is productive engagement, rather than ending a 20-minute agenda item in exactly 20 minutes. By "productive engagement" I mean progress on the issue and enhanced relationships among members (that is, participants will know each other better as a consequence of the consideration). These dual objectives are far more important than how fast can you find a solution that everyone can live with.

o  Mapping out the engagement
A good facilitator will sit with the draft agenda ahead of time and see into the concerns, teasing out the key questions that are likely to arise. Sometimes it makes a significant difference in what order questions are addressed (perhaps because the outcome of one question is crucial to how a subsequent one will be viewed); sometimes it doesn't. If possible, good facilitators will build the conversation toward a solution just as they'll manage the energy, moving from turbulence to laminar flow.

o  Riding the bucking bronco of fulminating distress
Essentially this translates into not freaking out when someone freaks out. It's being able to function with a clear head and a strong heart in the presence of nontrivial upset. On the one hand the facilitator needs to be fully present—without judgment or side-taking—for anyone who's upset, to help them feel safe and understood. On the other, the facilitator needs to make sure that the topic is neither sideswiped nor dominated by the distress. If, in the process of examining an issue, you manifest tears or anger, you'll get heard; but there's no guarantee that you'll be agreed with. The facilitator needs to be compassionate, yet fiercely neutral.

o  Integrating body and mind; heart and soul
For most groups the default style of meetings entails a great deal of sitting around, where the focus is on rational discourse (and a calloused butt). Unfortunately, that's only one way humans work with information and decide what they want. We also "know" things in our bellies and in our hearts (not just in our heads) and thinking is not everyone's first or best language. A skilled facilitator will offer participants a variety of ways to get at topics, offering multiple on-ramps into the consideration—which translates to opportunities for people to share feelings, intuitions, and body-knowing; not just their "best thinking." A savvy facilitator will not just get ideas in motion; they'll get bodies in motion, too.

The Facilitator's Horse Trick

I was recently in a conversation with a friend who had just facilitated a difficult meeting for a neighboring community. Upon reflection, he felt fine when it came to working conflict and emotional distress, but felt sloppy and not well-focused when it came to managing problem solving and issue exploration.

While most facilitators would report the reverse (comfort in examining issues, yet unsure our their footing in the face of strong emotional currents), I believe deeply that we need facilitators who can do both. The bad news is that it ain't easy. The good news is that it's possible, and can be learned.

I've been a professional facilitator for 28 years, and have been teaching it—in the context of cooperative culture —for the last dozen years. Next year I'll be conducting three two-year facilitation training courses concurrently (one in New England starting Sept 10-13, one in Portland OR starting Dec 3-6, and one in North Carolina starting Jan 14-17).

One of the key concepts that I'll teach is that a high-end facilitator needs to be able to ride two horses: both the Content horse and the Energy horse. My friend, understandably, was witnessing how hard it is to be good at both. While acknowledging that as a widespread phenomenon—I know very few who are equally adept on both horses—I believe it's crucial that we invest in training facilitators to learn to ride like that.

The Content Horse
The skill set here includes:

o   Laying out clearly how the conversation will be focused 
o   Coming up with and following a plan for how the conversation will flow from opening to conclusion
o   Separating the signal from noise (not all contributions to the consideration are equally valuable)
o   Offering concise and accurate summaries
o   Weaving together the common elements of disparate statements (bridging between people who disagree)
o  Making sure no one is left behind
o  Tracking loose ends of the conversation
o  Accurately reflecting the sense of the meeting

The Energy Horse
The skill set here includes:

o  Getting people moving frequently enough (up out of their seats, to increase blood flow)
o  Maintaining a positive, curious attitude
o  Appreciating people's contributions without taking sides
o  Attending to emotional undercurrents when they start impacting the group negatively
o  Not freaking out when others freak out
o  Sequencing the work such that the group is ready to do heavy lifting when the time comes
o  Celebrating success 
o  Finishing on an up note

Unfortunately, the skills needed for doing well with one horse are largely unrelated to being good at the other. And as if that weren't enough, there is the further challenge of discerning which horse to be riding at any given moment. All of which is why facilitation is an art form and not a paint-by-numbers exercise, where all you need to do is follow a script.

The two main difficulties that facilitators face are complexity (a Content concern) and volatility (an Energy concern). What if you encounter a topic that includes both—which is a lead-pipe certainty to occur some of the time? That's when you use your most experienced people, or even bring in a hired gun. You'll need someone at the helm who can deftly handle both horses and will know when to switch rides. If facilitators get in over their heads, everyone pays (not only do you suffer through a poor meeting, but the facilitator can get traumatized into the bargain—yuck).

If you cannot develop the capacity for a single person to ride both horses (best), try to have two people work in tandem, with a horse each (next best). While two riders means you'll have to choreograph who's the lead facilitator at any given moment, it can be done, and may be more accessible than one person developing the agility needed to dance from one horse to the other, and back again.

Stumbling on Stage

I recently facilitated a series of meetings for a cooperative group where I fell flat on my face.

We were working an interesting topic: how much, if any, community money ought to go into supporting an initiative that some expected to benefit from a great deal and others weren't that interested in? It was a big ticket item—an outdoor activity center—that most people felt would result in a significant enhancement of community connections.

While the vast majority favored some level of community support (even those who didn't think they'd be likely to use the facility) mixed with some level of contribution from those who could afford it and those likely to use it, there were a couple of members who did not feel comfortable with any level of community contribution to funding. When asked, the core concern for these two boiled down to affordability: one didn't want to pay extra in homeowners dues to finance this project (they lived on a fixed income), and the other was not convinced this was a high enough priority (and spending a lot of money here meant significantly less available for other projects). They preferred that it be funded wholly by private subscription, a mechanism that had been used successfully for other projects.

As we cast the net for proposals that might bridge the gap, someone came up with the idea of offering community funding coupled with a commitment to allow relief for those who couldn't afford the additional expense.

When I turned to the outliers and asked if that would work for them, the wheels came off the wagon. Instead of feeling held respectfully (by an offer that was meant to address their core concern about whether they would be asked to pony up money in support of a project that didn't float their boat), they both felt on the spot, and my asking them for a response came across with the judgment that they ought to say "yes." My persistence was experienced as badgering. Not good.

So what happened?

o  Going against the grain of community habit
The community was used to backing away when someone expressed a strong objection, rather than leaning into it (as I was doing). Thus, I came across as disrespectful as soon as I asked for a response. Never mind that I believed that was the right thing to do; they were already feeling isolated by the way the conversation was flowing (they knew they were outliers), and I wasn't careful enough about reestablishing connection before making a request.

For example, I might have started with asking them how they were doing, and trying to reassure them that the group wasn't going anywhere if they weren't on board. Instead, I asked them to take responsibility for working constructively with others' desire to support the initiative with community funding, which landed for them as pressure to capitulate. Uh oh.

o  Failing to build a robust creative container
I have the view that it's important to separate the Discussion phase of a consideration (where the group identifies the factors that a good response needs to take into account, during which I encourage the expression of passion and advocacy) from the Proposal Generating phase (where I no longer want to hear advocacy; I'm looking for bridging among interests). Although I'd taken time to try to explain that difference (and even been assured by a member of the group that they do that well), in fact only some of the group embraced a creative, bridging attitude. Others—notably including the two outliers—didn't get there.

o  Framing of the request poorly
I approached the outliers directly: asking them if the combination of community support and an affordability safety net could work for them. While there was nothing false or skewed about that, in retrospect I believe it would have worked better to have focused solely on whether the concept of an affordability safety net addressed their bottom line concerns.

That is, I could have simplified what I was asking about (fewer variables to respond to) and placed the emphasis on the safety net, which was intended as an olive branch, not a Trojan horse. While they may not have found it acceptable, it's unlikely that a good faith attempt to reach out to them would have been so triggering, and I might have been able to get deeper into an examination of resistance (if that's what we encountered).

o  Persisting beyond their comfort level
Once I got off on the wrong foot, and the outliers felt the need to defend their position about not wanting community money going to the outdoor initiative, I compounded the problem by simply repeating the request that didn't land well in the first place (working on the premise that I hadn't been heard accurately). Instead of clarifying, the repetition landed as badgering (you gave me the "wrong answer the first time, so I'll keep asking until I get the "right" answer). Understandably, that just made things worse. (I was reminded of the adage: when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to put the shovel down.)

o  Leaking irritation
In addition to everything else, I was frustrated that my exchange landed so badly, and that I achieved no progress on a dynamic that I had been expressly asked to showcase how to deal with differently and productively. This leaked into my energy, making me less safe for the outliers. Oops!

I was trying to demonstrate how to unlink positions (no community funding of the outdoor initiative) from interests (affordability and impact on personal budgets) in an effort to achieve a respectful breakthrough in a logjam, but I didn't get there.

Of course, it never feels good when you stumble on stage, yet, as I tell my students, if you need to succeed every time to feel sustained as a facilitator, quit now. Everyone has off moments, and I had a beauty. Unexpectedly, I got the chance to demonstrate how to pick yourself up off the floor and keep going. While that wasn't what I was hoping to model, it was what was needed in the moment.

The Difference Btewen Facilitators Deriving and Driving

I view meeting facilitation as more of an art than a science. While it's good to have a sense of how to structure a meeting and a road map for how to work topics, those are guidelines, not imperatives. While there are approaches to this craft that are formulaic (if you have a large enough tool kit you'll be ready for all occasions), I don't buy it. I believe the only crucial elements are the right mind set and a basic tool kit—because a good facilitator will work with what unfolds, rather than work from a script.

One of my favorite process metaphors is of the facilitator as horse rider, in which image the group is the horse. If the group is being productive and the energy is congenial, you hold the reins lightly, letting the horse have its head. If, however, Old Dobbin is balky or obstreperous, with a tendency to stray off course or to jump the hedge, then the rider needs to hold the reins firmly, giving strict instructions.

There are plenty of people out there who facilitate as if their only concern is deciding who gets to speak next. But good facilitation is way more than something that passive. At the same time, neither is it not about being a taskmaster, where you treat meetings as military campaigns designed to conquer pockets of rebellion. You want to be prepared, yet not dictatorial. A good facilitator elicits everyone's input and than sees how disparate viewpoints can be woven into whole cloth.

You want to be deriving the solution from what the participants bring; not driving the solution based on what you think is a good idea. To be sure, the line between these two can be blurry, and the uninitiated can fail to discern the difference. It may be helpful to think of the facilitator as a potter, where the group supplies all of the clay. The facilitator may play a considerable role in helping to shape the clay, but shouldn't be inserting their own clay into the mix unless expressly requested to do so.

One of the trickiest dynamics I have to navigate as a facilitation instructor is when, in the context of a training weekend, I'm called upon to offer consulting advice to clients—by virtue of my being a process resource—which is markedly different than modeling skilled facilitation. While I work hard to be transparent when I switch hats, sometimes I'm too casual about that and observers can get confused about what their seeing, with the unintended consequence that students can be inadvertently inspired try their hand at free-lance consulting—something they've witnessed go over well when I do it—only to have the group push back when they do it. It can be an awkward lesson. The key here is not simply that I'm a professional and they're not (at least not yet), but that I was asked for my opinion and they weren't.

Good facilitation can look like many things. It can be very quiet and hands off—for example, when you have a focused, disciplined group of consensus veterans. At other times, when the group wanders all over the place, when participants are prone to repetition, or when there's considerable volatility in play, the facilitator may have to work hard to keep the group on track and in a constructive zone. The point is that the facilitator needs to be able to match styles and degree of being directive to the needs of that meeting, not with some idealized picture if what facilitators should be.

Levels of the Conversation

At breakfast today someone asked me how I learned, as a facilitator, to be able to pull out the essence of a conversation. As I reflected on that, I wasn't sure. While I know it's something I can do, and something I can describe in detail (see below), I'm not at all clear how I got there.

I teach facilitation in cooperative groups. While the curriculum covers many things, the day in and day out skill is working conversations productively. (One of the more dramatic and critical skills is dealing effectively and sensitively with emotional meltdowns, yet that’s only a tiny fraction of your time on duty.) If you think of conversations as onions, let me peel back the layers...

First Layer: What was said? 

It is absolutely necessary for the facilitator to hear what people are saying accurately. While this may seem relatively straight forward, it can get complicated. You will undoubtedly encounter individuals whose style, diction, vocabulary, and/or organization of information are such that you will have to work very hard to understand what the hell they’re saying.

What's more, it's not just the words and their literal meaning, there can also be important nuance in the way things have been said and the energy that infuses statements. Being heard accurately entails working with all of these potentials.

Second Layer: How to restate viewpoints concisely? 

While not always needed, the skilled facilitator should be able to offer on demand a Cliff's Notes version of what a speaker said, such that the speaker is satisfied. Do not fail to note the adverb “concisely.” There is a Mark Twain anecdote that applies here: he is reputed to have once apologized to someone he’d written to about the length of his correspondence by saying he was sorry, but he didn’t have time to write it any shorter. Brevity is not just the soul of wit; it is the heart of attention. 

To handle this well you'll need the ability to sort wheat from chaff (distinguishing between wholesome kernels and non-nutritive fluff) and to strip out redundancy in order to reduce contributions to their essence.

Hint: If you want to get good at this, volunteer to take minutes, which requries the same skill—only you do it in writing instead of orally.

Third Layer: Where are we at?

The facilitator should always know where the group is at in the conversation (what has been said collectively, not just individually) and where it is at in the process. The essential skills here are the ability to summarize accurately and plainly, and the ability to track and make transparent the process.

To some extent, this is a traffic cop function, making sure that contributions are cogent, non-repetitive, and in the right sequence. If people are confused about what's happening you should be able to give a clear, courteous explanation on request.

Fourth Layer: How to connect statements one to another?

As a facilitator you need to be able to see the aspects of commonality (especially when others do not) and weave them into a fabric that can, ultimately, sustain agreement. You need to learn to see the links between comments, especially when they are not identical.

This ability is all the more critical because most people have been deeply conditioned in competitive culture and think first in terms of how their views differ from others, rather than how they are linked. Often, the skilled facilitator will be the first one to see the bridges possible between speakers simply because that person is the one who has trained themselves to look for them.

Fifth Layer: What is not being said?

You need to develop the capacity to step back from what is happening and ask if there are any ghosts in the room—obvious questions that are not being asked or spoken to. Invite these unspoken queries or viewpoints to join the party.

Sixth Layer: Where does the group need to work?

This is a complex question that combines “Where is there confusion?” with “Where is there energy to explore for agreement?” It is the facilitator’s job to steer the group productively, which involves both what to look at and how to look at it. Often it is a matter of posing the right questions, and in the right sequence.

Seventh Layer: Where is the conversation headed?

The skilled facilitator will learn to look ahead of the curve and steer the group away from dead ends and unnecessary dangers. Part of this is time management (don’t go where you cannot gracefully stop or return in the time available), part of it is understanding the pitfalls of the selected path (assessing the potential for burying the axles instead of working out of trouble), and part of it is knowing the capacity of the group (not leading the halt and the lame into heavy traffic, where stamina and agility will be needed to make it through safely). When this skill is practiced well, meetings are experienced as easier and lighter because the facilitator has chosen a better path, and heroic extractions are not needed.

Eighth Layer: What agreement is possible?

All along, the facilitator should be thinking about how the weavings of the Fourth Level can produce a durable fabric that will hold an agreement about what to do with the issue at hand. How can the agreement be framed such that everyone can identify with it and support its moving forward? The skilled facilitator has a broad understanding of what “product” and “agreement” can look like. Sometimes it is a policy; sometimes an action; sometimes a process; sometimes an assignment; sometimes a pause.

Ninth Layer: What remains and where will it land?

Often, the group has not tied up a topic with a ribbon and bow. In those times, the facilitator needs to make sure that the next steps are identified and someone or some committee has been identified as the implementers or shepherds of those steps. You need to think holistically about all the pieces that comprise a safe landing and make sure that none are forgotten.

• • •

OK, that was the onion. Now let's circle back to the original question about how to learn to pull out an accurate summary of a complex conversation. It's the combination of Levels Two, Four, and Eight: what was the essence of the contributions, how can that be inclusively and even-handedly summarized, and how can the factors be woven into a durable solution.

—Part of this is experience. Having seen what has worked in similar situations, you get a feel for what can work here. 

—Part of this is doing the personal work needed to get your own ego out of the way, so that you can hear cleanly what everyone says. 

—Part of this is learning to read the energy of the speakers for clues about what matters most, and where there's give. 

—Part of this is trusting the process, which means you'll see the connections between statements as they appear—rather than insisting on trying to suss out the bridges ahead of time. (A skilled facilitator knows how to read the currents in the room, and doesn't try to fight them.)

There's a part of me that was embarrassed that I wasn't able to give a paint-by-numbers answer to the question this morning. (A good teacher should be able to break down how to learn that essential skill.) But then I remembered, facilitation is more of an art form than a skill. It's not so much learning a formula, as learning to be focused and open, trusting that the floor will appear under your feet after you've committed your weight forward.

Yes, it can be scary. But it can also be magic. And it's learnable.