Facilitation Philosophy

From BlueOxen

Facilitation is traditionally viewed as the active guidance or management of conversation. While there is a place for this type of facilitation and some of the underlying principles -- active listening and engagement -- are critically important, we hold a different view of facilitation. In our view, 80 percent of the facilitation is in the design of the event itself. Facilitation is about holding space, giving the participants the opportunity to achieve its collective potential.

What exactly does this mean? To a large extent, it means trusting that a diverse group of excellent people will do the right thing given the right space. Your job is to give them that space and to hold it. The difference between this and the traditional view is that traditional facilitation is largely about control, whereas this type of facilitation requires giving up control. You control the space; the rest is up to the participants. You have to have tremendous faith in the process.

Design (creating the space) consists of the following:

• Framing. What is the purpose of the gathering? Defining purpose clearly and concretely is critical for catalyzing systems. A more event-oriented framing is to clearly establish ground rules and expectations at the event itself.
• Agenda scaffolding. The participants should be shaping the agenda at the event itself. Your job is to create the scaffolding so this happens. This can happen in a number of ways, but here are the basic principles:
  • A great collaborative event generally goes through three stages. Folks call these stages by many names, but they are all essentially the same. MGTaylor calls them Scan Focus Act. Phil Windley calls the "scan" phase the "butt-sniffing" phase. It's about developing Shared Language. It's the messiest stage, and hence, it's the stage most people try to skip, but it's critical. It's the hardest part about the design of the event; if you design this piece well, everything else should flow smoothly.
  • Encourage as much interaction and cross-fertilization as possible. This means small group interactions and lots of them. Which brings us to...
  • Small group breakouts + large group report-outs.
  • Pay attention to time of day and design accordingly. Don't schedule a lecture after lunch; do something that incorporates movement.
• Environment matters. If you want people to talk to each other, form circles. If people are discussing sensitive matters, make sure there are private spaces.

Holding space means:

• Listen actively. Monitor the group closely. If the energy is flowing, don't break things up. If energy is flagging, cut things short. Be flexible with the agenda.
• Sweat the small stuff. You can have the greatest design in the world, the greatest participants in the world, and the greatest facilitator in the world, and it will all go bad if there's not enough coffee or food, or if the wireless fails at inopportune. Sweat the small stuff. Make sure the logistics run smoothly.