Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation Read online

  The first two chapters reframe how we think about facilitation. Taken together with the next five chapters, you’ll have the framework you need in order to make the most out of the latter five. Chapter eight is the turn, and chapters nine through eleven are our prestige. Here’s a more detailed tease at what we’re going to cover in this book:

  Understanding Facilitation as a Nuanced Skill. Facilitation is…well…both nuanced and a skill: two things we don’t give it enough credit for being. In this chapter we’ll talk about why facilitation is a skill, who gets to identify as a facilitator, and the need to practice facilitation.

  Facilitation vs. Teaching vs. Lecturing. Facilitation is a different style of engagement from teaching or lecturing. What makes it different? Why is that difference so important? What are things that we are giving up and gaining by choosing to facilitate?

  Being Neutral. This chapter could also be called “Neutrality is non-existent” or “Neutrality: That would be nice, and so would Santa Claus.” Being a facilitator is not about being neutral, but instead about being honest and open with your group about your goals together, and recognizing the implicit bias in those goals.

  How to Read a Group. Start by listening. Get to know them before they get in the room as much as possible, and then pay attention to what they are expressing and sharing in order to know where to go next. Groups are writing a lot about what they need; you just need to start reading.

  Both/And is Greater than But/Or. The power of replacing but with “and” is incredible. Find out why in facilitation it can change how your participants respond and react and how you respond and react to them. Pulling ourselves out of the duality of either/or, the almighty “and” helps us see multiple realities as feasible and present.

  The “Yes, and…” Rule. One of the foundational rules of improv has become one of our foundational concepts of facilitation. By adding to someone’s reality rather than negating it, you can often learn much more about a person’s perspective, understanding, and ideas, than any “no” could ever bring you.

  Asking Good Questions. Good questions are more than just “open-ended” questions. Good facilitators ask good questions; great facilitators know how to do that every time. We cover what makes a good question, what kind of questions are out there to be asked, and what kind is best in what scenario.

  Safe Spaces for Vulnerability. Facilitating can be challenging; showing up and really being seen while you’re facilitating can be even harder. We explore the impact of vulnerability on facilitation, and how courageous compassion is required to make a space where folks can learn from vulnerability.

  Triggers. Not all experiences within a training are pleasant or wanted, and sometimes they leave our blood boiling and our heart racing. To be an effective facilitator, it’s our responsibility to manage our triggers, and we give you a model for doing just that.

  Learning from Emotions. Emotions happen. As facilitators, we have a choice of whether to invite emotions into our trainings and what to do when they show up. We’ll explore how to make the most of those emotional moments, and the types of powerful learning available when you get ready to wrestle with emotions.

  Role Modeling Continuous Learning (or The Myth of the Expert). We ask a lot of our participants, but perhaps nothing more important than being open to new learning. As a facilitator, we must lean into our own request, own our journeys, and role model the importance of saying, “I don’t know.”

  On Pronouns, Footnotes, and References/Resources

  We’re huge fans of the gender neutral singular “they,” and in this book we will be using it liberally (already have). If this is going to frustrate you on a “grammar nerd” front, we recommend one of two things: (1) look up the origins of singular “they” usages in English--it’s only recently that it’s become a grammar faux pas; or (2) get over it.

  We use footnotes to provide both sources for references mentioned in the text, and frivolous asides or back story from a personal perspective. The general rule can be that if there’s a footnote, it’s not required reading to make sense of the text that follows, but it’s always recommended.

  Finally, instead of including a recommended readings, references, or resources appendix in the book, we will have a living version of this on the book’s website at the following link: http://facilitationmagic.com/resources.

  Let’s begin.

  Magicians don’t call what they do tricks, they call them effects. We think that’s too perfect, and with that, let’s get into our first chapter, and our first effect: the one that comes after you recognize the nuanced skill that is facilitation.

  Understanding Facilitation as a Nuanced Skill

  “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”

  – Edgar Degas

  Facilitation is a challenging subject to teach. It’s in the face of this challenge, we suspect, that most folks don’t even bother trying to formally teach it. Most facilitators learn how to facilitate in one of four ways, presented here in most-to-least formal: (1) in a retreat or mini-retreat setting where the material to be facilitated is covered, and a few general pointers about facilitation are presented (e.g., “Ask open-ended questions…. Avoid values statements....”); (2) shadowing or co-facilitating with an experienced facilitator; (3) being a participant in someone else’s facilitation and thinking “I could totally do that;” or (4) being given a packet with some instructions, put in front of a room full of people, after someone saying “you can totally do this.”

  If you’ve participated in any of the above forms of facilitator training, you may have noticed something we noticed: it’s less training on how to facilitate, and more training on what you’ll be facilitating. In this book, and in the following three sections in particular, we are doing the exact opposite. We are presenting to you lessons we’ve learned--from other facilitators, from unrelated researchers, and from our own 1000+ hours of experience facilitating--focusing on developing the skill that is facilitation.

  The primary reason facilitation is so difficult to teach is because of how nuanced it is. There is no one right way to do it (indeed, everyone does it differently); there is no credential or requisite experience necessary (indeed, most of us only have the training mentioned above); and the only way you can get good is by practicing it a lot (indeed, indeed, indeed). In this chapter, we’ll expand on these ideas, and in the following chapters, we will dig deep into them.

  Elements of a Nuanced Skill

  There are a few key things about facilitation that it shares with other nuanced skills (like golf, interior decorating, and pronouncing the word “nuanced”). Understanding these elements--how they affect your ability to facilitate, your perceptions of facilitation or other facilitators--is integral to processing the learning in the following chapters. So what makes a skill nuanced?

  Everyone does it differently

  Great facilitators do not all facilitate alike. Some are adept at staying in touch with their participants' moods, energies, and needs; others know just how to keep your attention; others can invite an entire group to participate no matter what the topic. It’s easy to be seduced into the idea that there’s a “right” way to do it, a model to emulate; but we all have different ways of being great facilitators. There is no one right way.

  Everyone comes to it from different places, with different expectations.

  Have you ever watched someone golfing and said, “That looks so easy”? Have you ever tried golfing? It’s great, if you enjoy a little fresh air to accompany your torture. Some people learn to golf as kids, some take lessons, some have to do it for work, some are naturals, some are not. Facilitation is the same way. There’s no one way people come to don the Facilitator Cap, and there is no formal or requisite past experience one needs to do it, nor to do it well. And while it looks easy to some bystanders, facilitation is anything but.

  Practice makes perfect.

  We hope this book can expedite your learning process. Our goal here is for yo
u to benefit from a few thousand words of wisdom gleaned from thousands of hours of practice. That said, know that this book is not a substitute for practice in front of a group. Give yourself grace, knowing that regardless of how much you prep, or how fastidiously you apply the lessons from this book, there is going to be a (steep, mountainous, but super fun) learning curve when you get in the front of the room.

  Respecting (and Appreciating) the Nuance of Facilitation

  Like most great art forms, facilitation, when done well, looks effortless. The facilitator moves and flows and asks and listens, and hours fly by. In a response to powerful facilitation, participants often register comments in feedback forms that allude to “how surprised” they are by how much they learned, or how quickly the time passed. And like most great art forms, there is a masterful intention behind every decision--a vision for the final painting that forms with the first brushstroke.

  In the next several chapters, and then in the following two sections of the book, we are going to introduce you to and explain the often-invisible techniques master facilitators use in every training. At first glance, the chapter headings may register as unrelated, or even disinteresting (i.e., I don’t need to know this to facilitate), but we ask that you trust us: these are the things we wish we had known before starting our facilitator journeys, and we won’t lead you astray.

  Facilitating vs. Teaching vs. Lecturing

  “The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "the children are now working as if I did not exist.”

  – Maria Montessori

  A wise person once said, “If this is a book about facilitation, why is there a chapter about teaching and lecturing?” That person was our first-pass editor (and likely you). It’s a fair question. In the last chapter, we talked about the nuance of facilitation, and how facilitation is a tough subject to teach. Well, one of the ways we’re hoping to help you understand that nuance is by talking about two things that facilitation isn’t--but that it gets confused with, and are as integral to most training or learning experiences as facilitation itself. And besides, what’s more nuanced than talking about a thing by talking about what it isn’t?

  Different Methods with the Same Goal: Learning

  Although we identify as educators whose method of choice is facilitation, we also find ourselves putting on our teacher or lecturer caps. All three methods of achieving learning have their perks, and to know which is best when, we must first understand the differences among lecturing, teaching, and facilitating.

  Two helpful things to consider when dissecting the differences among lecturing, teaching, and facilitating are (1) the levels of agency the educator and learners hold over the content covered; and (2) the level of active participation required by the educator and learners. Let’s define these concepts so we’re all on the same page:

  Agency, in this case, can be thought of as the “capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices” (Wikipedia) for what content will be learned.

  Active participation is the level at which the person is engaging the other people involved--vocally, externally, and in a way that affects the outcome of the overall learning.

  More simply, agency is who is deciding what’s learned, and participation is how that learning is achieved.

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  Lecturing: High Educator Agency & Participation, Low Learner Agency & Participation

  Lecturing has achieved a negative connotation in most social circles, but it is not without its value. Lecturing can be thought of as any time the educator is speaking directly to the learners in an uninterrupted way until their point is made. Beyond the bias that the word “lecture” evokes, our main concerns are that lecturing is often overused and sometimes not treated with enough care.

  In lecturing, the educator has high agency over the content that will be covered, and also must be actively participating throughout the entire learning experience; whereas the learners have little to no agency, and little to no participation is required. This high level of educator agency and low learner participation is helpful when…

  ● there is something really specific that needs to be learned, and the group cannot do without it;

  ● you’re crunched for time and have a high level of content to cover;

  ● the educator holds some specialized knowledge that the group likely does not; and/or

  ● there is a highly disproportionate ratio of educators-to-learners (there’s a reason universities are full of lecture halls, not lecture closets).

  Lectures are often thought to be long (or really, really, really long if you want to be melodramatic about it), but there is no set length that qualifies a lecture. To emphasize this, we want to introduce you to the idea of mini-lectures (or lecturettes, if you wanna gender everything), which are short lectures--generally no more than 5-10 minutes--that teach a specific, concrete point.

  We use mini-lectures throughout trainings when we want to present a chunk of information before getting feedback or taking questions. We like to thread them through other activities, or material that we also teach and facilitate. If you are hoping to accomplish a training that involves your group, you should avoid lecturing for all (or even most) of the time. Even if the training is incredibly short, back and forth is crucial for participants to feel included and important.

  Teaching: Medium Educator Agency & Participation, Medium Learner Agency & Participation

  Teaching is the method of learning that we experience the most. It’s often confused with lecturing, and is generally the go-to default for achieving a learning goal with a person or a group. While teaching has a lot of value, one of our goals with this book is to get you out of default-mode thinking, and push you to be intentional with all of your choices. Choosing when to (or when not to) teach is an important choice.

  Teaching, in the context of a school room, often carries a power dynamic where one person is seen as the “Teacher,” meaning the person who holds the knowledge and the ability to disseminate that knowledge, and everyone else is seen as “Students,” those without knowledge who need to be taught. This way of thinking is what Paulo Freire calls the “banking model” of education, and while many school teachers (and school systems) ascribe to or perpetuate this form of teaching, it is not the type of teaching we’re referring to in this chapter. That understanding of teaching more aligns with what we describe above as lecturing.

  In this chapter, we’re using “teaching” to describe a co-created relationship between educator and learner. Teaching, as opposed to lecturing, requires that the learner has buy-in, the educator is ever conscious of the learners' wants and needs, and by frequently checking in with the learners, the educator gives the learners opportunities to ask for clarification, redirection, or a deeper understanding of a particular idea.

  To put it more simply, one might say that lecturing is done at a learner, while teaching is done with or for a learner.

  Teaching is the middle of the road on both the agency and active participation front. In teaching, the educator has medium agency and high active participation; the learner also has medium agency, and medium-to-low active participation. This medium of everything is perfect for learning goals that aren’t too hot and aren’t too cold. We recommend teaching when…

  ● you have a sense of what material needs to be covered, but the group could live without everything, and you’re able to head down a few rabbit holes if the group asks;

  ● you have a few more minutes available than what it would take to just say all the things, but you don’t have buckets of extra time;

  ● you know a lot about a particular thing, but you also have a hunch that you’re not the only one in the room who does; and/or

  ● the group of learners is big, but not so big that you couldn’t learn all of their names in a few minutes if you gave it a shot.

  Facilitating: Low Educator Agency & Participation, High Learner Agency & Participa
tion

  Now that you have a few different ways to think about lecturing and teaching, you probably already have a strong hunch about what we’re going to say about facilitating. And you’re probably right: facilitating is everything that lecturing and teaching isn’t. As we’ve moved through the three concepts using agency and participation as our anchors, you’ve likely noticed a trend: lecturing, teaching, and facilitation exist on a continuum of sorts, with lecturing and facilitation being polar opposites, while teaching is in between the two.

  In facilitating, the educator has low agency over what content will be learned, and a low level of active participation; whereas the learners have a medium to high amount of agency, and a high amount of active participation is required for it to work. Facilitating is communism for learning: it’s decentralized, it requires everyone’s involvement, and Sam’s uncle will get mad if you bring it up at Thanksgiving dinner.

  Don’t mistake the low educator agency and participation as a sign that the educator can check out. Facilitation requires an incredible amount of focus, intention, and engagement from the facilitator--even if they aren’t doing most of the talking.