What does it mean to Facilitate?

Before we leave this two-week module on what facilitation is and is not, I wanted to add some thoughts about different sorts of facilitation based on some of the people I work with and what I think are some interestingly evolved perspectives on the subject.

In the World Café we don't even use the word facilitation - rather, we speak of "hosts" that help create the context for generative conversations. In trusting that the "whole" holds whatever knowledge is needed, a good host gently "guides" the proceedings, largely through creating hospitable space for collective wisdom to emerge, rather than trying to manage it in any more overt ways.

The Art of Hosting offers facilitation training, using process methodologies like the World Café, OpenSpace, Appreciative Inquiry and Circle work. Their concept of facilitation is largely based on self-awareness and cultivating a "way of being" that is conducive to mutual responsibility and interactive creativity. Online conversations with this group are fascinatingly fluid - full of participation & innovation - with no one "leading", but no one holding back either.

Craig Neal of Heartland Circle offers a tele-course in the Art of Convening, and his approach to facilitation is similar to the Art of Hosting and World Café in that the training is largely focused on convening, or creating space within which transformation can occur - both internally and externally. Craig & I also work with FireHawk Hulin and PeleRouge of Resonance where the work of "facilitation" becomes even more refined. They model how to "listen" closely to energy and notice how it "moves" - inside oneself as a guide, and inside the group as a whole. The key to facilitation for them is in listening deeply to what is emerging and knowing how to respond to it moment by moment.

My immersion and collaborative participation in all these group processes has greatly influenced my own ideas on facilitation and my personal facilitation style shares many of the fundamental principles they espouse. It's a little out of date now, but here's a short overview I wrote with a few key suggestions on how to "Midwife" Online Community: Download MidwifingOnlineCommunity.pdf (100k).

All these methods either pre-suppose a populace that is self-motivated and mutually responsible, or they are designed to support the emergence of these traits. Greg Bacelon wrote a recent post to the FOC08 mailing list, posing the question "If one were to take the Internet as one on-line community, then the term Facilitating is possibly a contradiction in terms – who is the Facilitator of the internet?". The answer for the communities using these methods, like the internet itself, is of course "all of us". Everyone that participates in a conversation, who offers content or helps to build infrastructure - we all have a part in "facilitating" the collaborative phenomenon that is being born as we speak.

Comments

[Daryl Cook]

Nice post Amy. You and I are coming at this from a topic from a very similar angle, I guess largely because my own concept of facilitation is–as you so nicely put it–"largely based on self-awareness and cultivating a 'way of being'". Thank you.

[Jeffrey Keefer]

Amy, I think you are raising a number of challenging issues here regarding teaching and learning. I find that I facilitate a lot more than teach, and when people in my department speak about giving a lecture, I consider it as an opportunity to mention a few things from the reading and then discuss them rather than just talk at people.

However, a number of my students struggle with this; some because they want to be told what to think or what is important; some because they decide to do little work on their own since we are not focusing on content in our class sessions; and others seemingly because they do not know what to make of this form of learning and have trouble determining on their own how much they need to focus upon.

The biggest challenge I face in this area is determining how much "knowledge" or content I should convey because it is too obtuse or specialized vs. how much I can discern my students are ready for. From this perspective, discerning the line between teaching and facilitating is somewhat blurry for me and is a goal toward which I work.

[Loretta Donovan]

Amy, You are spot on as you focus on "creating space within which transformation can occur" as the key ingredient in facilitation and hosting. In my 2-day course on Appreciative Inquiry at Columbia University, many people - whether they are consultants, managers or graduate students - come to the class looking for out-of-the-box steps for "running an AI". Their thinking is shifted as they experience the spiritual and reflective environment which is at the heart of AI. It's not a tool that you can replicate step by step. It's honoring the beliefs that underlie the collaborative process that makes it so powerful in the hands of a master facilitator.

Loretta Donovan
http://continuingeducation.tc.columbia.edu/default.aspx?pageid=134&PK=2199

[Amy Lenzo]

Wow! What juicy responses to this post! I apologize for having been out of the loop with a heavy work load followed by a vacation, both of which kept me from responding more promptly.

Daryl, thanks for your kind words and the recognition of similarity in our approach.

Loretta, it sounds like your course on AI is fabulous. You capture the essence of this more nuanced kind of facilitation in your comment about the "shift of thinking" that is necessary to be able to lead from one's own experience, rather than applying pre-determined rules.

Jeffrey, I appreciate the challenges you describe in workplace conditions that may not always be comfortable or conducive to your goals. Your courage in following your own sense of what's right is commendable, and for what it's worth I think your focus on conversation and dialogue is absolutely the most effective way to learn.

The trick here is probably in formulating your questions so that everyone feels able & drawn to participate. If you lay out the original material so that those who are ready to absorb it can, and then ask questions that will allow even those who didn't really understand it to join the conversation, then much of the "teaching" can be done in a peer-to-peer context that will ultimately be much more valuable to all concerned.

Thanks, all of you, for engaging in this conversation. It seems like an important one, given that we're all looking at how to be our best at "facilitating" what needs to emerge in our schools and in our world.