Teams for a New Generation
A Facilitator's Field Guide
by
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This chapter will be a collection of thoughts concerning attitudes, beliefs, values and assumptions we find critical to being a good facilitator. Some will seem obvious; others may leave you scratching your head. Regardless, basic facilitation is about letting go.
Here is a quote that has really helped us understand what a facilitator needs to do if groups are going to learn.
Hospitality, therefore, means primarily the creating of a free space where the team member can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our teammates into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment.1
Hospitality, making a safe place where others can be honest with themselves and one another, is not a simple task. It requires some extraordinary things of the facilitator who would seek to create such a place. To begin, hospitality requires that the facilitator has taken an honest look inward. The hospitable facilitator is aware of his own fears, preferences, pressure points and gifts. Our basic premise is that awareness combined with courage creates choice. Because a facilitator knows himself or herself better and exercises his or her choice, a facilitator develops the inner freedom so very necessary to be a good host to groups. The facilitator's first responsibility is to let go of those fears that would hinder the team’s development. The facilitator is there for the group, and not vice versa. A good facilitator has other places from which to draw support, value and a sense of meaning. If the facilitator expects to obtain these things from the group, he will be of little value to the team and will avoid those things that cause discomfort, which are the very things that the team most needs help in recognizing. What should be happening is that the facilitator is able to absorb some of the team’s anxiety and communicate a commitment to the process. This vicarious confidence will allow the team to take the all-important first steps toward honest, open communication.
There are some other important values the hospitable facilitator will need. She must value truth over comfort. Too often, mistakes are hidden and potential learning is lost when individuals cannot tolerate the discomfort of being wrong long enough to learn from their mistakes. Another way truth over comfort gets played out is in the pull of the system to stay the same. Any time a person seeks truth over comfort, that person will be perceived as a threat to others around the individual. Consequently, those people who make up the various systems (co-workers, family members or friends) will try, either through seduction or sabotage, to get the person hooked back into being dependent on the system. It is often easier to just go along than to do the right thing.
The facilitator must believe that participants are more than their behavior. People are never as good as their best efforts and never as bad as their worst deeds. Letting go of certainty includes believing there is more to the situation than what can be perceived by the senses. A facilitator must learn to recognize defensive scripts when she sees one. If a facilitator is to foster deep learning in groups, she will undoubtedly see participants at their worst. If you can look past the mess to see what might be, you will extend a real sense of safety to the group.
There was a time in Greg’s life when he was quite concerned with getting people to ask the right questions. In his arrogance and concern, he believed the questions people were trying to ask would never yield the answers they truly wanted to hear. To be fair, Greg was not playing Monday-morning quarterback with other people’s lives. He was asking himself some very different questions. His friend and mentor gave him one of the greatest gifts Greg has ever received. This friend explained it was not Greg’s responsibility to get anyone to ask the right kinds of questions. All Greg had to do was to ask the right kinds of questions of himself, in their presence. That would be enough to make a difference. The result for Greg was a real sense of relief. No longer would he have to find ways to make people learn and grow. Being curious would draw others into his curiosity, and he could influence them, quite unintentionally.
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About the Book
There has been much written about teams with an ongoing debate about the primacy of environment or dynamics as the most important element to effective teams. Yet the need for groups to be able to consistently tap into the collective intelligence present in the team is more and more important. This requires teams to move beyond cooperation, goodwill and consensus and be able to challenge individual and collective assumptions to see new alternatives. This book provides a simple but elegant model to understand how teams move past the mediocrity of consensus to innovative thinking that comes with Collective Learning.
Collective Learning occurs when teams become aware of their assumptions and it challenges them to create a new understanding of what is real and what is important. When that happens, lasting change can come from within the team. There are four distinct abilities that must be present to provide the infrastructure for a group to learn collectively, and here is the ‘how to’ to dramatically increase team effectiveness.
This book is focused on how a facilitator can help groups and the individuals in those groups slow down the emotional and belief processes in order to create opportunities to choose responses rather than being on automatic pilot. The purpose of the facilitator’s effort is to move experiential learning beyond the traditional notion of teambuilding. Teambuilding has become a catchall phrase for helping a group get more comfortable with one another and develop trust. It is our opinion that to unlock the power of these experiential tools, facilitators must think about developing two Meta-skills – Emotional Maturity and Critical Thinking. Using experiential learning to develop the attitudes and skills to continually learn provides a real hope for creating fundamental change in the way people and groups interact.
About the Author
Greg Robinson is currently President of Challenge Quest, LLC in
Greg has a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Leadership from The Union Institute and University in
Greg’s professional career has concentrated in the areas of team development, leadership development, facilitation and consulting with organizational change efforts. He is the author of Teams for a New Generation: An Introduction to Collective Learning and co-author with Mark Rose of A Leadership Paradox: Influencing Others by Defining Yourself - Revised Edition.
Greg currently resides with his wife Jeannie, his daughter Keely and son
Mark Rose is a senior consultant with Challenge Quest, LLC and owner of MG Rose Enterprises, Inc. He works in a variety of areas for Challenge Quest including business development. His main focus is equipping teams with skills and tools to become more effective. He received his B.A. in Public Relations and his Master’s of Human Relations degree from The University of Oklahoma.
Mark has worked as co-facilitator in a series of training videos, Trainer Games in Action: Volume One and Two. These two videos show how trainers can use games and activities as object lessons in a training room to help the learner with the retention of information. Both videos have received the 2003 American Society for Training and Development’s Award of Excellence. Another product Mark helped design and develop is a training tool called Expression Cards.
Mark lives in Oklahoma City and enjoys golfing and spending time with his wife and two daughters.