The Facilitation of Groups

Dale Hunter, Anne Bailey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351889872
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

This book reveals the secrets of the art of facilitation and shows how to use it to initiate group empowerment. Developing facilitation skills means first fully understanding the facilitator role: that of a guide helping a group or individual towards a conclusion, without steering the decision. To become an effective group facilitator you need to understand the principles of self-facilitation and the facilitation of individuals, as well as that of a group. The authors, all experienced facilitators, begin by fully explaining the skills required and the benefits to be derived. The Toolkit which follows includes practical activities, designs and processes, and includes a model facilitation training programme. This combination of personal experience and practical advice will have wide appeal for facilitators, trainers and group members.

Part I
facilitation

1
preparing the ground

What is facilitation?

Facilitation is about process – how you do something – rather than the content – what you do. A facilitator is a process guide; someone who makes a process easier or more convenient. Facilitation is about movement – moving something from A to B. The facilitator guides the group towards a destination. Facilitation makes it easier to get to an agreed destination.

Facilitate = to make easy or more convenient

You can facilitate yourself, another person or a group. This book is primarily about facilitating groups. However, to facilitate groups effectively you need to facilitate yourself – your own processes (external and internal). And you need to be able to facilitate others individually as well (coaching or one-to-one facilitation) as groups are made up of individual people who come together to fulfil a particular purpose.

So, to become a powerful and effective group facilitator you need to train yourself in self-facilitation, the facilitation of others and the facilitation of a group.

What are the beliefs behind facilitation?

Why are we focusing on facilitation rather than other ways of working with groups, such as management, team leadership or being a ‘boss’?

The main belief behind group facilitation is that full co-operation between all people is both possible and desirable – values of equality, shared decision making, equal opportunity, power sharing and personal responsibility are basic to full co-operation.

The skills of group facilitation grew out of co-operative movements around the world and are based on ensuring that everyone in a group can, if they wish, fully participate in all decisions that affect them.

Our society has a democratic model – not a co-operative one. Democracy requires co-operation between people and participation in decision making, but says that the majority is right and majority decision making is the best way to make decisions.

If you draw a continuum of decision making, with autocracy (one person deciding on behalf of all the rest) at one end, you will see that ‘co-operacy’ (new word) is at the other end, with democracy in between.

We are not saying democracy or autocracy are wrong. Both are useful and have a place in decision making. However, we have a bias towards co-operacy and believe it is not used more often because its skills are not part of our culture. People want full co-operation and participation, but when it comes to the crunch, they believe the only thing to do is to take a vote and have the majority rule.

The shift from democracy to co-operacy is of the same magnitude as the historical shift from feudalism (autocracy) to democracy, and will be as big a culture shift. It could also be described in personal development terms as the shift from dependence (autocracy) through independence (democracy) to interdependence (co-operacy).

Most people know something of committee procedure and rules, and how to take a majority vote – these skills are very much part of our culture. However, when you want to reach a consensus or collective decision, you can often come unstuck as it seems too hard to get everyone to agree. You believe it is impossible or impractical:

‘It would take too long to get agreement.’

‘We’d still be here next week.’

‘Our business would go under while we deliberate the issue.’

These comments are often the immediate reaction to the idea of using cooperative decision making.

The authors have learnt many of the skills needed to make cooperative decision making a practical and workable alternative to democratic or autocratic models. We want to pass them on to everyone so people can have a real choice as to what model they use. We want cooperative processes to be as well known and accessible as committees and majority voting.

What is more, we believe using co-operative methods makes it possible to access a very important and critical resource for the world more easily. This is group synergy – the alternative fuel for the twenty-first century.

We may be running out of some key energy resources, but group synergy is one which has scarcely been tapped. We are in the nursery in relation to working together as groups, organizations, businesses and nations. The planet needs group synergy to survive because it is group effort on a small and large scale which will save and heal our planet.

So you can see we are very serious about writing this book. Our mission is to contribute to creating synergy on the planet.

It is important to mention here that we assume group synergy is a neutral resource like oil or coal – that it can be used for good or ill. So we need to do our very best to pass these skills on with care and integrity. However, we believe group synergy at a higher level is not ultimately neutral – that on a global scale it will only be positive.

Over the last 30 years much work has been carried out in the area of personal development. It has now spread throughout much of the world and individuals have undertaken a wide range of personal development methods. Much of this work has been done in groups although the focus has been mainly on individual growth and development.

We believe we are on the verge of a quantum leap – that of group consciousness. Foreshadowed by family therapy, organizational development research and experience gained by living in communities, we are now in the pioneering stage of this quantum shift in human consciousness. We believe it will open up possibilities we can barely dream about. For the planet to survive this leap is imperative.

The role of the facilitator

The role of the facilitator is somewhat similar to the chairperson of a majority voting model such as a committee. The facilitator knows how to guide a group of people through co-operative processes, including collective decision making, so that the group can fulfil its purpose as easily as possible.

Before we wrote this book, we wrote The Zen of Groups – A Handbook for People Meeting with a Purpose. That book provides the concepts and tools to be an effective member of a co-operative group. If you are new to this kind of group, we suggest you read that book first. This book is a resource for people to facilitate co-operative groups. It contains the concepts and tools for working effectively and powerfully with cooperative groups.

Key concepts

For the purpose of clarity and completeness, the key concepts from The Zen of Groups are briefly outlined here:

Individual uniqueness — Each member of the group is unique and has his or her own world view expressed through ideas, beliefs, culture, memories and patterns of behaviour.

Baggage — This is everything you bring to the group – ideas, beliefs, opinions, feelings, desires, patterns, hopes and fears (your identity). It is all those things which can get in the way of you being fully present, moment by moment, to yourself and others.

Leadership — This comes out of the group. A leader can lead only with the active or tacit agreement of the group. There are no leaders without groups, though there can be groups without leaders.

Power — Power is always a factor in group life, and power issues need to be identified and worked through. There are different kinds of power – positional power, assigned power, knowledge power, personal power and factional power. Aim to share power as much as possible.

Feelings — Feelings are important and need to be acknowledged. They are not rational. Group members need to learn to have feelings, rather than be had by them.

Trust and identity — A group develops trust and identity through sharing. Attending to leadership, power issues and feelings will encourage the bonding of group members, leading to a stronger group identity and deepening trust.

Stages in the life of a group — Groups have a life cycle and move through various stages before reaching maturity. Most groups never reach maturity but get stuck and do not have the skills to work through conflicts and power issues and readily access synergy.

Roles people play — There are lots of behavioural roles you play in groups; some are constructive, some not. Avoid getting stuck in a particular role – for example, placater, blocker, tension-reliever, devil’s advocate.

Process and task — ‘Group process’ is about taking care of the group members as they fulfil their ‘task’ – that is, the project, objective or purpose of the group.

Group-assigned roles — A group will assign the roles of facilitator, recorder and timekeeper. Roles can be rotated to increase participation and skill learning. A facilitator can also be brought in from outside the group if more objectivity is needed. The facilitator does not take part in the content of decisions and cannot vote.

Group purpose — Every group needs to be clear about its purpose. A group without a purpose is purposeless, and so ineffective.

Ground rules — These can be set by the group to clarify and protect how it will operate. They may address confidentiality, being on time, personal responsibilities or any matters of concern to the group. Ground rules need to matter or it is better not to set them.

Being present — You are partly ‘unconscious’ most of the time and so not fully present to yourself and others. Being present is an ongoing, moment-by-moment discipline. In addition, you get tripped up by your baggage (see above) and are not ‘all there’.

Speaking and listening — Being in a group is about speaking and listening, but especially listening. The more skills you have in communication, the better.

Withholding — Withholding is not saying things which need to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Facilitation
• Part II Toolkit
• Appendices
• Recommended reading
• Index