The Untapped Power of Group Facilitation Skills

At AoF, we are committed to facilitation as a discipline distinct from leadership, coaching, management or mentoring, precisely because we see what a difference it makes to focus on teams and to pay attention to group dynamics.

We believe that facilitation skills are essential for healthy leadership, management and participation in groups and that these skills can be developed by anyone, working at any level, with any group. Fundamentally, we encourage and support individuals to discover and develop their own style of facilitation for maximum presence and impact.

The Association of Facilitators (AoF) grew out of the integration of group psychological approaches with organisational development, specifically the development of humanistic, person-centred and gestalt practices for professional environments.

This article attempts to describe what a facilitator does and how facilitation skills generate a positive impact. This is also well-represented by our competency model, FACETS® authored by Brian Watts, co-founder of AoF.

A few case studies and models are included here for depth and colour guided by what individuals and groups have told us about how facilitation has impacted them personally - for their team, organisation and in their wider life.

The limitation of writing about facilitation, an experiential and relational activity, is evident throughout, as an inability to capture the 'third presence' that emerges only in the interaction between us.

This article is a response to being asked to articulate our approach to facilitation, whether speaking with new or experienced facilitators, organisational groups, or just people whose life paths crossed ours, and the conversation went below the surface… questions such as:

• What do you do?
• What is facilitation?
• How do you [learn to] do it?
• Why does it matter?
• What do you believe in?
• How does facilitation support shared achievement?
• How does facilitation support human flourishing?
• So, if you also have questions, I invite you to pull up a chair while I share some ideas and stories from the world of facilitation…

After a biochemistry degree, a ‘year out’ at music college, and an early career in information technology, consulting and project management, Bella specialised in group facilitation and in 2011, co-founded the Association of Facilitators. She has facilitated groups in many organisations and environments and trained, led and supervised many facilitator training programmes. She is committed to building awareness of power dynamics and the competencies required for intense cooperation and active participation, particularly in professional environments. She lives in a small village not far from London with her husband, dogs, cats and occasionally their grown-up children.

Along with Brian Watts, Bella is one of the co-founders of the Association of Facilitators.

I offer upfront my strong sense that my contribution to organisational change as a facilitator is more impactful than other configurations of “helping teams and people” I have tried. These include being a management consultant and project manager as well as being a coach, manager and training as a Transactional Analysis therapist. Working facilitatively with groups is highly satisfying for me and offers a unique quality of contact and deep sense-making for me with others.

In a world of separation and information overwhelm, I wonder what an article contributes. For several years, I have been reluctant to write about our work for several reasons (beyond the usual procrastination and busy-ness!). These include:

• I have an aversion to reading articles where an agent of change, such as a facilitator or consultant, acts upon a system, such as a department or team, to produce an inevitably positive shift through his or her (highly skilled and clearly discernible) actions, charisma or presence. This polished style invites a hurrah for the facilitator, or a purchase of the book, course or consultancy while glossing over messiness and complexities of personal contributions, journeys and ‘colour’. I fear I may reproduce this style of article by mistake!
• Facilitation is a relational process. In writing about my own experiences, I have tried to represent the experiences of others. These are true representations included with context and depth, but inevitably fall short of a client’s eye view.
• I am learning continually so tangible elements, such as interventions or case studies, are never fixed or complete, but rather a reflection of time. And my perspective on our work, and opportunities to work and write have varied as my life journey has taken me from 20-something single city professional to 50-something country-living parent of grown-up children.
• The work isn’t only my work – the process by which I facilitate, or the values that I express when I facilitate, or often co-facilitate, are not just “my way”. In particular, having worked so closely with Brian Watts, our styles and approaches are deeply interwoven. While we remain distinct practitioners – two separate voices in the room – we both, and AoF, have evolved together in such close dialogue that it is difficult to unpick where one influence ends and the other begins.

Having expressed all of this to a colleague, they simply pointed out that I read a lot, so was it not disingenuous in some ways not to write for others when I had the opportunity? Now that this article is as complete-enough to share, I find writing this has clarified and advanced my thinking. The process has helped me wrestle with some of my objections, and I reframe these self-quarrels by way of introduction.

We live our lives in groups, formal and informal – work, family, sports, community and beyond.

Most of us have been involved in groups that are healthy, functional and high performing… as well as those that are not. We have experienced the sense of achievement, shared purpose and personal satisfaction that good facilitation skills bring to groups and organisations… and the misery that can come with unresolved conflict and issues of power and politics.

It is difficult to pinpoint “positive impact”, but its ripples would definitely include greater

learning, happier people, achieving shared goals, more joy and greater kindness (Nye 1995). Generally, the memory of a peak group experience stays with us for life, as do the associated feelings of flow and presence.

Having shared my reservations about writing about client work, above, I am now including below part of an email to me from a member of a client group I worked with over a couple of months. In it, she includes her reflections on the day. This email, memories of the group she was in, and other similar feedback, together paint a picture of what I mean by positive organisational impact, and untapped potential:

“All in all the presentation seemed to be well received and if I am honest I think we surprised our chief executive (in a good way). I think the task was quite ambitious and I am impressed that we managed to pull it off and have the presentation pretty much ready on the day.”

…

“I think these two sessions with you have been invaluable and if it had not been for the first session in particular I do not think we would have achieved the task at least not to a level we would have wanted.

• You have given us structure which I think we were lacking us a group.
• I think we are a “team” now rather than a group of people that work together.
• You have got us to look at our own behaviours and the behaviours of others within the team.
• We are now hearing from each team member rather than some more than others, encouragement has been given and we are more open with ourselves and each other.
• You have highlighted where some of us have ended up in a position where we do not defend ourselves or challenge things that come from the Executive. We are all adults after all and were employed for a reason to do our jobs. Empowerment has been lacking for some of us!!
• We have proven we can work together and work together well to produce results.”

“P.S. Normally I would have sent a brief response to you because “I had too much other stuff to do” which I have, but this is important and warrants time for a long-term view. My behaviours are starting to change…”

In recent years we have been engaging in practitioner-research (Barber 2006) into how facilitation skills support positive organisational impact and - its twin concept in our model - personal presence. This followed many reports of changes in both the inner and outer world of facilitators who we worked with in a training capacity and teams who we worked with as facilitators. We are of course familiar with the “just been on a training course/away day syndrome” where enthusiasm, engagement and optimism are high but perhaps not yet grounded. As a check point for this article, we specifically enquired into the experiences of members of an in-house Facilitation Network one year after a six-month action-learning based programme facilitated by us.

Gathered together with the experiences of this network are the past and current stories of those from many organisations (over 100), large and small, charity and FTSE100, local and global, who we have worked with, sometimes briefly and as individuals and sometimes as ongoing groups over several years. With our relational frame of reference, we consider impact to be a two-way flow (see Figure 1).

At its best:

• The facilitator impacts the individuals, group and organisation they are working with and/or part of.
• Working with individuals, groups and organisations impacts the facilitator’s wellbeing and development

We consider that positive impact is holistic, long-lived and involves changes in mindset as well as skills. Over time, personal discoveries and darker shadow material are assimilated, integrated, embodied and characterized and the change can be both “seen” and “felt”.

Many of the people I meet outside my world of ‘work’ (and more distant reaches of my friends and family) don’t understand what a facilitator ‘does’. Some have the impression that facilitators administrate, charm, entertain, cajole, mediate, neutralise or bully a group into doing what it should have done all along (like we know!)

It is striking how often groups express their surprise in the way that we work: “you just sat down and talked with us”, “you really listened to what it is like for us” or “you opened up space for us to really think”. Behind this simplicity is our dedication to person-centred principles, dialogue and working with what-is rather than what-should-be. Any such list of principles or description of style, tools or theories, however, provides only part of the answer to the question of what a facilitator does and doesn’t capture the depth, breadth and range of change that we witness in our work.

My consistent experience is that facilitation can lead to transformational change and long-lasting impact for people, groups, communities and organisations. Working facilitatively, we explicitly place awareness, culture, values, ethics and relationships centrally, when these are most often treated as peripheral or optional. No doubt there are consultants, trainers, supervisors, leaders, managers, therapists, change agents, artists, scientists (and so on) reading this article who also work in this way. Whatever we call ourselves, my sense is that the facilitative work that we are all doing meets a deep and often unarticulated need around human purpose, human potential, high performance, connection and relationships.

Facilitation is a deeply personal craft; no two facilitators will posess the same range of skills. A manager guiding an team of hopeful enthusiasts will face entirely different demands to an external consultant working with toxic power play at the corporate board level. What one facilitator discovers to be challenging, another experiences as a comfort zone. In a field that is holistic, systemic and relational, there is never a single ‘correct’ or ‘final’ answer. As people working with people, our facilitator choices and style changes, as our life experience unfolds.

John Heron’s (2001) core model, Six Dimensions of Facilitation Style provides for 729 facilitator interventions. Often frustratingly for trainees, the answer to facilitation-related questions is… “it depends” yet this answer reflects the reality of working in the field of human development. In this article, I hope to point to what good facilitation practice depends on, expressing something of the specific competencies, standards and considerations that are important for a facilitator to discover for (and about) themselves.

Our work has involved the analysis, synthesis and integration of theories, experiences and personal reflections, some of which are described in this article. We are experienced guides for the complex territory of group work, even if maps can never replace the experience of the terrain. Our work, what we do, only comes to life with groups, encountering the here-and-now reality of who each of us is, who we are together, and how we are being changed by the experience.

So, who you are as a facilitator (a slightly different question to the heading above) depends on:

• How you synthesize various models and translate them into real-world practice – who you work with, in which area, with what aim.
• The standards you hold, your core values, professional experience, habits, thresholds, psychological make-up and level of self-awareness
• The objectives and composition of the groups you choose to work with
• The relationship and complex interplay between your psyche and your social dimensions (status, relationships, work, community, culture, nature, country, identity).

Facilitators can help a group achieve their task, becoming aware, deliberate and choiceful about how they are working together at the levels of task, process and relationships (Cockman et al, 1998). Whatever the event (examples below) most groups give a lot of focus to the task, some give attention to the process, and very few pay attention to the relationships. Facilitators can add a lot of value by working skillfully with the group patterns and dynamics, whilst also ensuring outcomes are achieved.

Away Days

Action Learning

Appreciative Enquiry

Board Realignment Reviews

Regular Meetings

Review Meetings

Strategic Planning Events

Process/Programme Review

Learning Days/Training Days

Reflective Practice

Retreats

Conferences/Large events/Hackathons etc

Issue Resolution

Mediation

New Team Formation

Partnerships and Merger Meetings

Conflict Resolution

Team Building

Team Behaviour and Communication Days

Group Culture Enquiry

Psychometric Profiling

Governance Meetings

“Organisational Impact”, as well as being the subject of this article, is also the name of a module we offer on our Certificate Programme in Facilitation Skills. This two-word title could equally describe Social Action, Community Development, Team Coaching, Group Process, Action Learning Set, Organisational Development (‘OD’), Human Endeavour, Public Service and so on. In each case, you can see that in our picture of working facilitatively, in addition to the facilitator, there are (1) a group of people and (2) a shared developmental purpose in a positive direction.

A McKinsey survey in 2008 upheld John Kotter’s earlier findings (1996) that only 30% of organisational change programmes succeed[1]. Lack of success in itself can fuel cynical thinking and further failure, although this disappointing statistic is clearly not “all in the mind”. Whatever the actual figure, the devastating cost that human beings pay as a result of failing systems and unfit organisations is all around us and the distress of seeing it and feeling it is rarely far under the surface.

Gareth Morgan (1986) offers several metaphors for organisations, ranging from machines, brains, computers, instruments of domination and psychic prisons to organisms and cultures. AoF is most aligned to his view of organisations as ecosystems in “flux and transformation” although we work with people who view their organisations in different ways, such as those outlined above. Sometimes our impact lies in getting people to simply see and question how they view their organisation and their place in it and adjust to different ways, less bound ways of seeing themselves and others.

There simply cannot be one way of addressing change which fits all organisations and people. Clearly we (humanity) haven’t found an answer and I am certainly not claiming here that we (AoF) have. Approaches to change will always be matched with our contextual understanding of the world and our prevailing worldview is that the world is interconnected, relational and emergent. Given this, I have expanded on several figures which emerge as being ‘of interest’ when I consider how we have impact.

Aristotle’s political ideas provided “a means of creating order out of diversity while avoiding forms of totalitarian rule” (quoted in Morgan, ibid). The connections that Aristotle made back then - between the individual and the collective and between external control and internal satisfaction - are ones that most of us working in organisations (the modern equivalent of Greek city-districts?) will recognise today.

In addition to considerations of dominance and oppression at a systemic level (traditionally the domain of EDI) group participants experience the ebb and flow of sameness and difference across various dimensions. Inherent in group membership (belonging) is some shift in personal identity, in service of the group or community. In moving from the individual sphere to the group sphere, we may experience the edge of competing needs, e.g. individual status (selfishness) vs group belonging (altruism), autonomy vs direction, safety vs challenge, transparency vs privacy, extraversion vs introversion etc. We may not, in fact, always want to bring our whole self, which is complex, to work, which is also complex.

Evolutionary biology and neuroscience have much insight to offer about the strengths and vulnerabilities of being a group member, given the primacy of human survival and status needs. Without awareness, we can perceive other people’s differences as a threat to our sense of personal power. The good (or bad) news is that all humans in all groups are engaged in the power, status and diversity dance. With awareness, we can settle our feelings of one-up or one-downmanship and value others enough to participate and contribute.

The work of John Heron (2001) has much to offer about working with power in groups. His “modes of authority” model describes how a facilitator can be in a place of hierarchy, cooperation or autonomy, and depicts this as a scale with intermediate positions (see Figure 2 below). At the former end of the scale, the facilitator directs the group, make decisions and choose for the group (‘leads from the front’). At the other end, the group chooses its own learning and direction and the facilitator is a ‘group resource’.

In itself and on its own, this is a very practical model to help facilitators increase their range and act with intention and awareness. Our work is highly experiential so we have seen facilitators making sense of this model in many varied and rich ways, often starting from previously unseen rules and limitations (“I don’t… I can’t… I long for… I must… I should…”). For example:

• Exploring their own relationships to power positions and personal dynamics (“I don’t want to be in charge”, “I want to be a likeable facilitator”, “Facilitators must cooperate”, “Facilitators are neutral”, “I can’t know more than someone senior to me”.)
• Noticing power hierarchies (“I can’t say that because my boss/team is in the room”, “The customer/market is king”, “why don’t they just do what I tell them to do?”)
• Exploring their own unique preferences, skills and abilities and ability to contribute (“My natural style is x but I can stretch to y”)
• Expressing conscious feelings and becoming aware of unconscious feelings about themselves and others (“I don’t want to look incompetent in the presence of others”, “I can’t say what I really feel”)
• The influence of the wider systems – family, historical, social, psycho-social, situational, global (“I don’t belong here”, “My role is to be the one who…”.)
• Ethical observations and explorations (“Who am I to impose my philosophy and style on others”, “What if I don’t agree with the purpose or values of this group?”).

We see confidence and competence increase when facilitators explore this model experientially -and when they discover for themselves an extended range and greater possibilities to offer their groups through autonomous learning and conscious hierarchy.

Significant systemic and personal pressures, particularly those of diversity and inclusion, can be made visible by exploring power relationships. For example, differentiation at the forming/storming stage, necessary to move forward into performing/norming stages (Tuckman & Jensen 1977), is often welcomed by the lower power group (who know they are different from the prevailing norms) but resisted by the higher power group (“we’re all the same”, “you’re one of us”, “we’re all human”) which maintains the status quo.

For the richness that this offers, exploration of power and diversity dynamics is key to organisational impact and also to lifelong learning.

“I intend to reflect and build further on the mode of power model. I am keen to move away from a natural default “hierarchical” style where I feel I can box myself in to incorporate the other modes … with an emphasis on building greater connection…”

The impetus for engaging or developing facilitation skills generally arises after a period of professional experience where the “rubber hits the road” and the theory of organisational life does not match with the practice. We have (with no small sense of satisfaction) had MBA graduates tell us that with us they learnt “everything I didn’t learn on my MBA” and have seen many trainers come alive with the possibilities offered by whole-person learning (Taylor 2007).

David Kolb (1984) expressed the learning cycle as a continual process of experience, reflection, conceptualisation and application. His model of experiential learning, depicted in Figure 3, guides us in our way of working. We hear from groups that what we offer is often the environment, time and psychological space to reflect and make sense of experiences in the here-and-now.

We observe how often this cycle is short circuited – or steps are missed out - in our workplaces and beyond. Organisations often simply react, lurching from experiences (“Just Do Something!”) to planning for a different experience (“It didn’t work! Do something else quick!”), or get stuck in reflection or analysis, without having engaged in a time-efficient fuller version cycle of learning. In our wider systems too, we see quick-fixes, soundbites and knee-jerk reactions to things not going as we would want.

Working in a group experientially enables us to learn not only from our own experience but also that of others, plus from all of the interrelated dynamics and patterns that occur in a diverse group, and to our reactions to them. It is truly lifelong learning and this dawning of awareness is daunting and expanding.

“I particularly valued being allowed to take time experimenting with styles, allowing me to build an understanding of how they worked for me and other people… Being allowed and encouraged to discuss this and reflect on these differences and how they can be used to our advantage was a huge eye opener for me…”

Wilfred Bion’s research (1961) suggested that beneath all organisational processes there lies the realm of Group Process (= group dynamics = relationships). He described high performing teams (‘Sophisticated Work Groups’) as working with what is above and below the surface, i.e. explicitly including elements of the human process. He found that lower performing teams (‘Basic Assumption Groups’) would only work at the level of the task, i.e. above the surface. There is much left unsaid in Basic Assumption Groups and activities are diverted by powerful and common emotional drives (anxiety, fear, guilt, dependence and so on).

This ‘fact of life’ is the well-known idea that we can live and work superficially (on the surface) and/or at depth. At AoF, as you may have gathered, we attach great importance to what lies beneath the surface of groups and we consider working at depth and with awareness to be key facilitator competencies.

We often sketch out the levels of experiences in groups in a flipchart picture which we refer to as ‘The Iceberg model’ (see Figure 4), where sea-level is around the middle of the iceberg. We mostly find that there is pressure on organisational groups to work at the surface, generating visible results and taking action. It is rare for an organisational group to prioritise relationships over task, unless (or until) they hit “crisis mode”.

The contract we develop with most groups is to work at depth to support and underpin any surface “task” rather than committing to any end point or goal. As with the reflective practice earlier, we encounter resistance and hit defences at individual, group and systemic level which we facilitate groups “through”.

It is familiar for us to encounter resistance to a way of working that includes reflection and integration. In our experience, the avoidance of reflective and integrative practices steers us away from an explicit exploration of our situational context, power structures and our own personal authority.

Most frequently in organisations we hear about back-to-back meetings, the pressure not to make mistakes and the constant gear-changing. At senior levels, we hear the frustration of leaders not speaking up, conversations going ‘round the houses’, politicking and no time to think.

“I don’t think that I spend enough time focussing on myself and how I want to be perceived, and how I can add more value to some of the work that I undertake. I have a large geographical area and seem to spend most of my time driving around the country, having meetings, putting fires out and then catching up on admin and emails on evenings and planning for the week ahead on the weekend. The workload is exceptionally high and unsustainably so at the moment…”

It seems to us that ‘mistakes’ continue to be made despite or even because of this pressure, or more accurately in our frame, experience doesn’t necessarily lead to learning through reflection. Barriers to the reflective phase frequently reference pace, time and “the real world” and these defences generally overlay deeper defences to personal development work. Potential traps exist in getting stuck in reflection (“naval gazing”), sense-making (“analysis paralysis”), planning (“control freaks”) or in continual action (“experience junkies”).

Another blocker to healthy learning is the shadow side of positive-thinking approaches (perhaps including aspects of humanistic psychology), which prevents uncomfortable material being brought into the light. I refer to this as the “tyranny of the positive”. Any good-intentioned approach which is badly implemented can generate more rule-bound repression rather than freedom, development and creativity. We view this shadow side as an essential consideration, and equally take care to ‘delve’ into shadow material no more than is implied by the group contract, context and aims.

On reflection though - and working through resistance however it arises - we hear how valuable the full cycle of experiential learning in a peer group is to:

• Tell the truth
• Build connection
• Receive feedback
• Share best practice
• Update one’s self perception
• Become a critically reflective practitioner
• Understand and take responsibility for one’s own situation
• Approach learning in a holistic manner including body, feelings and energy
• Examine deeper thoughts and feelings that we have about ourselves and others
• Remove the mask (e.g. of serious, competent activity) and connect with one’s lightness
• Meaningfully sort through and evaluate the complexity of culture, history, goals, abilities, blind spots, shadow material, defences and compulsions
• Experience the Paradox of Change as expressed by Beisser (1972):

“change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not.”

Conflict (and change) often involves addressing the gap between myths and reality, current and future, actual and desired, person A and person B (etc). In Tuckman and Jensen’s model (1977), the storming phase arises interpersonally as group members seek to occupy roles, influence priorities, establish pecking order, play out life scripts (Berne, 1972) and rove around the drama triangle (Karpman, 1968). As described in the earlier section around power and difference, each peron’s personal myth/reality comes up against the relational reality of contact with other people, each with their own myths, realities[2] and needs. The skills to navigate through conflict are the skills of facilitation, mapped out by Heron’s six dimensions of facilitation (2001) or Cockman et al’s (1999) model of organisational life.

A group where members are able to confront themselves and one another in service of the shared aim, and with the meta aim of raising awareness to their own blind spots is a high-performing team. We know what constructive challenge looks and feels like, and how it helps move through conflict and get themselves unstuck.

Bion (1961) and others such as Lencioni (2002) described the patterns of stuck teams, again familiar to most of us. Discussions end the same way; patterns are repeated and rigid, tensions are high. Psychic tensions spill over into the private life of group members worry, feel physically tight/tired, sleep badly, are hypervigilant and continually rehearse conversations with protagonists[3].

Bion (1961) described the process of healthy containment, where what is contained is the raw, “unthinkable” feelings (anxiety, frustration, shame, boredom) that a group or individual cannot process. The facilitator, in the role of container, is able to sit with the discomfort such that the group becomes a place of learning about self and other, navigating through challenges rather than collapsing into dysfunction. It is worth saying here that any group member or leader can provide containment, and a high functioning group is where team members are able to contain and digest discomfort together.

One of the joys as well as the raisons d'être of our work is helping groups to achieve their shared aims through acknowledging the power of what lies “below the surface”. Whilst most facilitated sessions have a task to complete (a strategy, team building, conflict resolution, training) and achieving their aims is a priority, it is much more likely to happen successfully and if teams are able to acknowledge and navigate their own patterns and blockers.

In working with any group, whether consultancy or training, there are usually twin aims of role-modelling (facilitator as leader) and of skills transfer (facilitator as educator) such that groups learn to lead and educate themselves. In a polite group but unproductive group, the facilitator may offer a well-calibrated challenge, checking that this ‘lands well’ as a spark for productivity. In an overly confronting group (often lots of words, no action) the facilitator may challenge patterns that lead to poor performance[4], allowing for catharsis and a return to focused work. The paradox of good facilitation is that, ideally, we work ourselves out of a job.

Case study ½: Programme Leadership (Psychological Safety/Accountability)

– Innovation Sector

During a scoping call, a potential client wanted to address long-standing ‘problems in the team’ through a training day based on the RACI project management framework (Responsible/Accountable/Consulted/Informed). The issue described was that multiple managers would accept responsibility but no-one would step up to be accountable. I suggested that some relevant introductory activities could be followed by a live, experiential exploration of the topic of accountability in their context. Options for structured activities included a “hot potato” exercise, reverse interviewing (“why I shouldn’t get the job”) and, simply, truth-telling and inquiry. The client seemed entertained by the possibilities but added a proviso that it would be my duty that no-one would feel blamed, or put on the spot and ‘everybody’s psychological safety would be guaranteed’.

Creating a psychologically safe environment[5] is a central to a well-facilitated session.

However, when a team is described as lacking accountability, this is typically a sign of low levels of psychological safety and likely underperformance (Lencioni, 2002). Given the long-standing nature of issues related to blame and accountability, I felt there were almost certainly issues relating to empowerment and the drama triangle (Karpman, 1968). I was also sensing the potential for blame coming my way, should I accept this work.

Taking on responsibility for psychological safety (however well-meaning the request) when the issues raised were likely to be ones of conflict, control and power is rarely in service of the group; nor is it ever possible for the facilitator to provide such a guarantee with any degree of congruence. In the context of accountability, an agreement to support the group to explore issues that have importance and relevance for them is much more conducive to moving forward on solid ground. An agreement to be “safely-unsafe” allows for the possibility of the discomfort which is a prerequisite for any change or learning to take place. When well-contained by the facilitator, the freedom of such a session enables the sponsor, group and the facilitator to generate the culture of trust that underlies psychological safety.

The agent who introduced us experienced the exchange with the potential client as insightful however we agreed this work would not go ahead with me – probably to relief all round!

Case study 1: Board of Trustees (Purpose and Strategy)

– Healthcare

A Board of Trustees for a professional association was stuck with formulating their strategy. The President gave me free rein for the agenda and we agreed to “work at depth”. After various scene setting activities in the morning to get to know them, “tune in”, identify issues and build trust/safety (constellations, agenda formation, contracting, truth telling, dialogue) the group, who don’t meet often, was connecting well and enjoying doing so. After lunch we hit a brick wall as we approached the topic of articulating the strategy. The pressure of time was starting to build and our room felt cramped and airless. I invited them to take a short walk in pairs around the block rather than push harder at the task. My embodied sense while they were out of the room was that the activity had become stuck as it was detached and “out there” rather than accessible and “in here”. On their return, the room instantly felt bigger and less cramped. We sat closely together, and I invited the Board Members to answer a very simple question in a structured and repetitive way: “Why am I here?”. Out of that activity emerged three key themes: Support, Sharing, Learning. The atmosphere was electric as the group realised that their own personal themes and shared reasons for being there were also their strategic offering to their membership.

In practice, as well as being a joy to witness, depth-work can be uncomfortable and slow. What is highly challenging within one group may not be to another; groups need us to meet them where they are and stay with them as things emerge.

Case study 2: Leadership Team (Wellbeing)

– Charity

In working with the leadership team from a domestic abuse charity, we ended up with a great many post-its on the floor during a planning exercise. As the exercise slowed down, the team seemed to want to push on and tidy up and the vibe was “antsy”. I enquired how it would be to leave the messiness on the floor and experienced a great blast of reactions as they all told me about their “OCD-like” tendencies to tidy-up around the office. This led to an in-depth discussion of how painful and out-of-control it could feel to work in the complex and messy arena of domestic abuse, and expressions of appreciation for the support they provided for one another.

Simply dwelling with a team in their environment, slowing down, seeing and feeling ‘what is’ can lead to spontaneous insights, allowing a team to know themselves better and work more closely and productively together. Slowing down often speeds things up.

Often, in this group environment, our defences, far from being impossible to overcome (as we fear) are gently blown away as we learn about ourselves and our impact on others. We aim to build participants’ capacity and capability for self-regulation by practising skills in giving and receiving feedback. We aim to build the ability to self-confront (become more self-aware) through building confronting (awareness-building) skills in the group environment. We guide participants to pick up accurately on cues (internal and external) and to become aware of the lenses they use to navigate the world and how, for each of us, our personal ‘story’ influences how we ‘read’ others. Whether historic or situational, our defences never really work as well as we think they do. Healthy group environments are tailor-made for offsetting the possible pain of this learning with the potential for laughing with others at our human absurdities.

As facilitators, working with groups as defences and projections arise, we aim to work in an encouraging way, supporting the person while confronting personal, group or organisational myths. Our work at its best reflects our dedication to core Person-Centred principles (Rogers 1957) and to effective Organisational Development for ‘real people’.

Bobbing up to the surface after working at depth, a participant may let out a breath and say “Phew! That was a bit like therapy!”. Certainly our approach does share a basis with therapies and healing arts. Typically, the people we work with are articulate, high performers and to begin with at least are more comfortable discussing performance than “personal development”. To return to the client quoted at the start of this article,

“I feel that we do get tired and overwhelmed and as a result it impacts on our results, (that is definitely the case for me personally). We are not as productive as we could be at times because we get too bogged down in things. I think as a group and individually we probably need to work smarter rather than harder. We often duplicate tasks around the building because we are not communicating properly with each other, I think the change in format of our Inter departmental monthly meetings should start to improve this situation though. I think because we are generally under stress/pressure we do not support each other properly and probably miss out on opportunities to make our work lives a bit easier as a result."

Our work with teams, while not therapy, is therapeutic, restorative and healing. Many go on to deeper personal work, with us or others.

Our analysis and synthesis of many models and maps provide pathways to link the whole person approach with a whole organisation approach and consider how only both together have transformational impact (see Figure 5, below).

In closing, I return briefly to a more personal theme. A major driver for me personally is to offer support to enhance well-being in families. I have previously co-written a book for female-led businesses (Martin & Mehta 2006) and I founded and led for many years a Community Interest Company dedicated to childcare.

I am occasionally asked why I don’t work with families. My answer, quite definitely, is that I do! All of the people within organisations are also family members, in whatever form that takes. A member of a financial leadership team I worked with said that he had slept better as a result of improved teamwork and clarity about his role and performance. When he added simply, almost as an afterthought, that he had been nicer to his wife and children as a consequence, I was not alone in welling up with emotion.

For a facilitator like myself—someone whose home territory is the physical room, the presence of people, and the flow of dialogue—writing feels strange, even a little insecure, like speaking into a void. As I close this piece of writing, I find myself imagining (hoping for!) an attentive listener who has chosen to sit with me as we’ve shared ideas and stories. I’m also conscious that exploring the depths of facilitation practice is not, to use a very British expression, everybody’s cup of tea. And I’m thankful for that: variety is the spice of life.

I wonder how reading this has been for you?

Is it your cup of tea? or your spice of life?

Perhaps you’ve wished to interrupt - to resonate, challenge or add?

Perhaps you have a great story or insight to share from your experience of groups?

Perhaps you’ve been frustrated that I haven’t said something important (and if you were kind enough to share this I could learn this from you?)

I would be pleased to hear your thoughts.

At AoF, as well as believing that facilitation skills can be learnt by anyone, we believe that:

• facilitation as a profession has benefits beyond those for the individual facilitator or the groups that we work with
• facilitation skills contribute towards a more healthy and connected way of being.

Our vision is to increase the skill level of individuals in order to generate healthy and positive outcomes for the groups that we all live and work among.

I wonder, have I achieved these aims or supported AoF’s vision to any degree here?

Please do contact me with any comments in response to this article.

bella@associationoffacilitators.co.uk