Facilitation training: the importance of practising your practice

My experience this week with members of the Detention Forum, working with fellow Rhizome member Hannah Clayton, crystallised some emerging thoughts about facilitation in general and facilitation training in particular.

First, I feel that some facilitation training sees facilitation as a discipline, as a body of knowledge to be passed on, albeit that that knowledge is about process and experience: it isn’t Latin. But I see facilitation as first of all a craft. Like all crafts, you can theorise about them. But no amount of theory will make you a decent potter if you never get your hands dirty. Facilitation is like pottery: it’s the getting the hands dirty that counts.

Second, most facilitation training starts with a syllabus. But most people, if they have tried out facilitation or are about to, have particular aspects that they want to feel more confident about and to improve. For the Detention Forum, for instance, we had a session on working with people with strong and opposing views, because that is what they asked for. One of the advantages of working with people all from the same organisation is that they are likely to have overlapping interests, making it easier to shape the agenda around those interests.

Thirdly, I have found that it is possible to set up role plays in the moment that give people a chance to practice ideas or techniques that have been presented and/or discussed. Using the Detention Forum again as illustration, members practised dealing with people with those strong and opposing views, on the one hand, and encouraging people who weren’t speaking, on the other. I’m fairly sure they learned more from such trials than from anything said by Hannah or by me!

Down with theory! Up with practice!

Perry

Formal consensus and Crowd Wise

Perry and I were delivering a day’s training on consensus for Talk Action yesterday. The day covered an overview of formal consensus (often simply called consensus or consensus decision-making) and an introduction to Crowd Wise. We rounded off with a ‘clinic’ – collectively troubleshooting a consensus-related issues for one of the group and trying to apply the day’s learning to that organisation’s needs.

One of the things that makes this training more interesting and perhaps challenging is that it draws in people from a wide range if backgrounds and organisations – those whose work involves participatory engagement, such as community workers and freelance and local authority planners; staff and volunteers for small charities and community organisations; staff from NGOs of varying sizes; as well as those with an activist or campaigning background. Yesterday we had participants from a local authority, Garden Organic, the Occupy movement, a local CVS support organisation, a network of residents associations and more.

This was the second time out for the training and we’d had a good clear out, de-cluttering the content and focusing on the experiential activities wherever we could. It seemed to go well, and there was a lot of energy and warmth at the end of the day.

Inevitably there are a couple of activities we will tweak again for next time. Our warm up activity produced less clear learning about consensus than last time. Similarly the clinic tended towards broad group dynamics topics where we had hoped it would be more obviously consensus-focused. Talk Action have the evaluation forms, and we’ll come back to you and share some headlines when we get a look at them. We’ll also let you know when the next course is running. Maybe see you there?

As an aside, Anna from Talk Action tweeted her way through the morning – not something I’m used too, but an interesting insight into what at least one participant was taking away from the course:

A forum for consensus

Hannah and I were at work with the Detention Forum on earlier this month, facilitating a 5 hour session on consensus decision-making. The Forum is “a loose network of over 30 NGOs who are working on immigration detention issues” and as such is evolving its processes all the time. The co-ordination group are trying to work as consensually as possible and want to support other working groups and the wider Forum to do the same. Hence the training.

This was very much a chance for the Forum to explore whether formal consensus was for them, or whether there were elements or values within consensus that were useful to them without necessarily adopting the formal consensus process wholesale.

We threw them into a decision-making experience out of which we drew the values, attitudes, states of mind, of co-operative decision-making. These we discusses, explored and mapped onto the formal consensus process before throwing them back into another decision-making activity.

It’s clear that all the talk of values had an impact – reaffirming to the participants how they envision their relationships in meetings, causing pause for thought in some cases. The session left them with challenges and questions – one being about sharing the experience and learning with the wider Forum. How do you support others to work towards these laudable values? How do you make the transition from values to actual behaviour in meetings?

Fortunately Hannah and Perry will be working with them again at the end of the month, with a focus on facilitation. I suspect the role of facilitation in supporting groups to work to their higher values will be on the agenda!

With the Forum’s permission we used the session to so some internal skill-sharing. Hannah was keen to learn more about facilitating consensus training. Not that you’d have known she had more to learn from her assured performance!

From the evaluation we seem to have been successful in supporting people to see beyond consensus process to consensus values, and in helping them to appreciate that potentially tricky aspects of consensus, such as the block, are positive when used appropriately.

“It was very timely and useful for us, giving us much to think about but also helping us to think differently about meetings and discussions we’ve already had, seeing them in context…

I was quite cynical beforehand but this session has completely changed my mind”

Of the couple of ‘negative’ comments we received one was concerned with an activity we did in which we asked some people to take on roles. The roles were unnecessary in this instance and as much (or more) would have been learnt without them. Hannah and I drew the same conclusion in our debrief conversation. Always good to have that confirmed by the participants. The other was simply a comment that the formal consensus process wasn’t, in this participant’s view, appropriate for the Detention Forum.

Ayanna – workshops to nourish and inspire

Just in from a friend of ours:

The workshops/film nights aim to provide a nourishing and inspiring space, a time to slow The workshops/film nights aim to provide a nourishing and inspiring space, a time to slow down and breathe, to learn something new and have some fun. Most of them are being held at community centres used by local people, who will be involved in organising and promoting the event.

These workshops came about after some community workshop conversations under the name of ‘Ayanna’, an initiative started by a few activists and community workers in London which has brought together people doing local community based work for social and environmental justice.

These conversations started with a dream of doing something a bit different to the organisations many of us had experience working with. We identified organisations in the voluntary/third/campaigning sector as one of the barriers to truly exciting social change based on values of social justice – with models of funding, marketing, management hierarchies and bureaucracy that don’t often do best by the people these organisations claim to represent and advocate for.

Activities which are nourishing and inspiring were identified as really important, especially at a time of funding cuts, overwork and political mayhem.

We hope you can make one or more of the workshops. All are free of charge. All will be fun and you’ll learn something new, we promise! These events are all run by volunteers, though we’ve had a small amount of funding to help with costs.

mediating and meaning

Mediated a dispute between members of a core group in a direct action group. The agreement was to keep the content and fact of the mediation confidential, so I can only talk about the process without any reference to the members of the group or the group.

One member of the group, that had agreed a plan of action and how it would be communicated, broke this agreement. A sub-group was set up to finalise the wording before the call out was publicised. A member decided to publish what they thought best. This annoyed the rest of the sub-group and the larger group that had come to consensus about the nature of the call out.

I spoke to some members of the group by phone and face to face before we met, and ironed out some of the conditions for the mediation. This included finding out who else needed to be involved, and how those involved represented the views of the wider group.

We only had an hour and a half, but spent it clarifying how the issue had arisen and what the underlying needs and motivations were. This helped to clarify where people where coming from, their intentions, how these intentions had been received and how they could be resolved. Those present thought that progress had been made and some initial steps were agreed to take forward this positive momentum.

For those interested in process issues. I began by negotiating the boundaries of confidentiality (I’d keep all confidential, they agreed to share the outputs with the rest of the group), the spirit with which we’d converse (using inquiry, rather than adversarialism) and started the conversation by asking why they thought I was present.

I then used a series of clarifying questions, summarised what I thought I’d heard every now and again and helped them to recognise any momentum that had been gained. I used notes and diagrams to keep track of what was said and destroyed them at the end of the meeting.

Civil disobedience, hard work and time

We tend to forget how long it takes for the dreamed of, planned for, struggled for change to actually take place. It is very easy for activists to feel disheartened and defeated after the early exhilarating stages of a campaign, or the excitement of an act of civil disobedience. It’s a long slog and much of it is just sheer bloody minded persistence. The anniversary this week of the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932 reminds us how very long it can take. I don’t just mean the 68 years from 1932 till the Countryside and Rights of Way Act was passed in 2000, but all the centuries of struggle by poor and oppressed people for equal rights to the land, appropriated by the wealthy and powerful for leisure and profit. The line of dissent runs through the Peasants’ Revolt in the 14^th century, which conjures the names of Wat Tyler and John Ball, through to Wynstanley and the True Levellers in the 17^th, with radical writers such as Blake and Thomas Paine in the 18^th, and the 19^th century liberals and radicals who founded the Open Spaces Society keeping the energy flowing. We’re talking 700 years and there is still work to be done on the issue of open access for all.

The trespass on Kinder was an act of civil disobedience. It was planned and advertised and organised, one group coming from Manchester, another from Sheffield. Hundreds made the walk, there were some scuffles with keepers, six people were arrested and charged with riotous assembly and five imprisoned. But a few weeks later thousands did the same, such was the inspiration and strength that it produced, and many years later new laws on access to open land began to be drafted. The centuries of protest and writing and preaching and talking and pamphleteering seemed to culminate in this iconic action – a few hundred men and some women (who were kept back from the actual trespass) speaking truth to power, saying it is our land too. Rosa Parks on a seat on a bus, black students at a lunch counter, the crowds in Tahrir Square last spring, Occupy at St Paul’s – all are events which, like the crest of a strong wave, contain beneath them the persistence of many people fighting for change over a long time, and it is still ongoing. It is not just the act of civil disobedience alone which changes things, it is the work, the planning, the effort, the time – and the support and desire for justice of those who cannot take part in this one event – which the act represents.

Like many other actions of resistance and dissent, the trespass was remembered in song, “The Manchester Rambler” by Ewan MacColl. A version, combining another song, by John Tams and Barry Coope is worth a listen, not only for their beautiful voices but for the line “nothing changes, it all stays the same” ringing like a warning bell.

Jo

Autism and the social change group: Part 2

After the workshop I participated in at the end of March, I’ve continued a dialogue with Caroline from Insider Autism Training.

We spoke about ways in which the training could have been made more experiential. That led us to the question of “experiencing what?”. Experiencing autism is clearly not possible, and we agreed that there’s something distasteful about asking NTs (neuro-typicals as we’re known in autistic circles) to ‘pretend’ to be autistic. That’s not to say that there aren’t experiential activities that can help raise awareness. More on that below. The conversation homed in on 2 themes – experiencing alienation and empathy and led us to talk about diversity rather than solutions.

Everyone has some experience of alienation – feeling out of their depth socially or culturally, even if just fleetingly, for example that first day in a new job or at a new school, or travelling in a foreign country, or the first Christmas spent with a partner’s family. We can tap into those experiences to give people a sense of the difficulty faced by those on the autistic spectrum in reading the unwritten social signals others are fluent in. In doing so we can begin to get a feeling for the experience of the autistic. Of course this sort of fleeting alienation is not the same thing that those on the autistic spectrum experience. It’s not even close. NTs have the luxury of knowing that the new school/new job scenario is the cause of their anxiety.

Caroline has been playing with other activities:

“I ran a workshop the other day where I divided the  participants in groups of about 5 with where one of the group was sat with their back to the group, they then had to discuss a topic as a group. The aim was for the person with their back turned to experience some of what it is like to miss out on body language and the others to notice how differently they treated someone they knew without body language – it worked brilliantly –  the turned round person’s description of their experience (“I didn’t know when to say something”, “I could not judge pauses”, “I felt ignored”) matched almost exactly the difficulties autistic people have articulated about being in groups. The rest of the group confessed to being aware that they were ignoring the turned around person, or even referring to them as if they were not there, but that awareness did not enable them to change their behaviour”

Empathy is harder. Whilst it might be laudable to work towards NTs experiencing empathy with the autistic, empathy is itself a contentious issue in autistic circles. Talking about empathy and autism rings alarm bells because there is a widely held (and largely incorrect ) belief that autistic people are empathy-deficient. I’m assured that things are much more complex than this and that many autistics are over-empathic.

The temptation for many facilitators is then to try and ‘fix’ the problem when they encounter it in groups. But solutions are not easy and it might be best to try instead to hone awareness. There are some behaviours typical of autism that can exasperate others in a group. And whilst it’s not impossible for autistics to learn and modify their behaviour it’s not going to happen in the course of a 90 minute meeting. Nor should the modification of behaviour be one-way. The NT community has a lot of work to do.

That’s not to say there are no solutions. In the workshop we heard how for some autistics there’s a real need to express their thinking immediately, and patiently waiting isn’t realistic. One suggestion from a participant on the autistic spectrum was to find ways to allow people to write down their thoughts in the moment, and then bring them in when the flow of the conversation permits – a parking space flipchart, a stack of notepaper or post-it notes.
But thinking in terms of solutions could be a distraction from the real issue – tolerance of difference and diversity.

Caroline reminded me of the terminology “neurodiversity”. We’re familiar with other, more visible forms of diversity such as gender, race, physical ability, but there are invisible forms of diversity and autism is just one. It may be that we can’t ‘fix’ behaviours that cause neuro-typicals annoyance. Even to think that way labels those behaviours as ‘wrong’ in some way. What we can do is try to strengthen our tolerance and give neurodiversity the same credence and respect we would any other diversity issue.
Let’s finish on a short piece from Caroline which neatly brings some of these themes together:

“I heard a story from Ann about training a group committed to encouraging diversity.  Anne noticed a group member, Richard, behaved in ways that led Ann to suspect he was autistic.  Anne was surprised to see how the other members of the group cut Richard absolutely no slack.  It would not be exaggerating to say they shunned and excluded him.  The rolled their eyes when he spoke, did not acknowledge or respond to his contributions, but just continued the discussion as if he had not spoken.
Anne saw that Richard was dedicated to the work of the group, made reasonable points and desperately wanted to be included. Yet he was being exclude by a group of decent people who were vocal about how committed they were to diversity.  Anne could see that Richard could be irritating, he talked in a monotone, repeated points he had already made, picked up on tiny mistakes made by others and sometimes  interrupted others.
Anne felt very uneasy with the situation but was unsure how to address it.  She did not feel she could it would be helpful to state her take on the situation “It seems to me you have an autistic person here – this is an opportunity to respond appropriately and celebrate the diversity you already have within your group”.  If she voiced her perception of the situation in this way Anne would have been potentially shaming Richard, and adding to, rather than ameliorating his sense of alienation.
The reaction of the group to Richard begs the question of what they think they want to encourage by encouraging diversity.  Do they understand that diversity is more than window dressing, goes deeper than looking exotic but brings with it the need to engage with real differences and real difficulties.
Engaging with the challenge Richard’s way of relating brought to the group could have resulted in an examination of working methods.  A more explicit structure to meetings, the use of a “talking stick , a protocol whereby nobody could speak twice until everybody had had the chance to speak once and a summing up that acknowledged all contributions might well have helped.  It might have enabled Richard to be a more constructive group member and increased clarity about how the group was functioning.   Difference and diversity can bring a seam of richness to our endeavours, but for this to happen we need to be willing to question and continually adjust our ways of working, and engage with differences that are more than skin deep.”

More of Caroline’s writing can be found on her website. Many thanks to her for the sharing that has enriched this post.

Occupying direct action

I spent Sunday morning in Southend-on-Sea at the Occupy National Conference. I was there running a short (2 hour) nonviolent direct action (NVDA) workshop, as well as getting a feel for this particular moment in Occupy UK.

Whilst you can’t satisfy everyone in every workshop, the energy, engagement, and conversation afterwards spoke to a decent workshop. My sense of the Conference was that it had involved (and would go on to involve) a fair bit of sitting and talking. So we focused on doing – exploring a few physical aspects of NVDA (holding a space, passive resistance and so on) and using those as stepping-stones to talking about communication, safety, comfort, mutual support and more. There were those in the group with considerable experience of NVDA, so it felt very much like an informal co-facilitation. And that’s a good thing. I recently wrote that I thought Rhizome hadn’t engaged enough with Occupy. Nice to redress that balance, if only slightly…

 

Trainer as social engineer?

It’s been a funny few months in terms of feedback on training I’ve been involved in facilitating.

In February myself and a co-facilitator received one of the most affirming pieces of feedback I’ve ever received. To paraphrase we were told that we didn’t teach the group anything, but they learnt loads. Music to the ears of anyone that believes in an elicitive* and participatory approach to learning – we simply create the frame within which the participants paint their own artwork drawing on their own experience, knowledge, and vision.

This weekend it was suggested that there was social engineering taking place in a workshop. It was fairly obvious that the criticism was leveled at me in my role as trainer. From an empowering and empowered model of training to manipulator and puppeteer in a couple of months (and yes, when  asked what social engineering meant in this context manipulating towards hidden ends seems a reasonably accurate paraphrase). That’s some fall from grace.

Perhaps naturally, there’s a part of me that wants to write it off as a participant with “issues” about working in groups. Whether or not there’s any truth in that is not the point, however. It would be far too easy to stop listening at that moment in time but something in me says there’s more than a measure of truth in the criticism.

Of course the role of trainer can be slightly (or vastly) different from that of impartial meeting facilitator. Much training is still based on the ‘empty vessel’ approach of the trainer pouring his or her wisdom into the group. Maybe there are echoes of that left in the training I run? I certainly feel that the work I do is far more elicitive than it once was, as I’ve learnt to trust the group to have the answer, and to craft the right question. But on reflection however committed to drawing out learning from the group I am, there are definitely times when I have my own agenda or worldview as a trainer and that leaves open the possibility of ‘social engineering’.

This was a nonviolent direct action (NVDA) workshop. I do have a model of NVDA that I train around, which includes many assumptions – co-operating as a group we are more powerful than we are as individuals; leadership is best when shared throughout the group; safety and support roles are as important as ‘action’ roles (or perhaps more important); and so on. These may seem like sensible assumptions, but do I always articulate them and check them out with a group? No. Am I ever drawing out learning to confirm certain pre-occupations and biases of my own, however widely shared. At times, almost certainly yes. Can I see that the fiercely autonomous individual, the free spirit, or the  self-sacrificing martyrs out there will find these assumptions grating? Yes. Does the fact that these folk can be on the margins of groups mean I shouldn’t listen? No.

I’m grateful for the interaction, especially as we were able to explore it more after the session was over. More work to be done on defining my role as trainer, preferably in collaboration with the group I’m working with, and continuing to develop the skills and attitudes needed. But isn’t that the joy of the role of trainer?

* Training for Change, in their handy glossary of terms, describe elicitive tools like so:

elicitive tools: exercises or activities that draw out participants’ knowledge, wisdom, feelings, humour, curiosity, motivation, and so on. When facilitators use elicitive tools, they find that the participants already know most of what the facilitator wants to teach, and the facilitator only needs to add. Elicitive tools invite participants to do most of the work of education, instead of the facilitator!

The power of provocation

The UK government lurches from crisis to crisis. They announce a policy initiative. There’s an immediate and fierce backlash. And then they fudge something to avoid too much humiliation whilst letting the powers that be go about business as usual. Hardly what I’d describe as ‘government’. However on one level I like the aspect of provocation, not that it’s deliberate in their case. It just needs to be coupled with competent handling of the response!

As facilitators we use provocation too little. Something to do with that impartiality ethic we often have? If we state something that sounds like a position we’re straying from taking care of process into content? Maybe because some of us fear the conflict we could provoke?

But it’s such a useful approach. Too often groups faff around, are too polite, too vague, too certain, or just not considering the full picture. Well placed provocative interventions can break through the mediocrity and open up a real and meaningful discussion. But unlike the UK government the response needs to be handled well. It needs to be met with a genuinely listening ear, a curious mind, more provocation (if needed) to open up all sides of an issue. As a facilitator I see nothing wrong with “just to play devil’s advocate here a moment….” or “has anyone considered that…” or “I’m very aware that some people argue that…”

Mostly I use provocation in the general dialogue with a group I’m facilitating, but there are some spaces and techniques that rely on provocation.

I’m thinking of spectrum lines (aka continuums)which are designed to present participants with an issue and help them formulate their own thinking on it. Often facilitators use a question to stimulate that thinking. I prefer a statement simply because it’s a more powerful provocation and people will bounce off it. Doesn’t matter where they bounce, as long as they do.

There’s also the reverse ideastorm (or brainstorm) – if you’re trying to get creative around attracting new members to a group, then ideastorm the opposite – “how could we put off as many people as possible from joining our group?”. It provokes a new perspective.

Edward de Bono also advocates what he calls a Po, a provocation operation – looking for solutions by beginning what may sound like an absurd starting point. You can find more on this, including a good example in his article Serious Creativity and a useful summary on the mycoted website. You can also find an exploration of provocation on the newmilleniumthinking blog.

I’d be really interested to hear how others get provocative and what they’ve learnt along the way.