Facilitation is often activity-based. Activities prompt a group to participate in a scenario that is an abstract representation of the intended learning; then, through processing that scenario (i.e. talking about the experience), the learning is solidified. However, facilitation can take a variety of forms, including games, discussion, reflection, dialogue, and more.
This whole book is about facilitating, so we’re not going to spend too much more time on it in this chapter, but there are a few times in particular we think facilitation is the bee’s knees. Facilitating is perfect when...
● you can leave most of the decision-making of the exact things the group will learn to the group itself;
● you have plenty of time;
● there is no doubt that the learners, as a community, already have some or most of the knowledge you’re hoping to learn, and might just need some help realizing it, or organizing their way of thinking about what they already know; and/or
● there isn’t an overwhelming ratio of learners to educators, or you’re able to easily convert some of the learners into educators (e.g., break the big group into smaller groups, and assign each group a facilitator of sorts).
Knowing What to Use When: Consider Requirements and Restraints
There are countless recommendations we could make, beyond the ones we made above, about when it’s right to lean on lecturing, teaching, or facilitating; but most of them would come down to our subjective bias (don’t think we have to spell out what ours would be, considering the title and subtitle of this book). Instead, we recommend you consider the requirements and restraints of any learning situation, and then pick the method of engagement best for the moment.
In this case, the requirements are pre-determined learning outcomes or goals for the experience, the decisions about which are out of your hands. For example, answers to questions like “Are there specific ideas, concepts, or understandings that the learners must know?” would constitute requirements.
And by restraints, we mean the conditions around the experience that are out of your hands. For example, the amount of time you have, the number of participants in the group, and the physical setting in which the learning will take place are a few possible restraints.
With the requirements and restraints in mind, the choice often makes itself. Knowing the differences among lecturing, teaching, and facilitating fall largely on agency and active participation, you’ll often find yourself seeing that lecturing is great when there are a lot of, or very limiting, requirements and restraints; and facilitating is perfect when you have more wiggle room in both areas.
And when in doubt, know that it’s totally okay, and totally recommended, to mix it up: variety is the spice of life, and sometimes you won’t figure out the best method to achieve a particular learning outcome until you’ve tried a few different ones.
Educators? Learners? Facilitation blurs the difference.
If you think back to our primer on facilitation, you’ll recall that one of our favorite things about facilitation is how the idea-exchange is not unidirectional. That is, the educators are learners, and the learners are educators. In this chapter, we’ve used the language of Educator and Learner as an intentional detour from our typical Facilitator and Participant, because we want to make clear that sometimes the facilitator is the one learning and the participants are the ones teaching. That is, in every scenario above (lecturing, teaching, and facilitating), the person serving as Educator could be you or someone else.
What’s more, the methods that facilitators and participants have at their disposal when serving as educators are one and the same: both facilitators and participants can choose to lecture, teach, or facilitate. If this is getting too abstract, let’s consider a typical training moment that incorporates all three methods of achieving learning, being employed by both the facilitator and the participants:
Facilitator: “Why do you think we just did that activity?” [Facilitating]
Participant 1: “You wanted us to realize [...], because for our roles it’s important to know [...].” [Lecturing]
Participant 2: to Participant 1 “Can you explain what you meant by [...]?” [Facilitating]
Participant 1: “I meant [...]. Is that more clear? Perhaps if you think of it like [...] it will help.” [Teaching]
Facilitator: “Well said! And to put that another way, [...].” [Teaching]
Facilitator: “There is also another reason I wanted us to do that activity: [...].” [Lecturing]
And now, to put our Authors of a Book About Facilitation Caps back on, we want to leave you with this challenge: though it may be difficult, we believe it’s possible to achieve the learning of pretty much any content through facilitation. And throughout this book, we hope to show you how.
Being Neutral
“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
- Howard Zinn
One of the most amusing things in life is when people start a sentence “No offense, but….” You know that not only are they about to say something (usually horrifyingly) offensive, but they think the caveat “no offense” somehow balances it back out to neutral. Or, as one of our favorite professors in grad school used to joke, when people say a terrible thing about another person, but add on the phrase “...bless their heart.”
As facilitators, we often feel pressure to be seen as a neutral party in the room. In fact, neutrality is so idealized that we have about a dozen different phrases we deploy to ensure our neutral stance. To name a few, we have “objectively speaking,” “most people would say,” “not to pick sides,” and “just playing the devil’s advocate here” (often used when we want to masquerade as neutral, but still argue what we truly believe). We’re concerned that if we are perceived as bringing our own biases into an educational setting, others will question the validity of what we have to say, or discredit it completely, chalking it up to an “of course you’d say that, you’re […]”-type prejudice.
Attempting to be neutral as a facilitator is about as possible as starting a sentence with “No offense, but…” and not offending anyone. We want to suggest that attempting neutrality isn’t just unrealistic, it’s unhelpful. Instead of expending energy on being perceived as neutral, you’re better off (and your participants are better off) naming and working with the biases present--the biases we all have, and the societal pressures at large that are shaping the conversations in the room.
Neutrality Isn’t Neutral
Part of what is so appealing about “neutral” is the thought of some absolute truth, an unquestionable right or wrong. However, most of what we think of as neutral is really quite subjective, and generally just a majority opinion being masked as objective fact. First, let’s ensure we’re working from the same definition of neutral:
Neutral: absence of decided views, expression, or strong feeling (Google).
Let’s take the most neutral, least subjective truth we can muster, and break down what we’re talking about when we say neutrality isn’t neutral:
2 + 2 = 4.
No question that four being the sum of two and two is neutral, right? Well, that depends. Without questioning the factuality of the statement above, consider the following thoughts:
● Is everyone capable of determining that 2 + 2 = 4, or is there a set of beliefs or teachings necessary for one to come to that conclusion?
● Is everyone able to express why 2 + 2 = 4 in the same way, or with the same clarity?
● Will the statement 2 + 2 = 4 evoke the same feelings in everyone?
The symbols themselves are Hindu-Arabic, which are relatively widespread, and therefore may be thought of as neutral; but, as Sam learned when he was backpacking through Egypt and Jordan, in most of the shops he visited,2 + 2 =٤ (the original Arabic character for 4 looks surprisingly like a reversed Hindu-Arabic 3), which was confusing at first, to say the least. Even when folks understand the symbols of 2 and 4 the same way, asking several to express why 2 + 2 = 4 will likely get you several
answers (from “because it does” to “ugh… I don’t do math”), which brings us to the last point: math, though “objective” (“not influenced by personal feelings” [Google]), has a particularly subjective effect on people (it influences lots of personal feelings).
With those thoughts in mind, you might realize that the answers to the above three bulleted questions are all “No.” Does that mean that sum of two and two is not 4? Nope. It just means that even this “objective” case is not entirely neutral: it’s not absent of decided views, expression, or strong feeling.
Now, considering the type of content you will be facilitating learning on, it probably won’t strike you as too radical an idea to accept the following: achieving neutrality as a facilitator is impossible.
But that’s okay.
Being Open & Honest, Instead of Being “Neutral”
As we’ve discussed above, neutrality isn’t an achievable goal, and even if it were, we don’t think it would be the one we’d want to aim for. But just because neutrality isn’t possible, it doesn’t mean you can’t achieve some of the goals that neutrality espouses.
Being “neutral” (scare quotes intended) is often one of two things: (1) a person intentionally trying to present a space as open-minded and free of judgment; or (2) a person ignoring their own biases and dominant cultural biases and presenting them as objective. The latter is pernicious, and too prickly for us to get into in this book[2]. And we hope to show you that your best bet in accomplishing the first is, as counterintuitive as it seems, by being open and honest about how closed-minded and judgmental we actually are (bless our hearts).
By openly and honestly naming our biases, and the cultural biases we’ve unknowingly internalized or brought into a space, we are most able to create a space where folks are genuinely able to share their perspectives, explore difficult subjects, and be honest themselves. Here are a few tips:
● If something is politically charged, address the political charge. Most social justice topics are couched in a lot of different belief systems: political, religious, personal, and beyond. Recognizing that there are multiple perspectives from which to view any one issue allows others to be more comfortable adding theirs to the conversation.
● Allow participants to share their opinions even when (especially when) they differ from yours. You have biases about the material you’re facilitating, and so do the participants in the room. Don’t cut folks off simply because their biases are different from yours, and let them know they can share freely in the space, but...
● Recognize the goals of the learning space, and highlight them when highlighting your and others’ biases. If the goal of a training is to reduce racism, there is a clear bias against thoughts, ideas, and understandings that are rooted in or reinforce racism. Your bias as the facilitator, then, is an anti-racist one, and calling out racist bias (yours and others’) is key to achieving the goals of the training.
● Be selective about when you share your opinion or experiences. Your opinion, will often create a climate where the “neutral” is similar to you, disproportionate to other people’s sharing. Know your voice carries this weight every time you decide to weigh in.
Creating a space where people can share differing opinions, and where the judgment of others and you as the facilitator won’t impede that, is an admirable goal. It’s one we celebrate and encourage. To do this, we do not need to present a facade of neutrality with our words, but use actions to level the playing field. In the next few chapters, we will provide you with a bunch of tools that do just that. And no offense, but you’re gonna need ‘em.
How to Read a Group
“Listen and be led.”
- L.M. Heroux
When Sam first started performing stand-up comedy, someone gave him a piece of advice: good comedians aren’t the ones who know how to talk the best, but the ones who know how to listen. Sam had no idea what to do with this advice until almost a year later when he started facilitating group discussions. The best comedians and the best facilitators, in this case, have an important thing in common: they know how to read and respond to a group. And to do that, we have to know how to listen.
Let’s start with the listening, then get into how it helps with the reading.
Reading a Group Means Learning How To Listen
You may be thinking, “Are they going to tell me I need to be an active listener? [commence eye roll]” because so often any conversation about listening turns into a conversation about active listening (or the often blurry distinction between “listening” and “hearing”). If your eyes are rolling, you can safely return them to a non-rolled position. While active listening is wonderful, what we’re talking about here is less nuanced and even more important: great facilitators spend more time listening than talking.
And, for the sake of this chapter, that’s it. To read a group, the first step is to listen more and talk less.
Now, don’t get too far ahead of us. While it’s easy in theory, not talking is--for some of us more than others--a near-impossible task in practice. Nerves, good intentions, and fear of quiet can equally demolish any chance we have of listening more than talking. There are several things you can do to improve your odds of listening.
During Sam’s undergraduate experience as an orientation leader, his mentor Kelly came up with a mnemonic W.H.A.L.E. for facilitators to use while leading group discussions. Used after a facilitator asked a question of the group, the goal of W.H.A.L.E. (which stood for, if Sam’s memory serves him, Wait, Hesitate, Ask [again], Listen, then Explain) was to prevent facilitators from answering their own questions, and subsequently dominating the discussion they were there to lead. You’ll notice the first two steps in the W.H.A.L.E. acronym are “Wait” and “Hesitate.” That’s right: two parts of the five-part solution were don’t do anything.
Being silent and letting yourself pause as people think about questions or where they need to go next is a risk. It can feel intimidating, uncomfortable, and vulnerable. Sometimes a group will laugh awkwardly, look around at each other, or just stare you down. Every second can feel like an hour, and you might have a voice inside your head yelling the answer to the question you just asked, begging you to fill the void. Resist that urge, and you have a shot at reading your group.
If you are like us, and find it difficult to listen to silence, and vomit words all over your participants (ALL OF THE WORDS), here are a few pointers that will help:
1. Develop a system that works for you. What is something that can keep you from clouding the air with words? For Sam, the acronym W.H.A.L.E. helped immeasurably in the beginning. He would ask a question, then in his head recite “Wait…Hesitate…” and usually by then someone else would have broken the silence. Maybe counting works for you. Maybe you know all the words to Poe’s “The Raven” and you want recite those. Whatever. Just have something you can run through in your mind to quiet the urge to talk out loud.
2. Trust the system. This might be the only time you’ll ever see us type these words, being folks who generally don’t trust--and are actively working to subvert--systems of control. But in this case, it’s a benevolent system; this is not The Matrix. When you’re in a situation where you feel like it’s your responsibility to talk, a second of listening feels like an hour. It’s easy to throw it all away and just ramble. Hell, we still do it. Try not to. Trust the system, Neo (take the blue pill).
3. Allow others to crumble first. There aren’t many laws when it comes to groups of human beings, but there is one that has never failed us: if you don’t talk, someone else will. Sometimes you have to wait a seemingly excruciatingly long time (like two, or maybe even three whole seconds), but someone else will crumble first if you allow them to. The more you experience this happening, the more fun it becomes. Biting our tongues through awkward silences has actually become one of our favorite things--an enjoyable discomfort, like a Fear Factor challenge (only in that case, it would probably involve biting some other thing’s tongue).
When we were discussing this subject, Meg shared she has never regretted being too silent during a training she was facilitating. On the other hand, there have been a boat load of times she’s walked away from a training thinking, “Mhmm, I did too much talking there,” and that motivates her to keep quiet next time. Share the airtime.
Now That You’re Listening: Read the Group
Consider for a moment the experience of someone reading a pop-up book to you. There is so much more to a pop-up book than just the words on the page—there are movements, visuals, and the tone of the narrator. And there are also the words on the page. All of these elements blend together to tell you a more vibrant, more complete story. Now imagine the pop-up book is also a choose-your-own-adventure style book, where at different stages you, as the listener, are prompted to alter the story itself.
Reading a group of people is like having a choose-your-own-adventure pop-up book read to you. Every element--from the words on the page to the tone of the narrator--is important, and if you listen to each, you will get the most complete story of your group. Let’s clarify how these elements apply to reading a group, starting with the most obvious.
Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation Page 3
