Here are a few scenarios where co-creative questions are ideal:
● When there is a participant (or the group at large) who just doesn’t seem to be “getting” or connecting with whatever content you’re talking about. Example: “I am hearing that in your experience, men are always more into sports than women. What would it mean if there were a group of men who didn’t like sports? What would that say about them?”
● If there is pushback, or you are talking about a controversial, polarizing issue. Example: “What is the worst case scenario you can imagine if [...]? What are things we could do to prevent that from happening?”
● When you have a lot of time to explore without the promise of gaining any learning from that use of time (co-creative questions are always a risk, and often require several follow-up questions to work). Example: “I am hearing different thoughts on whether parents should have paid time away from work when their children are born. Why do you think we all have different opinions on this topic?”
Now that we know the anatomy of good questions, let’s talk about how to put them into action in your trainings. Can we call this the physiology of good questions? Why might it annoy you if we keep using more and more taxonomies to define questions? Are we still friends?
Putting Types and Categories of Questions to Work
Remember, as we said in the beginning of this chapter, the main thing that separates a good question from a bad one is how much learning it evokes. Keep the following things in mind--in addition to all that jazz we said above--when choosing your questions, and you will be able to sit back during a facilitation as your questions do all heavy lifting.
Prep
Asking good questions is not only an improv-like “in-the-moment” skill. Taking time when you’re prepping for the workshop to consider what kind of questions you should ask, how you should ask them, and what type of learning and answers you’re looking for is essential to asking good questions.
One way to do this is to write up discussion questions beforehand for each activity you’re facilitating, and then jot down a few bullet points of learning you hope these questions will lead to. That way, even if those things don’t come up from the group, you can plop them on top yourself--little cherries on the facilitation sundae.
Sequencing
The order in which you ask questions can be as important as the questions themselves. Imagine that in facilitation you are constructing a building with your group members. The answers they provide to your questions, and the learning that takes place, are the bricks; the questions are the scaffolding that allows you to build higher and higher. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up[8].
If you have heard of the debriefing technique known as the “What? So what? Now what?” you already know a little bit about sequencing questions. This technique empowers a group to define the learning that is taking place (“What?”), why it is important in their own lives (“So what?”), and then to consider how they might integrate the learning in their future life and work (“Now what?”).
Another model we’ve really found helpful to keep in mind when sequencing our questions is the experiential learning model[9]. This model has 5 stages: Experience, Share, Process, Generalize, and Apply.
Experience is the actual doing of the activity or having of the discussion. You may need questions in the actual activity as well, but these aren’t your processing questions.
Share is talking directly about the experience, reflecting on the experience of doing. “What was it like to do that activity? Did you have any thoughts or feelings you didn’t expect? How did it feel to be asked to share with a partner? How did it feel to have to step into the circle?”
Process is the next layer in, when we are starting to get at the heart of the learning goals of the activity. “What did you learn during the course of that activity you hadn’t considered? What kind of insight did you learn about yourself during this activity? Why do you think I had you step into the circle rather than stepping out? What might that represent?”
Generalize is when we start to bring the processing outside of the activity. We do this by asking questions that allow participants to start seeing the bigger picture importance of the learning they were just processing. “Where else in your life do you think that type of experience may occur? In what other areas of life could the things we were just talking about be important?"
Apply is when we get to a place where participants integrate what they are learning to specific situations, to their jobs, to their relationships, or their life. The questions you ask here will hopefully bring what is learned in the training out into the world. “How do you think this kind of insight could be incorporated into your job or into a group you’re involved with? If you had to teach someone about something you learned in this activity, how would you do it? What did you learn from this activity that will change how you interact or engage in the future?”
Execution
The way we ask the question matters too. As facilitators, much of how we do matters more than what we do, and this is true here as well. Here are some elements to keep in mind that can impact the outcome of your questions:
Tone. Tone is huge for creating those shame-free learning spaces. We want to answer questions when someone is genuinely curious about the answer, so it is important as facilitators that we clearly communicate with our tone our curiosity about the respondent's answer.
Answering first. As a facilitator, when you let folks know what you think first, some may internalize this as the “right” answer, and be less willing to share their thoughts. On the other hand, it may lower the risk and invite more people to share. This is a tricky balance. If you want your participants to be vulnerable, it helps if they know you’re willing to be vulnerable as well (and modeling this can break the ice); but reserving your opinion until the group has responded will help prevent you from swaying their thoughts too much.
The “awkward” silence. Silence is important ingredient in facilitation. It affords time for folks to internally process the question, to build up the courage to talk, and it can be a welcome and needed pause in the flow of the workshop--a breath of fresh air. If you’re asking complex questions, reflective questions, then folks are going to need time to think through them. All of this creates moments of silence in the room. That’s okay! Silence feels different for different people, but it is almost always necessary for good questions to grow into great questions. If you, as the facilitator, are uncomfortable with silence, it will likely feel awkward for everyone in the room. If you embrace the silence, you’re opening the door for others to do so as well.
Asking for Forgiveness and Permission
What we’ve laid out above is meant to serve as a road map. Questions are (without question) the most important vehicle in which you can facilitate a group from point A to point B. And like all road maps, sometimes they can get you exactly where you need to go, and sometimes you read them wrong and they get you lost. This couldn’t be more true than with asking questions.
There will be times when a question you ask takes a group from point A to being even more stubbornly at point A; or when you ask a question hoping for B and you end up lost in X, Y, and Z; or--the thing many of us dread the most--when you get a group to point B (Yay! Go you! You’re awesome!) then ask a question that undermines what the group learned, and you all find yourselves back at A (Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.).
Questions are risky. Facilitation is risky. As we discussed before, the temptation to lecture comes from wanting to have full control. With more control there is less risk.
There’s this phrase that amuses Sam[10]: “It’s better to ask for forgiveness later than permission now,” meaning do what you want (even if you might have not gotten a “Thumbs up!”), then apologize after. By choosing to facilitate learning, instead of lecturing or teaching, we are, in a way, asking our group for permission now to ask for forgiveness later. We’re asking their permission to involve them in the learning
every time we ask them a question; then, when things don’t go exactly as we had in mind (as they never will--not exactly), we ask for forgiveness as we redirect. And this continues throughout the experience.
Facilitation is inviting the participants to contribute to the learning with every question we ask, while accepting responsibility for the learning (so we can build on it) and lack of learning (so we can refocus) that’s already happened. It’s going in knowing that we’re going to fail, but hoping that we can fail forward together.
And with great risk comes great reward. The reward of asking good questions is seeing a light go on in a person’s eyes, and the feeling in your gut that they get something important that comes with it. It’s a brighter light than you’ve ever seen when you taught someone something, because through asking the perfect question, we’ve enabled them to teach it to themselves. It’s learning we know will stick, and that they will carry with them into their life. Our goal was to get them from point A to point B, and the best questions will leave them walking eagerly on their own through B toward point C.
Safe Space for Vulnerability
“Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.”
– Brene Brown
On one side of the stage, high above the crowd, a trapeze artist chalks his hands, pats them on his legs, then grips the bar. He takes a small breath, shakes off his fear, and steps off of his platform--after a moment’s fall, he swings. Swooping toward the ground, then toward the sky, he releases his grip and throws his body into a spin. Suspended in the air, for an instant he’s weightless, but gravity soon takes its grip and he begins to plummet.
A few moments earlier, another artist on the other side of the stage, having chalked her hands and cleared her mind, recentering herself, she inverts on the trapeze; and hanging from her knees high above the stage, she takes her leap. Now, she is swooping in a large precious arc toward the first artist, who is in a free fall toward the stage. She reaches out, locks arms--his life is literally in her hands -- and safely swings them back to her platform.
The crowd erupts in applause. Most of the audience are rapt in awe and disbelief--unsure of how either artist was capable of what they did, or everything it took for them to succeed in their feat--but a few spectators are looking up at them, high on their platform, thinking, “I’d like to take that leap.”
The first artist is the embodiment of vulnerability: throwing himself into the air, uncertain of his safety; trusting that this risk won’t result in his undoing, he surrendered himself entirely into the hands of another.
The second artist is the embodiment of courageous compassion: planning to catch before the other needed it; having already made the decision to do everything she could to catch him, no matter how twisted or turned he became in his leap; and inverting herself, shouldering a different kind of risk to ensure the connection.
In this chapter, we discuss the complementary pair of traits that are vulnerability and courageous compassion, two things that combine to foster risks without regrets, leaps without deadly falls.
This complementary pair is necessary get the most out of all the concepts that follow this chapter (the prestige of this book), and in order to succeed in this feat, you’ll need to draw on all the lessons you’ve learned in the chapters that came before it (our pledge). This is the turn. Pay close attention, or you might miss it.
[Re-] Introducing Vulnerability
Vulnerable is generally thought of as being susceptible to emotional, physical, or psychological harm. Vulnerability, in this understanding of the term, is generally unavoidable (you can never absolutely protect yourself from all harm) and simultaneously something to be avoided at all costs (most people do not seek out harm). Vulnerability gets a bad rap. In the context of this book, we’d like you to meet a different connotation of the word.
In this book, the word vulnerability means making oneself susceptible to emotional, physical, or psychological harm. In this way, vulnerability is as much of an action as it is a mindset. It’s a decision. It’s a process. And, above all, it’s something we see as desirable, healthy, and even necessary for fostering connection and powerful learning.
Our understanding and celebration of vulnerability comes from Dr. Brené Brown, whose research has informed our facilitation work as much as it has our lives in general[11]. It was through her work that we further solidified our beliefs that vulnerability isn’t something to be avoided, but something to be embraced, both for us as facilitators, and also for the participants in our trainings.
What does vulnerability look like?
The analogy that we used at the opening of this chapter demonstrates a physical display of vulnerability, and also a particularly loud one, but vulnerability takes on many forms and volumes. Sometimes it’s physical, but for many of us it’s more often opening oneself up to emotional or psychological pain. Sometimes vulnerability is subtle, tiny, and almost invisible. What feels vulnerable for one person may not feel vulnerable for another, and there may be no one act, decision, or mindset, that is universally vulnerable. But to paint it with a broad brush, vulnerability looks like risk.
Vulnerability is someone letting their guard down. It’s opening the drawbridge to the castle when you feel there is an enemy is at the gates, and asking them kindly not to storm in. Vulnerability is someone stepping outside of their comfort zone. It’s playing a game when you’re not sure you can win. Vulnerability often feels like displaying weakness when you want to be displaying strength.
In facilitation settings, vulnerability takes a few common forms:
● Saying “I don’t know”--as a facilitator, who feels pressured to be seen as an expert; or as a participant, who is afraid to acknowledge they have room to grow.
● Engaging in an activity, discussion, or process without a clear assurance of where it will go--as a facilitator, for whom this is new territory; or as a participant, who has to trust the facilitator to be their guide.
● Sharing a perspective that is personal, meaningful, unpopular, or otherwise scary--as a facilitator, who may lose the group’s trust or respect; or as a participant, who may be mocked, attacked, ignored, or worse.
What does vulnerability feel like?
The process of vulnerability is uncomfortable. There’s a phrase we use a lot in conversations about complex social issues (like oppression, or identity) that goes, “If you’re comfortable, you’re not engaged in the conversation.” This is because to fully engage in a controversial conversation is an act of vulnerability, and the discomfort that comes with it is generally palpable. We feel it in the pits of our stomachs, in our quickening heart rates, the sweating of our palms, the anxious tapping of our feet, the clenching of our jaws and tensing of our shoulders.
Sometimes the process of vulnerability brings about a fight or flight response in our minds. We feel threatened, and in turn see options of “threaten back” or “retreat.” Things move quickly--too quickly--and we don’t have time to think them through. Risks get highlighted, magnified to an overwhelming scale, and are sometimes all our mind is able to identify.
And sometimes the process of vulnerability evokes an intense emotional response. From fiery anger to profound sadness, the range is wide and the experience is often one that feels decidedly irrational. Part of us knows I shouldn’t be feeling this (e.g., “Why am I crying? All I did was tell the group how grateful I am to be here...”) while another part of us knows I should absolutely be feeling this (“Of course I’m crying. I just told the group how grateful I am to be here!”).
We’re using this phrase “the process of vulnerability” because all of the above might happen at any point in a series of moments: when you’re considering a vulnerable action, when you’re acting vulnerably, or after you’ve acted.
Why is vulnerability important for facilitation?
After reading the above section, you might be remembering back to our phrase “celebration of vulnerability” and thinking, “Please don’t invite
me to a Meg and Sam party.” Yeah, yeah, we know. Sweaty palms isn’t an easy sell, and if we somehow didn’t hook you with the allure of irrational sobbing, then give us one more shot.
Let’s revisit what we highlighted as common forms of vulnerability that present themselves during facilitation, and see if we can get you all aboard the S. S. Expose Yourself[12].
Vulnerability is saying “I don’t know.” We don’t know about you, but for us it’s hard to imagine learning happening in a setting where people are unable to confess a lack of learning. Further, when we do a side-by-side comparison of “sweaty palms” and “giving inaccurate information that may damage someone’s career or cause serious and irreversible harm because of winging an answer someone felt unable to not answer” we see an obvious, sweaty winner.
Vulnerability is engaging in an activity, discussion, or process without a clear assurance of where it will go. If you recall back to previous chapters, you’ll remember that facilitation (compared to teaching or lecturing) requires us to let go of individual control. We might end up sobbing uncontrollably, or we might end up asking the perfect question that opens a floodgate of learning, and sometimes we’ll do both of those things at the same time.
Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation Page 7
