First, we must stop vilifying ignorance, and instead, see it as the ideal place from which to learn. Most of us are ignorant about most things in the world. We haven’t had the opportunity to learn, or we were too busy, exhausted, or distracted to learn. Either way, it’s okay that we don’t know something, and the last thing we should be doing is making others feel ashamed for not knowing something[25].
It takes a lot of vulnerability to acknowledge our own ignorance, and often it takes a level of courageous compassion to affirm someone else’s. These are things that often prevent us from being willing to celebrate ignorance as a starting place for learning.
Embrace “I don’t know.” If you want your participants to feel comfortable admitting ignorance, you need to be comfortable doing so yourself. And it’s not just this phrase, but many other similar ones that can create a space where folks are willing to admit to something they might see as a deficiency. “I’m not sure,” is another good one to start sentences with, if you’re willing to give it an educated guess. And so is “It took me awhile to figure this out, but…” and other similar phrases that help highlight your own journey in experting.
The fear response to not knowing the answer to a question is often to make something up. We do this because we don’t want to lose prestige, or fall from the “expert” status we were granted or felt we had to occupy by being a trainer. Holding onto this title, especially when we feel like we’re deceiving others, can be exhausting and stressful, even though sometimes we feel like it’s necessary. But tricking others into thinking you’re an expert by not saying “I don’t know” when you don’t know is not helping anything. (And neither is the fear that’s forcing you to keep up the charade[26].)
Get excited about opportunities to learn. When we say “I don’t know,” there are a bunch of different reactions we often go through. Sometimes we feel guilty or apologetic (because we thought we should know), or even ashamed (because we’re a bad person for not knowing). Once you’ve stopped vilifying ignorance (internally and externally), and begun embracing everything “I don’t know,” we hope you’ll move toward a more positive reaction.
We see “I don’t know” as a launching off point for genuine excitement to learn something. As facilitators who often facilitate similar types of conversations, not knowing something is wonderful: it allows you to be entirely selfish, ask questions for the sole purpose of satisfying your own curiosity, and all the while the rest of the group is also learning. Actually, they’re learning two things: whatever it is you’re learning, and also that it’s okay to be that excited to learn.
Work in Progress
As you’ve read this book, regardless of your knowledge, experience, or previous interest in facilitation, we hope you’ve been introduced to at least one idea that was entirely new. In writing this book, we’ve learned dozens of things. As the book comes to a conclusion, we hope to leave you with more excitement than comfort, more questions than answers, and with more uncertainty than certainty. Our goal with a lot of this book has been just that: presenting things you thought were clear, muddying them up, then giving you a path toward re-clarifying them in a more holistic way. If we can get you to say “I’m not certain I’m ever certain,” then we consider that to be a win, but there is one thing we want you to be certain of:
You can be a wonderful, powerful, inspirational person and have room to grow.
We are all works in progress. Sharing the products of our growth, knowledge, and learning is wonderful. Hopefully, the concepts in this book will help you do just that. And being open about where we still have room to grow, what we don’t know, and what we haven’t yet learned is also wonderful.
Allow yourself to connect with the humanity of being imperfect. It will brighten your spirits, open your eyes to the path ahead, and release you of unhelpful burdens. It will also allow you to connect with your participants with more authenticity, empathy, and sincerity. And it will always keep you in touch with your “beginner's mind,” something that will keep you in the moment more than anything else discussed in this book--and can always be counted on to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Conclusion
“It's important to remember that we all have magic inside us.”
– J.K. Rowling
Coming to our mind right now are the countless times we’ve looked up at the clock during a training, noticed we only had a minute remaining, and thought, “Wrap up? But we’ve only just gotten started.” Because we really have only just gotten started.
There are still a million Important Things we feel compelled to share with you, but we know we only have a minute left, so we want to leave you with just one more:
We’ve learned as much from writing this book as you have from reading it.
Throughout the year that this book went from a raw idea to a refined manuscript, we have been constantly challenged.
We’ve been challenged to hold ourselves accountable to these concepts, both in our facilitation at large and in the facilitation of co-authoring this book itself. Writing these things down makes it ever more apparent when we fail to live them out (e.g., When we accidentally shut someone down with a “but;” or don’t meet their vulnerability with courageous compassion, and witness them crashing down to Earth).
We’ve been challenged to prioritize and reprioritize what’s important -- and really what’s necessary -- for facilitators to know in order to be effective facilitators. Because, in our guts, we know that everything you have at your disposal is necessary for effective facilitation. When we interview other facilitators, the list of requisite traits that come up are as diverse and numerous as there are facilitators in the world. So, who are we to say these eleven trump any of those infinite others?
We’ve been challenged to be okay with giving you something, even if we feel that something is incomplete -- we’ve had to convince and re-convince ourselves that an imperfect something is better than a perfect nothing. We were constantly resisting the urge to write more -- more examples, more anecdotes, more explanations -- in order to write just enough. Enough that it pushed, but didn’t overwhelm. Enough that it elucidated, but didn’t convolute. Enough that after you read it, you felt like it was worth your time, but not too much that you didn’t think you had the time to read it.
And in all of these challenges, we see a common thread: we are resistant to acknowledge our imperfections, or present something that is imperfect, because we so much want to do right by you, our reader.
As facilitators, despite our best intentions, we will always end up falling short, in some way or another. We’ll get in the way of our participants’ learning. We’ll speak too hastily, or add too much. We hurt when we’re trying to heal. We generate confusion when we’re trying to find clarity. And for those of us who, in stepping into the role of facilitator, place upon our shoulders a mantle of unconditional responsibility, these shortcomings can keep us from acknowledging the good we’ve done.
Sure, you understand that facilitation is a nuanced skill, and that like all nuanced skills there is no one right way to do it, everyone approaches it differently, and the only way to master it is through practice -- hundreds of hours of practice.
And you also know the difference between facilitation, teaching, and lecturing, and know that all three have merits. No one of the three is universally better than the other two, but deciding which engagement style to use is about agency and participation.
You’ve seen through the fallacy of neutrality. And you can name your bias in a way that will create a more open space for everyone to learn. Knowing if you’re doing this well requires that you know how to read your group -- how to listen to what they’re saying, in all the ways they say things to you -- and what to do with that information, something you’re now familiar with.
You can add to participants realities with “And,” instead of demolishing them with “But.” Like the masters of improv, you can use the “Yes, And…” rule to do so.
There are now doz
ens of different types of questions up your sleeves, and you know that how you say the words matters as much as the words you use to do so. In no situation is this subtlety more important than in trying to create a space where people can safely learn from vulnerability. And you know that it will take courageous compassion on your behalf to hold that space.
Yeah, you can now see the exit signs to navigate triggers, and a comfort in inviting emotions into a training, and learning from those emotions.
And, finally, you know that you don’t need to be perfect, but instead that you should be modeling your imperfection. It’s okay to reveal areas where you still have room to grow, and in doing so you will make others more willing to do the same.
But we still feel like there’s so much we have yet to cover.
So here, in conclusion, we will provide you with a final piece of comfort in the form of solidarity: we are not experts, we are not perfect, we are works in progress, and we are on this journey together.
Acknowledgments
We want to thank, first, all of the participants in our trainings who, over the years, have been unknowing guinea pigs in the creation of this book. We learn so much from our participants, and it’s you who keep us motivated in this work.
We also owe more than we could name to the facilitators, educators, researchers, and writers mentioned throughout the text and footnotes of this book. As much as this book couldn’t exist without the participants who allowed us to facilitate, we not have been able to continue improving our facilitation techniques without the wisdom of those thinkers and sharers.
A huge “Thank you!” to Alice for jumping in on the copyediting process on this book when we needed you, and for coping with our singular “they.”
Following, we’re going to break from “we” speak and take a personal moment to thank the people who, in our individual lives, had an impact on this book.
Sam’s Thanks
Andrew was the person who taught me my first facilitation magic trick, and many more after that. He was the first person who, in any sort of a formal capacity, provided me with explanations to how facilitation worked, pointers for doing it better, and techniques to use in different situations. Maggie first taught me about co-facilitation, as my co-facilitator and buddy. Kelly taught me about facilitating amongst differing power dynamics in a group, and how to listen. The names could go on and on, but what I’d rather say, I suppose, is that I first learned how to facilitate as an orientation leader at Purdue, and lessons from that period of my life are threaded throughout this book, and everything I do today. In that light, thanks to everyone who knows what BGR means.
After that, the list quickly gets massive and disparate. I owe so much of my facilitation skill set to so many different folks, from comedians who helped me find my voice on stage; to my professors in grad school who helped me think more intentionally about others’ learning, development, and growth; to my sex ed colleagues who continue to push me pedagogically.
Someone in my life who asks for so little acknowledgment, but is responsible for so much of what I manage to create (this book being no exception), is my manager Chaminda. Chum, thank you for showing me a whole different side of facilitation, for facilitating so many of my projects, and for being such a positive influence in my life.
Someone who encourages me to create, and also to find calm, is my partner Jessica. Thank you, Love, for putting up with all of my projects, and making Austin home.
And a big ol’ THANKS to Meg, for co-authoring this book, holding space for the meta in all of our conversations, and being a constant source of healthy challenge and unequivocal support.
Meg’s Thanks
I have always found writing to be a challenge. From bad teenage poetry, to blog posts to book chapters… it has been a battle. As an astute teacher once said to me, “Meg, you’re all forest, but there are trees.” The fact that you’re reading a book with my name on it truly blows me away and I am deeply humbled. For this and many other reasons, my first and foremost heartfelt thanks go out to my co-author, business buddy, and friend, Sam. Without him -- his gifts of creativity, persistence, support, and his way with words -- this book would not have happened. Sam, thanks for helping me become a better writer. Thanks for being who you are and doing what you do in all the ways that you do it. For being willing to dive into this new adventure that is co-writing head first, and co-creating this book together. Thanks for inviting me on this (and many other) journey with you.
I love facilitation. And there are so many people who have been involved in encouraging me, supporting me, and believing in me as a facilitator and educator. Andrew, thanks for being the first to tell me to keep doing it and all that have believed in me every day since. It is a true gift to get to do what you love and love what you do. There is no shortage of people and communities that have had my back, but I do want to take a moment to highlight a few. Thank you all for helping me get to this point, arrive at many of these thoughts, and find my voice to share them.
The AEE Community - Amanda & Brit - Andrew Jillings - Arianne - Ava - Caitlin - Christina - CSPeeps - D-L Stewart - Ellen Broido - Hamilton College & Rainbow Alliance - Heather & robbie - ICWES Womyn - Intern Ted - Jane - Liane - Linh Nguyen - Lisa Magnarelli - Lula - Mom, Dad, Claire, Steve, Brian & Carolyne - Preetha - Ryn - Sakhile - SJTI facilitators - Travis Hill - Trey Boynton - Yvonne Zylan
You are all part of the community that has shaped my world and left a lasting impression on me as a human, an educator, and as a facilitator. Thank you all for the gifts and words of encouragement, belief, and wisdom you have shared with me. I truly couldn’t have done it without you.
And to all the coffee shops, libraries, and friend’s living rooms I sat in while writing, editing, and drafting this book -- thank you! Thanks for keeping me warm, full, and for your lack of judgment in my lack of coffee drinking. I’ve appreciated sharing many moments with you.
About the Authors
Sam Killermann is a comedian and social justice facilitator who got his start in university orientation and first-year programs. His primary role in life now is as Director of Creativity for hues, a global justice collective, in which he writes, performs, speaks, and makes things. Sam is the co-creator of TheSafeZoneProject.com, where his favorite way to spend time is training facilitators, and he’s the author of A Guide to Gender, which opened as a best-seller in gender on Amazon. Sam earned his bachelor’s from Purdue and master’s from Bowling Green, and enjoys riding his bicycle around sunny Austin, TX, where he counts himself lucky to live.
Meg Bolger is an social entrepreneur and facilitator passionate about the process of engaging in social justice work. She founded Pride for All, an organization that creates projects and services focused on sparking social justice conversations. She's the co-creator of TheSafeZoneProject.com, where she enjoys helping folks create sustainable gender and sexuality education programs. Meg graduated from Hamilton College with a B.A. and Bowling Green State University with a M.A. She enjoys flying around the U.S. to helping schools and organizations develop facilitators, all while getting asked if she's old enough to sit in the exit row.
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[1] Imagine oppression being a classic rock band. They’re always turning out new stuff, but nobody goes to the concert to hear it. It’s impossible to top the hits. And this guy played them all: the “colorblind” approach to oppression (“I don’t see difference”), the “it’s not a big deal” (to a person with the dominant group identities), the “straight pride parade” argument (a reprisal of the “White history month” Billboard Hit), and the forever-chart-topper “reverse discrimination” jam session.
[2] If it’s something you want to dive into, we are working on A Guide to Facilitation: The Social Justice Advocate’s Handbook, which has an entire section dedicated to this. And in the meantime, we have some resources on the official website for this book that might tide you over.
[3] Conjunction Junction, what’s your function? I’ve got two real choi
ces, and one will get me far: Protect participants’ realities, or destroy and leave them scarred.
[4] A distinctly robotic glee. Sam has a background in improv comedy, and often wonders if there is some Zoolander-esque brainwashing that improvisers experience, where the asking about the “Yes, And…” Rule is the trigger (as opposed to Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s song “Relax”), and they just start reciting what they were programmed to say (as opposed to “killing the Prime Minister of Malaysia!”). It’s our hope that this analogy never becomes more direct, and we learn comedians are secretly brainwashed assassins. But go ahead--try asking an improviser about the rule yourself, if you don’t believe us. Just be ready to live with the consequences.
[5] Something we can’t do in a live discussion: cite our source. For those curious, many studies show that abstinence-only education does nothing to lower the rate of teen pregnancies or delay teenage sexual activity, and a federally-funded survey of these sex education policies has shown that they may make teens more resistant to using contraceptives when they do become sexually active: http://bit.ly/UTMaose
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