Facilitation and me

I love facilitation. But because I didn't really choose to become a facilitator, I have not taken the time to really unpack or write down why I love it so much and what I think I bring to the table—literally.

Facilitation was kind of imposed on me over 10 years ago during social entrepreneurship events that I took part in. Because I was there (and the sister of the organizer), I was asked to volunteer to oversee groups of people looking for a new ideas through collective intelligence methods they were just discovering. On many occasions, I came to these events thinking I’d be a mere attendee but over time, it was obvious I’d need to take a more active role in each of them. It eventually just became a given that I knew what I was doing. Learn by doing, as they say.

This article is bringing an end to this “Fake it ‘til you make” façade to my approach to facilitation. It is a first attempt at narrowing down on what I value in facilitation, based on my experience of the past 10 years.

Birthing ideas

As a facilitator, I'm not there to do anything. Of course, that's an exaggeration, but the bottom line is that I'm here to make others work.

I'm here to help them get to new ideas, new projects or new processes that will allow them to take their own endeavors further. I see a parallel between that posture and what I learned during my journalism training: journalists observe groups and situations and give an analysis that will allow that same group in that same situation to gain new knowledge and inform their future interactions.

I don't necessarily have goals regarding what the groups will come up with during workshops. I facilitate through the skills I learned asking questions as a journalist. If I see causes of conflict or tension, as an interviewer or an observer, I can push them further in their thinking and hopefully get to a place they weren't expecting to go. I can chime in with the right prompts in order to turn blocked situations around so that people can think out of the box and find new avenues when their first option turns out to be impossible or too difficult. As a journalist and facilitator, my work is to ensure people can take critical look at themselves, the world and their role in it in order to figure out how they can feel empowered and contribute their best.

Creating movement

Movement breeds and nourishes ideas. The body has a way of changing your perspective. There's a reason why we say we have to get our juices. The flow of electricity in our bodies, the blood that rushes through our body and then our brains when we move have a way of upending our thought process. In our cerebral-only society, I do everything I can to include movement within my facilitation practice. It can be as simple as integrating moments where we stretch and get up, or as intricate as trying to move all together in a harmonious way. It's my choreographer touch and my dancer experience coming out.

Seriously being unserious

I grew up in an environment where people laugh hard and loud yet never shy away from complex topics and discussions about politics or philosophy. Being serious was never a dull moment – it's in that intersection that I feel most comfortable.

I'm convinced that circles where we want to reveal ourselves need to allow for all facets of our personalities to shine, from the discrete to the wild. This is where I bring my performer side in facilitation. Performers often thought of as putting on a mask. But to me, they jump into a situation without restraint with the belief that this honesty will get sympathy and support. That trust can inspire the rest of the group to jump. What results from this is a mutual sense of safety and a feeling of community. When we feel the bonds that link us to the rest of the group, that's when we can create ideas, projects and conversations that make us all grow.

That’s where facilitation can yield results that are more than the sum of the participating group’s parts.