Number 47: The Art and Philosophy of Facilitating.
November 19, 2012
"What colour hat do you wear?"
Being a good facilitator means you guide and assist people to get to good conclusions. You do not push your ideas or “lead the witness” as they do in the courtroom on the current hit show, The Good Wife. You can probe to get to the heart of the issue but not dominate the actual discussion. Your job is to bring the best out of the people you are facilitating.
I believe it is important to have a philosophy about people and their opinions if you are the person charged with facilitating a good dialogue. Here is mine: All ideas lead us somewhere and everybody contributes to a good outcome. Believing that even the most negative person gets you somewhere takes time to absorb. You might recall Dr. Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats concept. He had this whole system of brainstorming that made sure you looked at your topic from all angles and one of the hats was Black for the contrarian viewpoint or devil’s advocate. Here are all the hats he used:
Information (White): Considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
Emotions (Red): Instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification).
Bad points judgment (Black): Logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch.
Good points judgment (Yellow): Logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony.
Creativity (Green): Statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes.
Thinking (Blue): Thinking about thinking.
People would actually put hats on to brainstorm this way. Ah, the ’80s. We did love fads in the boardroom. I still like the thinking behind this one but don’t get me going on the use of Plasticine. For those under 40, that was like Play-Doh and was used to stimulate creative thinking at one time. Ugh.
When I am in sessions I sometimes think of de Bono’s hats as people put forward ideas. All of them help us get somewhere. Everyone has elements of each hat but there will be people who personify a thinking type. I like them all. Getting them to all play together effectively is the challenge. Too much of one or the other can be drudgery, so the facilitator’s job is to know when to move on. Giving the group power to make those decisions helps too. It does not all rest on the facilitator to keep moving forward. The facilitator recognizes that the meeting belongs to everyone and they all must own the outcome.
The black hatters often raise good points and a facilitator can cut through tone and gruffness to rephrase their point so others hear it and help the negative person start to participate in ways that work better.
1. What is the overall objective?
2. What else do you need to know about the people or subject before the meeting?
3. What rules will you establish at the beginning?
4. Does the group know and agree upon the purpose of the meeting?
5. How will you structure the meeting and how much time will be needed?
6. How are you going to draw out ideas from people? (More on that in my next post, Getting to the Crux)
7. “What if.” Thinking through all possible problems/objections and how you will deal with them.
8. How will you manage the pace of the meeting?
9. How will you make sure the session is working?
10. How will you know when to stop?
That should be plenty to think about until next week. Perhaps you can even put into practice these questions before you meet with a group and let me know how it goes. What other questions would you add to that list?
I was participating in an academic committee once that did a lot of navel gazing and not much in the way of action. Initially, I was frustrated because I am a doer. Then, I started to relax and listen more closely and realized I was in a room full of blue hats — they were thinking about thinking. Brilliant minds that needed lots of noodling time and eventually they started to make progress. Coming from an industry built around insane deadlines, I would be aghast when they would talk about doing something in six or eight months. When I reflect on the work of that committee I realize why their process was so long and involved — the implications of their recommendations were deep and far-reaching. In that peer-review type of world there is a need to cross every “t” and dot every “i.” The critics can destroy your work in a nanosecond. I facilitate a lot of academic groups now and have grown to fully appreciate their thinking processes; it is what makes them good at their work.
Part of my attraction to the facilitating world is the never-ending study of people and how they communicate. There are enormous differences among professions. Some groups are incredibly granular, wanting to poke and prod through the minutest details; others are all about the big picture and could not care less how something gets done while some want to focus on the bottom line.
If you are in a position to facilitate anything — a parent/teacher meeting, a staff session, a family discussion, a controversial subject among friends — you need to start with a positive philosophy about the people, before you even begin to strategize the “how.”
The “how” of staging your facilitation or the art of facilitating comes from the difference between content and process. An old business associate of mine would brainstorm all his ideas before a session, walk in and present them, discouraging everyone from putting forward a thought. So here are my top 10 questions you might consider before embarking on facilitating anything:
1. What is the overall objective?
2. What else do you need to know about the people or subject before the meeting?
3. What rules will you establish at the beginning?
4. Does the group know and agree upon the purpose of the meeting?
5. How will you structure the meeting and how much time will be needed?
6. How are you going to draw out ideas from people? (More on that in my next post, Getting to the Crux)
7. “What if.” Thinking through all possible problems/objections and how you will deal with them.
8. How will you manage the pace of the meeting?
9. How will you make sure the session is working?
10. How will you know when to stop?
That should be plenty to think about until next week. Perhaps you can even put into practice these questions before you meet with a group and let me know how it goes. What other questions would you add to that list?
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