The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation: Best Practices from the Leading Organization in Facilitation

By Sandy Schuman

Sponsored by the International Association of Facilitators, The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation offers the need-to-know basics in the field brought together by fifty leading practitioners and scholars. This indispensable resource includes successful strategies and methods, foundations, and resources for anyone who works with groups. The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation provides an overview of the field for new and aspiring practitioners and a reliable reference for experienced group facilitators, including chapters on 

• Creating positive ongoing client relationships
• Building trust and improving communications
• Facilitating group brainstorming sessions
• Drawing out the best in people
• Developing a collaborative environment
• Designing and facilitating dialogue
• Managing conflicting agendas
• Working with multicultural groups
• Using improvisation
• Understanding virtual meetings
• Facilitating team start-up
• Assessing group decision processes
•   Building expertise in facilitation
• Reviewing core facilitation competencies
• Modeling positive professional attitudes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jun 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781118429648

Book preview

Part One

Create Collaborative Client Relationships

1. Develop working partnerships.

Clarifies mutual commitment

Develops consensus on tasks, deliverables, roles, and responsibilities

Demonstrates collaborative values and processes such as in cofacilitation

2. Design and customize applications to meet client needs.

Analyzes organizational environment

Diagnoses client need

Creates appropriate designs to achieve intended outcomes

Predefines a quality product and outcomes with client

3. Manage multisession events effectively.

Contracts with client for scope and deliverables

Develops event plan

Delivers event successfully

Assesses or evaluates client satisfaction at all stages of the event or project

Chapter One

The Big Picture

Creating an Ongoing Client Relationship

Nadine Bell

Susan Nurre

We received a call from Judith, an information technology (IT) executive in search of facilitation training for her team of project managers. We explored in general terms what she was seeking and arranged a meeting to talk in more detail about her needs.

Arriving at the meeting prepared with materials and questions, we began our discussion with the specifics of the requested facilitation class. We then asked Judith how her team would use the facilitation tools that we would be teaching and what problems she hoped these skills would address. During our meeting, Judith and we exchanged ideas, experiences, and methodologies as we established rapport and began to build a foundation of credibility and trust. It became clear through the interview that besides general facilitation, Judith wanted her team to learn how to apply those skills to specific IT sessions.

When we asked about our competition, we learned that we knew both of the other candidates since we were all part of the local facilitator network. We told Judith that although we wanted her to choose us, she would not go wrong with any of her choices.

Later that afternoon, Judith called requesting some information on mind mapping. We quickly pulled together and e-mailed some resources, then followed up with a telephone call.

We delivered our proposal to her within a few days, recommending two classes and follow-on coaching for maximum success. Shortly after, she accepted our proposal, and we delivered the classes. Two weeks later, we met with Judith to debrief the classes, review the evaluations, and discuss next steps.

At a celebratory dinner, Judith shared that she had received many positive comments about the training. She had told a number of people, both inside and outside the company, that she thought our training would be of great benefit to them. Judith also recommended opportunities to showcase our services, such as speaking at the local Project Management Institute meetings. During the course of the conversation, we also explored her current challenges. We brainstormed a variety of solutions, identified where we could provide assistance, and recommended other resources for services that were beyond our expertise.

At a subsequent luncheon meeting, we agreed that our interactions were so rich that we wanted to take our collaboration to a new level. We discussed submitting a proposal to deliver a joint session on facilitation and project management at the 2004 IAF conference.

Since that time, Judith has referred colleagues to us and asked us to submit another proposal for both a repeat of the course we delivered and two additional courses.

As we continue to keep in touch with follow-up telephone calls, e-mail, and occasional lunches, we offer Judith assistance in defining issues and brainstorming solutions. We also serve as a sounding board for her ideas and make referrals to resources to meet her specific needs. When other managers ask her for assistance with their challenges, she does not hesitate to recommend us because our continued, productive contacts have kept our name and services fresh in her mind.

CREATING THE BIG PICTURE

Developing a relationship with clients based on trust and collaboration goes beyond working with them to prepare for a single workshop or series of sessions. The skills we use to design and facilitate sessions—clarifying mutual commitment, customizing the session to meet the client’s needs, emphasizing collaborative values and processes, deciding which participants to include, and reaching understanding on scope, deliverables, roles, and responsibilities—do not merely result in successful sessions.

We use these same skills to establish rapport, credibility, and trust with our clients as we help them look beyond the current engagement to the big picture in which they define their problems from a comprehensive organizational point of view. It is through this process that we establish mutually beneficial partnerships that provide our clients with a trusted adviser to help them define their problems, explore possible solutions, and refer to appropriate resources (books, courses, and other people). These partnerships provide us a source of repeat business as well as positive referrals to other potential clients.

As we use our facilitation skills to help our clients broaden their view and fit their immediate needs into their Big Picture, we make it a point to:

Be prepared.

Interview effectively.

Gain trust.

Practice empathetic listening.

Invest in quality.

Communicate intentionally.

Think about clients.

Understand needs.

Recognize challenges.

Evaluate satisfaction.

BE PREPARED

Preparation is the backbone of our facilitation. (See Chapter Four.) The preparation we do at the front end of a facilitation session—understanding the objectives, interviewing the client and participants, crafting sample deliverables, and designing a suitable agenda—lays the foundation necessary to achieve the desired results.

That same focus on preparation is important in managing client relationships and helping clients to see their challenges within the context of the Big Picture. Being prepared for client interactions before and after the session is as important to creating an ongoing client relationship as being prepared for all that we do during the session. Being prepared builds trust, nurtures the client relationship, and develops clients’ confidence in our ability to meet their needs.

As we prepare for each interaction with our clients, we determine the objective of the client meeting and design a suitable agenda for accomplishing the objective. For some of our interactions, we may conduct research on the Web, review periodicals, read company materials, and talk with others in order to learn about their company and industry; identify legislative, economic, and environmental issues affecting their business; and become aware of what their competitors are doing.

Just as preparation pays off in a facilitated session, there are many dividends to the preparation we do to nurture client relationships. The better prepared we are, the easier it is to ensure that we achieve the objectives we set for our client relationships: ongoing partnership, additional work, and positive referrals.

INTERVIEW EFFECTIVELY

When we ask facilitators what their most versatile tool is when facilitating a session, they often answer, Questions. We ask questions of potential clients to obtain the information we use to determine whether to accept an assignment and, if we do accept it, how to proceed. During the session, we ask questions to get information, clarify what was said, elicit more detail, and determine if we have consensus.

Well-phrased questions assist clients to identify issues, concerns, and goals that are broader than our current assignment. By taking a Big Picture view, we encourage clients to explore both the scope of a single engagement and the way it fits into the organization’s initiatives for the year. In addition, questions are excellent tools to learn about circumstances that currently exist elsewhere in the company and explore in what other ways we may be of service.

We have found that using the journalist’s questions—who, what, when, where, and how—is the most effective way to help clients identify issues because these questions provide data with which we can work. We tend not to ask why questions because they are likely to put people on the defensive and often produce one of two nonproductive answers: I don’t know or Because.

We ask questions to determine what is in place to support the successful integration of the product of the session. Questions that explore obstacles to success, bottlenecks, and emerging problems reveal information that will assist us in maximizing the results of the session and surface additional areas in which our services can provide valued assistance.

Questions designed to explore the likely impact of industry trends and practices on our client expand the perspective to the Big Picture. Through our questions, we can discern if it is important to the client to be on the cutting edge in his or her industry, what it would take to achieve that end, and how we might assist in reaching that goal. By enlarging our clients’ perspective to the industry as a whole, we help them to anticipate and plan rather than react.

Many of the same questions that we use to ask clients about a specific engagement can be broadened to help them focus on the Big Picture. Examples of Big Picture questions include:

What are the key issues and problems with which your company is dealing?

How do these affect your department?

Who are the stakeholders outside your department who are affected?

How will the resolution of these issues affect other teams, departments, and divisions in your company?

What are your competitors doing regarding these issues?

What is a trend in your industry that you believe will affect your company? When did it emerge?

What areas need improvement to stay abreast of the developments in your industry?

A good resource for session-related questions that could be broadened into Big Picture questions is The Skilled Facilitator (Schwarz, 2002). Schwarz identifies four areas—process, structure, organizational context, and behaviors—for which he has developed a series of questions to help diagnose the client’s issues and determine whether to work together. For the Big Picture, we can identify which of Schwarz’s questions are appropriate for the particular client’s situation and broaden their perspective beyond asking about a specific engagement. Asking about a session, Schwarz uses the question, In what ways does the organization help or hinder the group? (p. 279). The Big Picture question, What is it about our organizational culture that has a negative impact on our people and puts them at risk? could help a floor covering company focus on what is happening within the entire company that results in the manager of every one of their stores suffering a heart attack.

Whether exploring a single engagement or managing a productive client relationship, effective questions assist us in putting clients in touch with information we can use to support them in achieving their objectives.

GAIN TRUST

In our facilitated sessions, we strive to build trust in order to maximize the people, the process, and the product. (See Chapter Six.) Trust creates a safe environment that enables the participants to open up and share freely without criticism. We build trust by providing operating agreements on communication, respect, and confidentiality, as well as using inclusive techniques to encourage broad participation.

When we have created a relationship that is built on trust, clients are more willing to explore their problems and challenges with us as we address their Big Picture.

We establish our trustworthiness by demonstrating reliability, interacting openly, being authentic, respecting confidentiality, honoring our commitments, and operating with our clients’ best interests in mind.

When we share highlights of similar engagements, we demonstrate a successful track record and build credibility. Additional ways to build trust and show clients that we value them and their time include these:

Maintain regular contact during all assignments with frank and periodic communications on progress.

Return calls and e-mails promptly.

Be punctual for meetings and telephone calls.

Meet without interruptions from our cell phones and pagers.

While it takes time to build our clients’ trust, it can be destroyed very quickly. If we find that we have made a mistake, cannot meet a deadline, or have a problem in fulfilling a commitment, we do not ignore it. We have an honest and timely discussion on how we will remedy the situation.

Trust grows as we demonstrate our commitment to the client’s success in ways that do not benefit us financially, such as suggesting an alternative to a facilitated session or recommending another consultant for a particular service we do not offer. Although it might seem as if we are losing the work, we are actually strengthening our client relationship and potentially setting ourselves up for future opportunities.

In the Big Picture, when both the client and the facilitator bring trust, shared respect, and understanding to the table, a long and mutually beneficial relationship will result.

PRACTICE EMPATHETIC LISTENING

When we are facilitating, we listen with our ears and our eyes for both the spoken and the unspoken communication. By paying attention to the words, tone of voice, body language, and gestures, we enhance our understanding of what is being said, how the client feels about it, and what lies beneath the words.

Empathetic listening, a structured form of listening and responding, is a powerful tool that we use as successful facilitators and client relationship managers. Empathetic listening has several benefits:

It requires people to listen attentively to each other.

It avoids misunderstandings as people confirm that they understand what the other person has said.

It focuses the listeners on the feelings and needs beneath the words.

It encourages the clients to open up and say more.

Our questions not only evoke answers about the specifics of the assignment, they also produce information on issues that are important to their Big Picture. Thus, we broaden our scope as we listen for potential areas of difficulty as well as for departments, divisions, or allied operations that could potentially use our services.

In effective relationship management, we not only listen for information that will heighten our effectiveness with the specific engagement, we also listen for those things that relate to the Big Picture. We created the empathetic listening model for use in our course, The Consciously Competent Facilitator, because it provides the means for facilitators to address the needs and the feelings behind the words used by the participants (see Exhibit 1.1):

Exhibit 1.1: Empathetic Listening Model

Listen. Put all attention on what the client is saying, and listen for statements that relate to the company, the industry, and the latest trends. Example: The participant says, Why are we bothering to work on this plan? It’s just like all the other plans we’ve done. It won’t get implemented, and we’ll just have wasted all this time!

Paraphrase. State in different words what the client has said. This avoids misunderstanding because we know immediately if we both understand what was said. Example: We might respond, It sounds as if you think we’re wasting time working on this plan because the company is unlikely to put it into operation.

Empathize. Identify and reflect the needs and feelings heard beneath the words. Example: We might ask, Are you frustrated because you feel this is just one more plan that management will ignore?

Question. Formulate a question that probes for more information or leads to action that will address the issues we heard identified. Example: We might ask, What can we do to help get this plan implemented?

Marshall Rosenberg (2003, p. 127) underscores the power of empathetic listening in his book, Nonviolent Communication: Empathy lies in our ability to be present. This ability to be fully present with clients and hear the needs and feelings behind their words takes our interaction to a deeper level through which we build partnerships.

INVEST IN QUALITY

When we facilitate during a project, we commit to doing what needs to be done with excellence. Our investment in a quality product includes meeting the session objectives and deliverables as well as being honest with the client about what we can and cannot do within the constraints of time, budget, and resources.

Clients are more inclined to explore their Big Picture with us when they have already benefited from the quality products we have delivered. Producing with excellence what the clients have requested is a springboard to repeat business with these clients, as well as their referrals to other potential clients.

To build our clients’ confidence in us and strengthen our relationships with them, we do what we promise within the agreed-on time and budget and deliver a quality product each and every time.

Delivering a quality product includes providing suggestions to our clients for ways to effectively implement the results of a session as well as minimize or eliminate barriers that may have surfaced during the session. Quality produces satisfied clients. Performing with excellence positions us for trusted adviser status and can lead to additional work and referrals.

COMMUNICATE INTENTIONALLY

When we facilitate, we communicate with intention. We have a clear purpose in mind, use terms that are part of our client’s culture, ask well-phrased questions, listen empathetically, and accommodate different thinking and operating styles.

The ability to communicate intentionally with clients is essential to building dynamic, ongoing relationships. When our communication is clear and mutually understood, we minimize the chances of misunderstanding and maximize the possibility of achieving the desired results. Since all people do not send or receive information in the same way, we adapt our thinking and operating styles to those of our clients.

We understand, respect, and appreciate diverse thinking patterns and respond to each appropriately. By listening to our clients’ words and watching their behavior, we learn whether the way they process information is auditory, visual, or kinesthetic. We then speak in terms to match their thinking style. Auditory thinkers engage in the exchange of ideas and typically say something like, I hear what you are saying. Visual thinkers use illustrations and graphics and are likely to say, I see what you mean. Kinesthetic thinkers prefer to take action and may say, Let’s get this done (NLP Learning Systems, 1993, p. 7).

In addition to using different thinking styles to process information, clients have different operating styles. Although they may demonstrate characteristics from several operating styles, one of the following four styles will be dominant (Wilson Learning, 1987):

Driver. Action oriented, brief, and gets right to the point. Drivers do not like detail and consider small talk and personal exchanges a waste of time. They cut to the chase, make decisions quickly, and get things accomplished. Adapt to this style by talking in bulleted points and quickly getting to the bottom line.

Expressive. Articulate, enthusiastic, high energy, and influences others easily. They are people centered and do not like a lot of detail or working alone. They think out loud and are constantly revising as they speak. Adapt to this style by being friendly and focused and keeping the conversation on track. Otherwise, they are likely to take it in a different direction.

Amiable. Responsible, reserved, logical, cooperative, patient, and persistent. They take all the responsibility on themselves and will not delegate. These good listeners do not like fast change and want to be treated fairly. Adapt to this style by drawing them out and allowing time for ideas to incubate.

Analytical. Organized, methodical, quantitative, critical thinkers who want all the facts and great detail. They are perfectionists who seek detailed answers. They are precise, controlled, and reserved, and they resist change. Adapt to this style by giving them information in writing and providing time for them to analyze and process information.

Effective communication with clients requires clarity on what we plan to accomplish during our client interactions, awareness of the information our clients are seeking, and knowledge of how to deliver it to match their thinking and operating styles.

THINK ABOUT CLIENTS

In addition to conducting specific research for an engagement, we keep the session objectives in mind as we review literature, engage in professional discussions, and attend sessions at conferences. This helps us recognize and apply new facilitation techniques to address issues effectively, make the session more participative, and create positive results.

As our clients see that we are continually thinking about their Big Picture needs, they are more likely to remember us when an opportunity arises for facilitation or other consulting services.

We keep our clients’ Big Picture needs in mind as we read newspapers and professional magazines, peruse conference flyers and book reviews, participate in meetings and other networking experiences, and engage in activities that could provide information pertinent to our clients.

We use this information in a variety of ways to enhance our clients’ operations and maintain our connection. One way is simply to forward the information, such as telling them about a conference. Another is to customize the information to meet client needs, such as recommending specific workshops within the conference. A third is to use this information to help them expand their thinking such as recommending we copresent at the conference.

We use other techniques as well to demonstrate that we continue to think about our clients:

Create a short newsletter with information pertinent to their needs. Include contact information and a listing of our services. Use success stories with quotations from satisfied clients, especially if these emphasize new or different services. Consider an e-newsletter that is cheaper and faster than printed newsletters.

Send article clippings, book reviews, and copies of white papers with a personal note. As appropriate, highlight certain portions or add comments and suggestions.

Offer to speak, or help identify speakers, for company meetings or company-sponsored events.

Write specific articles or white papers for a group of clients. One consultant commissioned a bimonthly article aimed at her CEO clients; another sent a more general article to all clients.

Send a regular e-mail with tips or quotes that apply to our client base.

Send birthday or holiday cards. With a preprinted company name, a note and hand-addressed envelope adds a personal touch.

Taking the initiative to stay in touch can include any or all of these techniques, as well as other approaches such as taking clients to lunch or dinner, making periodic telephone calls, and forwarding relevant e-mails. The question is not, Which of these techniques shall we use? but rather, How can we most effectively demonstrate to our clients that we’re thinking about them and their Big Picture?

UNDERSTAND NEEDS

As facilitators, one of our main tasks is to help the group achieve a common understanding of issues and resolutions. Some of the things we do to accomplish this are paraphrase, probe for more detail, and document for clarity. We also invite participants to write their own concerns, ideas, and issues on cards and then group the cards to identify common themes.

In effective client relationship management, understanding our client’s immediate needs and how they fit into the company’s Big Picture enables us to help them address both. With this information, we are not only able to be more effective on our current project, we can also identify other areas where our services can provide added value to the client.

We stimulate our clients’ thinking when we ask them about their immediate, long-term, and Big Picture needs, using questions such as these:

What problems are you experiencing that led you to believe you need a facilitator?

Imagine you have addressed these problems. What has changed as a result? How does the department work now?

What conditions exist in the company that must be addressed to keep from interfering with the success of this undertaking?

The answers to these questions enable clients to understand that by focusing only on the immediate situation, they resolve the pressing issue yet run the risk of not adequately addressing issues that have a broader scope. For example, a client who is problem-solving an issue may be too narrowly defining the problem by looking only at his or her own department without considering the interdepartmental impact.

As we come to understand the full extent of our clients’ needs, we are able to suggest services that would best meet them. Some of these services we will deliver ourselves, and others will be provided through our network of consultants. To build our referral base of consultants, it is important that in addition to networking with facilitators, we build solid relationships with people in related services.

When we recommend a colleague to provide services for our client, we make a point of debriefing that person following the completion of the work. The focus of this discussion is to identify issues that emerged that require attention and might result in additional work for us.

Taking a Big Picture view means that we have our client’s total needs in mind, understand the long-term objectives, and provide the vehicles to achieve them.

RECOGNIZE CHALLENGES

When we interview clients or participants about a session we will be facilitating, we ask if there are any issues that might surface, such as hidden agendas, turf conflicts, or individual or organizational challenges. By getting this information in advance of the session, we avoid surprises and are able to deal more effectively with dysfunctional behavior that may arise from these issues.

Being aware of potential challenges facing our clients can help us better understand their Big Picture and provide alternatives for minimizing or eliminating those challenges.

We use the journalistic questions with our clients to encourage conversations that focus on where they are, where they want to go, and possible barriers they may encounter.

We stimulate their thinking about potential challenges with information gathered from our research on their company, industry, and competition. We also reference our experience with similar engagements and identify the similarities and differences in the challenges.

During a session, we listen for companywide or departmental issues that could sabotage the work that is being done. We communicate these potential issues to our client and encourage that they be addressed to maximize the chances that the work will be successfully implemented. In addition, we share what we have heard about challenges outside the scope of the session and suggest ways in which they can be dealt with in a timely fashion.

This approach instills confidence in our clients that we are committed to uncovering their challenges, able to meet their needs, and prepared for the unexpected.

EVALUATE SATISFACTION

Having participants evaluate our performance at the end of each session provides us valuable information. We learn if the participants thought we achieved the session’s stated objectives, if the process worked for them, and if we were effective in managing the group. We use this information to note our strengths so we repeat them and identify our areas for improvement so we can modify them.

Satisfied clients produce additional work and positive referrals. Monitoring our clients’ level of satisfaction on an ongoing basis positions us not only to exceed our clients’ expectations on a specific engagement, it also demonstrates our interest in helping them succeed at the Big Picture level. Their feedback provides us with a realistic picture of the opportunities for additional work and their level of willingness to be a referral source.

While client satisfaction for a specific engagement is measurable through the use of evaluation forms, relationship satisfaction is more informal and not as easily measured. Actions and behaviors provide clues to the level of our clients’ satisfaction with the relationship. We conclude that our clients are satisfied when they:

Seek us out for additional guidance and support.

Use us as trusted advisers to brainstorm solutions to challenging issues.

Respond positively to suggestions for collaborative work.

Are responsive to periodic invitations to lunch or dinner.

Initiate telephone calls and get-togethers.

By providing a listening ear, exchanging ideas, and operating with their best interests in mind, we work toward becoming a trusted adviser—the person to whom our clients come when they are in need.

When clients are pleased with our work, they are excellent sources for future business. By maintaining contact with clients following our successful engagement, we stay abreast of their issues and problems. This information helps us determine what additional services to offer to them.

CONCLUSION

Developing relationships with our clients that are built on trust and collaboration is vital to our continued success as facilitators. As we use our facilitation skills to assist clients to operate effectively in their Big Picture, we strengthen our relationship and position ourselves to provide service beyond a single engagement. By partnering with clients, we maximize the likelihood of achieving success, both theirs and ours.

Chapter Two

The Skilled Facilitator Approach

¹

Roger Schwarz

The Skilled Facilitator approach is a values-based, systemic approach to facilitation. It is designed to help groups increase the quality of decisions, increase commitment to decisions, reduce effective implementation time, improve working relationships, improve personal satisfaction in groups, and increase organizational learning. It accomplishes this in a way that creates collaborative relationships between the facilitator and the group and within the group itself. In this chapter, I identify the key elements of the approach and explain how they fit together.

WHAT IS GROUP FACILITATION?

Group facilitation is a process in which a person whose selection is acceptable to all members of the group, is substantively neutral, and has no substantive decision-making authority diagnoses and intervenes to help a group improve how it identifies and solves problems and makes decisions, to increase the group’s effectiveness.

The facilitator’s main task is to help the group increase its effectiveness by improving its process and structure. Process refers to how a group works together. It includes how members talk to each other, how they identify and solve problems, how they make decisions, and how they handle conflict. Structure refers to stable and recurring group processes, such as group membership or group roles. In contrast, content refers to what a group is working on. For example, the content of a group discussion may be whether to enter a new market, how to provide high-quality service to customers, or what each group member’s responsibilities should be. Whenever a group meets, it is possible to observe both its content and process. For example, in a discussion about how to provide high-quality service, suggestions about installing a customer hot line or giving more authority to those with customer contact reflect content. However, members responding to only certain members’ ideas or failing to identify their assumptions are facets of the group’s process.

Underlying the facilitator’s main task is the fundamental assumption that ineffective group process and structure reduces a group’s ability to solve problems and make decisions. While research findings on the relationship between process and group effectiveness are mixed (Kaplan, 1979), the premise of facilitation is that by increasing the effectiveness of the group’s process and structure, the facilitator helps the group improve its performance and overall effectiveness. The facilitator does not intervene directly in the content of the group’s discussions; to do so would require the facilitator to abandon substantive neutrality and would reduce the group’s responsibility for solving its problems.

To create the collaborative relationship between the facilitator and group, ensure that the facilitator is trusted by all group members, and see to it that the group’s autonomy is maintained, the facilitator needs to be acceptable to all members of the group (and seen as impartial toward individual members or parties), be substantively neutral—that is, display no preference for any of the solutions the group considers—and not have substantive decision-making authority. In practice, the facilitator can meet these three criteria only if he or she is not a group member. While a group member may be acceptable to other members and may not have substantive decision-making authority, the group member has a substantive interest in the group’s issues. By definition, a group member cannot formally fill the role of facilitator. Still, a group leader or member can use the Skilled Facilitator principles and techniques to help a group. Effective leaders regularly use facilitation skills as part of their leadership role.

To intervene means to enter into an ongoing system for the purpose of helping those in the system (Argyris, 1970, p. 15). The definition implies that the system—or group—functions autonomously—that is, the group is complete without a facilitator. Yet the group depends on a facilitator for help. Consequently, to maintain the group’s autonomy and develop its long-term effectiveness, the facilitator’s interventions ideally should decrease the group’s dependence on the facilitator. The facilitator accomplishes this, when appropriate, by intervening in a way that teaches group members the skills of facilitation.

KEY ELEMENTS OF THE SKILLED FACILITATOR APPROACH

The Skilled Facilitator approach is an approach to facilitation that I have been developing since 1980 when I began teaching facilitation skills. Often facilitation approaches represent a compilation of techniques and methods without an underlying theoretical framework. The Skilled Facilitator approach is based on a theory of group facilitation that contains a set of core values and principles and a number of techniques and methods derived from the core values and principles. It integrates the theory into practice to create a values-based, systemic approach to group facilitation. Exhibit 2.1 identifies the key elements of the Skilled Facilitator approach.

Exhibit 2.1: Key Elements of the Skilled Facilitator Approach

The Group Effectiveness Model

A Clearly Defined Facilitator Role

Useful in a Wide Range of Roles

Explicit Core Values

Ground Rules for Effective Groups

The Diagnosis-Intervention Cycle

Low-Level Inferences

Exploring and Changing How We Think

A Process for Agreeing on How to Work Together

A Systems Approach

The Group Effectiveness Model

To help groups become more effective, you need a model of group effectiveness as part of your approach. To be useful, the model needs to be more than descriptive-that is, it needs to do more than explain how groups typically function or develop because many groups develop in a way that is dysfunctional. To be useful, the model needs to be normative-that is, it should tell you what an effective group looks like. The group effectiveness model identifies the criteria for effective groups, identifies the elements that contribute to effectiveness and the relationships among them, and describes what these elements look like in practice. The model enables you and the group to work together to jointly identify when the group is having problems, identify the causes that generate the problems, and begin to identify where to intervene to address the problems. When you are helping to create new groups, the model helps you and the group jointly identify the elements and relationships among the elements that need to be in place to ensure an effective group.

A Clearly Defined Facilitator Role

To help groups, you need a clear definition of your role as facilitator so that you and the groups you are helping have a common understanding about and agree on the kinds of behaviors that are consistent and inconsistent with your facilitator role. This has become more difficult in recent years as organizations have used the word facilitator to define many different roles. Human resource experts, organization development consultants, trainers, coaches, and even managers have sometimes been referred to as facilitators. The Skilled Facilitator approach clearly defines the facilitator role as a substantively neutral person who is not a group member and works for the entire group.

The Skilled Facilitator approach distinguishes between two types of facilitation: basic and developmental. In basic facilitation, the facilitator helps a group solve a substantive problem by essentially lending the group his or her process skills. When the facilitation is complete, the group has solved its substantive problem but, by design, it has not explicitly learned how it improves its process. In developmental facilitation, the facilitator explicitly helps a group solve a substantive problem and learn to improve its process at the same time. Here the facilitator also serves as teacher, so the group can eventually become self-facilitating. Developmental facilitation requires significantly more time and facilitator skill, and it is more likely to create fundamental change.

Useful in a Wide Range of Roles

Although I described the Skilled Facilitator approach as having a substantively neutral third-party facilitator, the approach also recognizes that everyone needs to use facilitative skills even if they are not neutral third parties or not working in groups or teams. The Skilled Facilitator approach introduces roles in addition to facilitator: facilitative consultant, facilitative coach, facilitative trainer, and facilitative leader. All of these roles are based on the same underlying core values and principles as the role of facilitator. In addition, many of my clients have told me that they have used the core values and principles outside the workplace, including with their families and friends, and with positive results. The approach is broadly applicable because it is based on principles of effective human interaction. Consequently, if you use this approach across your roles, you are likely to be viewed by others as acting consistently and with integrity across situations.

Explicit Core Values

All approaches to facilitation are based on some core values. Core values provide the foundation for an approach and serve as a guide. They enable you to craft new methods and techniques consistent with the core values and to continually reflect on how well you do in acting congruently with the values. If you are to benefit most from the core values, they need to be explicit. The Skilled Facilitator approach is based on an explicit set of four core values—valid information, free and informed choice, internal commitment, and compassion—and principles that follow from them. (The first three core values come from Argyris and Schön, 1974.)

Valid information means that you share all the relevant information that you have about an issue in a way that others can understand it, as well as the reasoning by which that information is integrated. Ideally, valid information is specific enough so that others can confirm for themselves whether the information is valid. With free and informed choice, members make decisions based on valid information, not on pressure from inside or outside the group. With internal commitment, each member feels personally responsible for the decision and is willing to support the decision, given his or her role. With compassion, you temporarily suspend judgment to understand others who have differing views. When you act with compassion, you infuse the other core values with your intent to understand, empathize with, and help others in a way that still ensures that each person is accountable for his or her behavior. Together, the core values provide the foundation for the group to collaboratively develop a common understanding of a situation and to make decisions and take actions to which it is fully committed.

As a facilitator, you need not only a set of methods and techniques but also an understanding of how and why they work. By using an explicit set of core values and the principles that follow from them, you can improvise and design new methods and techniques consistent with the core values. Without this understanding, you are like a novice baker who must either follow the recipe as given or make changes without knowing what will happen.

Making the core values explicit also helps you work with groups. You can discuss your approach with potential clients, so that they can make more informed choices about whether they want to use you as their facilitator. When clients know the core values underlying your approach, they can help you improve your practice, identifying when they believe you are acting inconsistently with the values you espoused. In this way, the core values provide a basis for a collaborative relationship in which facilitators learn with clients rather than the client’s simply learning from the facilitator. Because the core values for facilitation are also the core values for effective group behavior, when you act consistently with the core values, not only do you act effectively as a facilitator, but you also model effective behavior for the group you are working with.

Ground Rules for Effective Groups

As you watch a group in action, you may intuitively know whether the members’ conversation is productive even if you cannot identify exactly how they either contribute to or hinder the group’s process. Yet a facilitator needs to understand the specific kinds of behaviors that improve a group’s process. The Skilled Facilitator approach describes these behaviors in a set of ground rules for effective groups. The ground rules (see Exhibit 2.2) make specific the abstract core values of facilitation and group effectiveness.

The ground rules serve several functions. First, they serve as a diagnostic tool. By understanding the ground rules, you can quickly identify dysfunctional group behavior—which is inconsistent with the ground rules—so that you can intervene on it. Second, the ground rules are a teaching tool for developing effective group norms. When groups understand the ground rules and commit to using them, the members set new expectations for how to interact with each other. This enables the group to share responsibility for improving its process, often a goal of facilitation. Finally, the ground rules guide your behavior as facilitator.

Exhibit 2.2: Ground Rules for Effective Groups

1. Test assumptions and inferences.

2. Share all relevant information.

3. Use specific examples, and agree on what important words mean.

4. Explain your reasoning and intent.

5. Focus on interests, not positions.

6. Combine advocacy and inquiry.

7. Jointly design steps and ways to test disagreements.

8. Discuss undiscussable issues.

9. Use a decision-making rule that generates the level of commitment needs.

Source: © 2002 Roger Schwarz & Associates, Inc.

Together, the ground rules enable group members to collaborate productively, exploring their different points of view, and develop a common course of action. For example, testing assumptions and inferences enables members to make sure that they are working together based on valid information about each other and the situation. Share relevant information, explain your reasoning and intent, focus on interests rather than positions, and ensure that members have a common base of information. By combining advocacy and inquiry, group members both share their views and encourage others to share different views and identify gaps in members’ thinking. Jointly designing next steps and ways to test disagreements enables group members to collaborate on testing out their differing points of view rather than each member’s gathering information to prove the other is wrong. Discussing undiscussable issues enables group members to address underlying issues that hinder group members from working together effectively.

The behavioral ground rules in the Skilled Facilitator approach differ from the more procedural ground rules (start on time, end on time; turn off your beepers and cell phones) that many groups and facilitators use. Procedural ground rules can be helpful, but they do not describe the specific behaviors that lead to effective group process.

The Diagnosis-Intervention Cycle

The group effectiveness model, the core values, and the ground rules for effective groups are all tools for diagnosing behavior in groups. But you still need a way to implement these tools. Specifically, you need to know when to intervene, what kind of intervention to make, how to say it, when to say it, and to whom. To help put these tools into practice, the Skilled Facilitator approach uses the diagnosis–intervention cycle, a six-step process:

1. Observe behavior.

2. Infer meaning.

3. Decide whether, how, and why to intervene.

4. Describe behavior, and test for different views.

5. Share your inference, and test for different views.

6. Help the group decide whether to change its behavior, and test for different views.

The cycle is a structured and simple way to think about what is happening in the group and then to intervene consistent with the core values. It serves to guide the facilitator (and group members) into effective action.

Low-Level Inferences

As a facilitator, you are constantly trying to make sense of what is happening in a group. You watch members say and do things and then make inferences about what their behavior means and how it is either helping or hindering the group’s process. An inference is a conclusion you reach about something that is unknown to you based on what you do know. For example, if you see someone silently folding his arms across his chest in a meeting, you may infer that he disagrees with what has been said but is not saying so.

The kinds of inferences you make are critical because they guide what you will say when you intervene, and they affect how group members will react to you. To be effective, you need to make these inferences in a way that increases the chance that you will be accurate, enables you to share your inferences with the group to see if they disagree, and does not create defensive reactions in group members when you share your inferences.

The Skilled Facilitator approach accomplishes this by focusing on what I refer to as low-level inferences. Essentially, this means that facilitators diagnose and intervene in groups by making the fewest and the smallest inferential leaps necessary. Consider two facilitators with different approaches, working with the same group simultaneously and hearing this conversation:

Tom: ‑I want to discuss the start time for the new project. Next week is too soon. We need to wait another month.

Sue: That’s not going to work. We need to do it right away. We can’t wait.

Don: ‑I think you’re both unrealistic. We will be lucky if we can start it in ninety days. I think we should wait until the next quarter.

A facilitator making a low-level inference might privately conclude, and then publicly point out, that members have stated their opinions but have not explained the reasons for their opinions or asked other members what leads them to see the situation differently. Observing the same behavior, a facilitator making a high-level inference might privately conclude that the members do not care about others’ opinions or are trying to hide something. Making high-level inferences such as this creates a problem when you try to say what you privately think. Higher-level inferences are further removed from the data that you used to generate them and so may be less accurate. If the inference also contains negative evaluations about others’ motives, sharing the inference can contribute to the group members’ responding defensively. By learning to think and intervene using low-level inferences, you can increase the accuracy of your diagnosis and your ability to share your thinking with others, and reduce the chance that you will create defensive reactions when you do so. This ensures that your actions increase rather than decrease the group’s effectiveness.

Exploring and Changing How We Think

Facilitation is difficult work because it is mentally demanding—cognitively and emotionally. It is especially difficult when you find yourself in situations you consider potentially embarrassing or psychologically threatening. The research shows that if you are like almost everyone else, in these situations, you use a set of core values and think in a way that seeks to unilaterally control the conversation, win the discussion, and minimize the expression of negative feelings (Argyris and Schön, 1974). This is called the unilateral control model. (I have adapted the unilateral control model from the work of Argyris and Schön, 1974, who developed the model and called it Model I, and from Robert Putnam, Diana McLain Smith, and Phil McArthur at Action Design who adapted Model I and refer to this as the unilateral control model.) You think of yourself as knowing all we need to know about the situation while thinking others who disagree are uninformed, you think of yourself as being right and others as being wrong, and you think of yourself as having pure motives while others’ motives are questionable.

It is not possible to create collaborative relationships if you are thinking this way. Consequently, this thinking leads you to act in ways that create the very results you are trying hard to avoid: misunderstanding, increasing conflict, defensive reactions, and the strained relationships and lack of learning that accompany the results. To make matters worse, you are usually unaware of how your thinking leads you to act ineffectively. Rather, if you are like most other people, you typically attribute the cause of these difficult conversations to how others are thinking and acting.

The same problem that reduces your effectiveness as a facilitator reduces the effectiveness of the groups you are seeking to help. Like the facilitator, the group members are also unaware of how they create these problems for themselves.

The Skilled Facilitator approach helps you understand the conditions under which you act ineffectively and understand how your own thinking leads you to act ineffectively in ways that you are normally unaware of. It provides tools for increasing your effectiveness, particularly in situations you find emotionally difficult. This involves changing not only your techniques, but also how you think about or frame situations and the core values that underlie your approach. This shift to the mutual learning model means thinking that you have some information and others have other information, that others may see things you miss and vice versa, that differences are opportunities for learning rather than for proving others wrong, and that people are trying to act with integrity given their situation. (I have adapted the mutual learning model from the work of Argyris and Schön, 1974, who developed the model and called it Model II, and from Robert Putnam, Diana McLain Smith, and Phil McArthur at Action Design who adapted Model II and refer to this as the mutual learning model.) This shift in thinking makes it possible to use the ground rules appropriately for effective groups and reduce the unintended consequences that stem from the unilateral control model. Making this shift is difficult but rewarding work, and it is essential for creating authentic collaborative relationships. By doing this work for yourself, you increase your effectiveness. Then you can help groups learn to reflect on and change the ways they think in difficult situations so that they can work more effectively together.

A Process for Agreeing on How to Work Together

Facilitation involves developing a relationship with a group—a social-psychological contract in which the group gives you permission to help them because they consider you an expert and trustworthy facilitator. Building this relationship is critical because it is the foundation on which you use your facilitator knowledge and skills; without the foundation, you lose the essential connection with the group that makes your facilitation possible and powerful. To build this relationship, you need a clear understanding and agreement with the group about your role as facilitator and how you will work with the group to help it accomplish its objectives. I have found that many of the facilitation problems my colleagues and I have faced stemmed from a lack of agreement with the group about how to work together.

The Skilled Facilitator approach describes a process for developing this agreement that enables the facilitator and the group to make an informed free choice about working together. The process begins when someone first contacts the facilitator about working with the group and involves a discussion with group members. It identifies who should be involved at each stage of the process, the specific questions to ask, and the type of information to share about your approach to facilitation. The process also describes the issues on which you and the group need to decide to develop an effective working agreement. The issues include the facilitated meeting objectives, the facilitator’s role, and the ground rules that will be used. By using this process, you act consistently with your facilitator role and increase the likelihood that you will help the group achieve its goals.

A Systems Approach

Facilitators often tell me stories of how, despite their best efforts to help a group in a difficult situation, the situation gets worse. Each time the facilitator does something to improve things, the situation either deteriorates immediately or temporarily improves before getting even worse. One reason this occurs is that the facilitator is not thinking and acting systemically.

In recent years, the field of systems thinking has become popular in part through the work of Peter Senge (1990) and his colleagues. The Skilled Facilitator approach uses a systems approach to facilitation. It recognizes that a group is a social system—a collection of parts that interact with each other to function as a whole—and that groups generate their own system dynamics, such as deteriorating trust or continued dependence on the leader. As a facilitator, you enter into this system when you help a group. The challenge is to enter the system, complete with its functional and dysfunctional dynamics, and help the group become more effective without becoming influenced by the system to act ineffectively yourself. The Skilled Facilitator approach recognizes that any action you take affects the group in multiple ways and has short-term and long-term consequences, some of which may not be obvious. The approach helps you understand how your behavior as facilitator interacts with the group’s dynamics to increase or decrease the group’s effectiveness.

For example, a facilitator who privately pulls a team member aside who, she believes, is dominating the group may seem to improve the team’s discussion in the short run. But this action may also have several unintended negative consequences. The pulled-aside member may feel that the facilitator is not representing the team’s opinion and may see the facilitator as biased against him, thereby reducing the facilitator’s credibility with that member. Even if the facilitator is reflecting the other team members’ opinions, the team may come increasingly to depend on her to deal with its internal process issues, thereby reducing rather than increasing the team’s ability to function independently.

Using a systems approach to facilitation has many implications, a number of which are central to understanding the Skilled Facilitator approach. One key implication is treating the entire group as the client rather than only the formal group leader or the member who contacted you. This increases the chance of having the trust and credibility of the entire group, which is essential in serving as an effective facilitator.

A second implication is that effective facilitator behavior and effective group member behavior are the same thing. Excepting that the facilitator is substantively neutral and not a group member, the Skilled Facilitator approach does not have different sets of rules for the facilitator and group members. Just as you use the core values and ground rules to guide your own behavior, you use them to teach group members how they can act more effectively. Consequently, when you act consistently with the core values and ground rules, you serve as a model for the group. The more that group members learn about how you work, the better they understand how to create effective group process. Ultimately, as group members model effective facilitator behavior, they become self-facilitating.

A third key implication is that to be effective, your system of facilitation needs to be internally consistent. This means that the way you diagnose and intervene in a group and the way you develop agreements with the group all need to be based on a congruent set of principles. Many facilitators develop their approach by borrowing methods and techniques from a variety of other approaches. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but if the methods and techniques are based on conflicting values or principles, they can undermine the facilitator’s effectiveness as well as that of the groups they work with. For example, a facilitator who states that his client is the entire group and yet automatically agrees to individual requests by the group’s leader may soon find himself in the middle of a conflict between the group and its leader rather than helping to facilitate the entire group. By thinking and acting systemically, you increase your long-term ability to help groups.

THE EXPERIENCE OF FACILITATION

Facilitation is challenging work that calls forth a wide range of emotions. Part of this work involves helping group members deal productively with their emotions while they are addressing difficult issues. It is equally important to deal with your own emotions as facilitator. Because your emotions and how you deal with them profoundly determine your effectiveness, the Skilled Facilitator approach involves understanding how you as a facilitator feel during facilitation and using these feelings productively.

These feelings are about yourself and the group you are working with. Throughout the facilitation, various events trigger your own reactions. You may feel satisfied having helped a group work through a particularly difficult problem or proud to see the group using some of the skills they have learned from you. Yet when your work goes so smoothly that the group does not recognize your contribution, you may feel unappreciated. When the group is feeling confused and uncertain about how to proceed in their task, you may be feeling the same way about the facilitation. If your actions do not help the group as well as you would like, you may feel ashamed because your work does not meet your own standards. You may be frustrated by a group’s inability to manage conflict even if you have been asked to help the group because they are having problems managing conflict. You may feel sad watching a group act in ways that create the very consequences they are trying to avoid, feel happy that you can identify this dynamic in the group, and feel hopeful seeing that the group’s pain is creating motivation for change.

At one time or another, I have experienced each of these feelings as a facilitator; they are part of the internal work of facilitation. The Skilled Facilitator approach enables you to become more aware of these feelings and increases your ability to manage them productively—what some refer to emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995; Salovey and Mayer, 1990). I have found that my ability to develop these emotional skills is both distinct from and related to my larger set of knowledge, skills, and experience as a facilitator. Although there are many ways to improve my facilitation skills that do not focus on dealing with my emotions, my use of any of these skills becomes more powerful if I am attuned to my feelings and to others’ feelings and deal with them productively.

Through facilitating groups, you also come to know yourself by reflecting on how you react to certain situations, understanding the sources of your feelings, and learning how to work with your feelings productively. In doing so, you not only help yourself but increase your ability to help the groups with which you work.

CONCLUSION

The Skilled Facilitator approach is based on a set of core values. Using a systems thinking approach, it enables you to clearly define your facilitator role and develop explicit agreement with a group about how you will work together. Together, the core values, the group effectiveness model, the ground rules, and the diagnosis-intervention cycle help you identify functional and dysfunctional aspects of the group and intervene to help the group increase its effectiveness. The approach enables you to explore and change how you think and improve your ability to facilitate difficult situations. It also helps groups explore and change their thinking to help them create fundamental change. All of the elements in the Skilled Facilitator approach are integrated to enable both group members and the facilitator to create collaborative relationships in which they can learn with and from each other. The core values, principles, and methods of the Skilled Facilitator approach are equally applicable to facilitative leaders, consultants, coaches, and trainers.

¹Note: This chapter is adapted from The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches, New and Revised Edition by Roger Schwarz, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2002.

Chapter Three

Facilitation

Beyond Methods

David Wayne

You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing in upon you.

Heraclitus of Ephesus

There is one constant for the facilitator: no matter how elegant the methods used or the skill of the practitioner, each group we work with is unique. In this chapter, we examine a few of these properties of groups and see how the effective facilitator’s awareness of them can create the best results for all participants.

All of us have been at meetings where hidden agendas, interpersonal issues, or group dynamics have had an impact on accomplishments. These process issues, as they are often called, occur in every group, and they