Facilitating ‘problems’

April 30, 2009 · Filed under Problems and possible solutions

1) We brainstormed some problem behaviours:

talking a lot/too much

encouraging quiet people

power/political agenda of participants/inequality in group

‘irrelevant’ talk

group going off on tangent

aggressive talk, but not aware

participant facilitates the facilitator

gender imbalance/power eg talk time

2) Kathryn set out her process of dealing with problems:

Step 1 What is happening?

What behaviour do you observe?

Step 2 Use active listening/observation to work out what the underlying issue/need is

Step 3 Choose a facilitation tool/strategy that will address the underlying issue/need

(based on guesswork about the underlying issue)

For example:

Dominant behaviour

Someone who talks a lot – could be because they have enormous amount of information, (receiving all the group’s emails) and meeting is where it is imparted

OR could be someone very experienced/knowledgeable – they may want to hold onto that power

OR could be that someone is not that self-aware about how much they’re talking, reducing other people’s talk time without thinking about it

The key is to figure out why the behaviour is taking place. If the reason is, alternatively, that someone doesn’t have enough information, keeps asking questions, then we have to resolve that issue.

3) We paired up discussing different problem areas, trying to identify underlying reasons for the behaviour and strategies for dealing with those underlying issues.

a) Participant facilitating the facilitator

body language feedback – be sensitive to body language

pull someone aside, ask how she feels about it

IRL person was not feeling well and not reacting to facilitator but facilitator was convinced he was.

b) Gender imbalance

What’s happening?

discussion is dominated by male participants

• More talking

• More info?

• more power in group

• more influence in decision making

• more respect/resources

• more time potentially

• more confidence to speak

• women get challenged more

What’s the underlying issue/need?

• privilege

• confidence

• patriarchal society

• lack of recognition of privilege

• lack of recognition of privilege

• assumption that other people not talking because they don’t have

• relevant/interesting ideas

Tool/strategy for dealing with this?

• pair work

• harder for 1 person to dominate

• Facilitator request to hear from people who haven’t spoken

• all women groups (without being obvious?)

• doing it quietly?

• distributing literature around/ promoting feminist ideas

c) ‘Irrelevant’ talking

Possible underlying issue and possible solutions:

• huge egos

• not familiar with meeting

• likes sound of own voice – lonely life

• talking is how they work out what they think about something

• group agreement seems to say ‘all opinions count – and can be said’.

  > possible solution: clarification of group agreement

• not interested in what group is interested in; has something else of their own that they are interested in > possible solution: suggest another group better placed to deal with it

  • • • > possible solution: form a working group to deal with that topic

• don’t think people in the group are listening to them

  • • • >possible solutions: add their item explicitly to the agenda or to next meeting’s agenda

        > possible solution: need to feel respected

• not listening to discussion

4) We then got up on our feet for an exercise, getting into a hot chair, speaking as if we were the facilitator, dealing with a particular problem behaviour. We then gave feedback to each other.

For example, with talking too much off-topic: add item to next meeting agenda; suggest extra meeting before next meeting – and before event they are concerned with.

Example: someone talking a lot off-topic.

Different strategies – putting something in the parking space; throw it back to the group and find out if the group wants to change the agenda; put it on the next week’s agenda; listen to the person and summarise what they were saying – make a suggestion of how to resolve issue. Feedback – in such a situation a show of hands can make the situation worse, making them more defensive.

Example: Talks aggressively without realizing it.

Different strategies – direct attention at person who comment was directed at; remind people about group agreement to respect opinions; break the group into small groups.

5) Roleplay

Someone left the group while the rest decided what the problem behaviours were going to be. That person came back to facilitate the meeting.

The first example was a G20 debrief. The problem behaviour decided on was facilitating the facilitator. The strategy adopted was to ignore the person, and to be assertive, sticking to the plan. Other strategies were discussed, including being open about your own vulnerability if you’re finding it hard to deal with too many suggestions. Pre-emptive strategies were discussed, including spelling out your plans in detail in advance.

We came across the issue of someone sharing a traumatic emotional experience in a group. Solutions for this remain to be discussed, possibly in another session.

We had another role play – the dinner has burnt, not everyone has money to eat out: what’s the decision? The group was going off topic. The facilitator tried to remind people of the group agreement not to talk over each other, asked someone to write the choices up on a sheet of paper, tried to get the group to focus (and also laughed at the way they were going haywire), and then gave up. Later she thought she could have asked questions about what the issues were – to draw out the fact that nutrition was a big choice, and that money was another issue which needed to be resolved.