Martin Thompson The biggest personal challenge for facilitators?
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The biggest personal challenge for facilitators?
Facilitating is an enabling role, i.e. it is not an end in itself, but a role taken in a group that helps others to make better use of themselves: their skills, knowledge and abilities.
Facilitators do not therefore contribute directly to the content of the discussion, nor decisions made. They do not need to be experts or even fully understand the subject under discussion. Yes that’s true. From personal experience this situation can be scary for the facilitator, but oddly on occasions this situation has helped me do my job as it forced me to focus on the group processes.
To add to the challenge, the facilitators’ role should be carried out as unobtrusively as possible. Why? Because anything facilitators do which shifts the focus away from the purpose of a discussion takes time and effort that could be used on the discussion. Every time facilitators intervene they take a risk, will it help or hinder the group!
The personal challenge?
All this can raise some interesting questions for facilitators about the value they are adding and the way they feel about themselves: if they do not contribute skills, knowledge or ideas that are part of a decision or solution, and any contribution that they do make will ideally go unnoticed, where can their satisfaction come from? The answer has to be mainly from within, believing that you have added value, from the personal satisfaction of seeing others’ succeed, and maybe occasionally some recognition sometime in the future.
Perhaps therefore the biggest personal challenge for facilitators is accepting that the more successful you are the less likely it is that others’ will recognise and value your contribution?
(I’ll mention more of the ‘helps’ in future blogs.)
Comments
Dear Martin,
I fully agree with all your points. Great remarks!
Throughout my experience as a facilitator I was always looking to find out what exactly are the skills, knowledge and abilities that a facilitator should have.
It’s similar to the “quiet achiever”, the one who does not make a sound but achieves its purpose, that of leaving its mark on its surroundings in more ways than one. I sometimes call him also the “unnoticed soldier”, the guy who is brave enough to defend his country, his believes, and any contribution he is making as an individual will ideally go unnoticed.
Same applies to the facilitator. Your contribution as an individual will ideally go unnoticed. However, the moment you think that you were a part of the team who made the success, will make a huge drive towards believing in yourself and in the value you have added. When you start to believe and to be convinced that your role in the team of experts is not the team leader, nor the technical consultant, nor the creative advisor but to facilitate the discussion, then your role will be as much as important as others’. These little facts are what will make the whole difference.
And how much valuable is the outcome of this discussion to those expertise, defines, more or less, how much valuable you were in the discussion.
Thank you for your important tips!
Dear Martin!
I agree with you too. My main task as a facilitator is "to move minds", to help the teams reach their aims + create and maintain a collaborative atmosphere during the process.
Before dealing with the teams real life aims I regularly use your games to create that collaborative atmosphere and to model the process of working together for common aims.
Thank you!
Sandor
Dear Martin,
So grateful for all your posts and emails. I have been reading your newsletters with great appreciation.
As a matter of fact ,your approach in facilitation has been of a great help to me with my 12 graders students and in my meetings with various educators as I 'm heading the committee of Education and early Childhood in my town council : Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem.
I was hoping to attend one of your workshops in London last November but unfortunately my visa was declined.
For the time being , I'll keep enjoying and following your updates.
All the best
Hanan