You have to love the way life mimics life. In life people say “group facilitation, we got this”, then they get in front of people and realise that there are some skills required to effectively work with a group of people. The fact is there are some fundamentals of group facilitation that people sometimes forget to apply.

​What are these fundamentals? (There are others, but these are at the top of my list).
 
1. Know the session purpose and context;
2. Know your role as the facilitator and not the subject matter expert;
3. Trust the expertise of the group; AND
4. Bring quality processes to harness that expertise and balance power dynamic.
 
Enter COVID-19 and the social fabric of society is becoming locked behind doors. Then life mimics life – “lets jump on Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp” comes the cry… it’s just a meeting online right? 
 
Twenty minutes into the meeting and people are checking emails, dropping their video so they can do a sneaky snack or dash of online shopping.

​It turns out that there are some skills involved in working a group of people.

​Online meetings can be facilitated, and by applying the same principles, meetings go from virtual to virtually real! We still need to know the purpose and context, we still need a facilitator that is there to facilitate, we still need to trust the group. But more than that, we need to harness quality processes and how you deliver processes for online meetings is different to delivery in a room.
 
One of my favourite free tools is Google docs and Google sheet… online, live, multiuser editing. For those who know your way around a Google sheet formula you can set them up so small groups each contribute into one tab, and then you can see all the collated input on another tab… see below for some screenshots
 
Life mimics life – effective online meetings need the same creativity and thought as an effective face to face meeting.
 
The best part of moving to online facilitation… your facilitator can now be anywhere in the world.

There are lots of other tools out there and we will be profiling a few of them in the Virtually Real workshop (online of course).

 
The date is Tuesday 22nd February 2011 and the time 12.51pm, and the City of Christchurch, New Zealand is about to be changed forever. It took a 6.2 scale earthquake, 10 seconds to liquefy the soil and destroy much of the city and surrounds. 185 people lost their lives and large tracks of land have now been deemed uninhabitable.
 
While it is not uncommon for people to come together in a crisis, something quite remarkable has emerged from the rubble … a community-led vision for both the short and long-term rebuilding of the physical and social infrastructure of the city.
 
Vacant land, where buildings once stood and are still waiting to be rebuilt, has been turned into parklets and playgrounds. Some have even been turned into paid parking, where the funds are quarantined for other community development activities.
 
There has been thought given to active transport (cycling, walking, e-scooters) to reduce the pollution from cars, work done to initiate urban farming that delivers a paddock to plate supply chain within the CBD and even returns the waste back to the paddock for composting. This is a self-sustaining commercial venture that demonstrates sustainable ways to reduce food miles.
 
By all accounts the people of Christchurch have grabbed the opportunity to review and regather with both hands. It’s not perfect, and I am sure there are still plenty of issues, more healing and rebuilding to be done … but the start that they have made is inspiring.
 
However, there could be a deeper lesson for engagement and facilitation practitioners to consider here – the way in which physical structures lock in a certain way of relating and being with each other.
 
Many of us face ingrained systems and thinking that serve as a speed bump or even a dead end on the road to change. But the example of Christchurch could be showing us two things:

1. That institutions and people can change ingrained systems and ways of working.
2. That what locks people in is not just the structure of institutions but the physical structures we create.

What is intriguing in the Christchurch example is that the walls of these institutions came crumbling down before the institutions and systems changed. On some level it makes perfect sense. If the people and systems building the buildings are locked into a certain way of living, then those buildings will be created to support the system that is there.

Think about the hallowed institution of government and the protocol that surrounds how elected officials interact and what it does for the quality of decision making. There is something about Humans that seems to be hard-wired to maintain and even defend the status quo. It is not until people seem to be quite literally broken that our humility kicks in and we become willing to work in a different way.

But could we consider if this level of change can be achieved without the need for tragedy?
 
In a world where everything counts, change may need to be considered on a deeper level than just the mental desire to do something different. Step out from the safety of those meeting room tables, turn off those power points and look across the room, sit in circles so you can see each other and you could even look at the photos on the walls and the messages they are sending.
 
If we want people to free up how they and/or others think then it seems incumbent on us all to explore the subtle changes we can all be making to help people move together differently, rather than doing the same thing and expecting something different.
 
If people respond with discomfort then maybe, that is the start of a change you are looking for … What habitual structures do you have for working with groups that may be a rut?
 

I can’t recall the last time I facilitated a workshop where the focus wasn’t on finding a solution, making a plan and developing priorities. We listen to the experts, we hear views from the room, we talk about what we want, hope for and need and we diligently set about making plans. It’s all good productive stuff.
 
But I am wondering more and more about the power of NOT knowing, the power of NOT jumping to a solution. Maybe even not getting to a solution in the meeting at all.
 
It’s the long-lost art of pondering. Sitting with a topic and reflecting on it from many sides and allowing the answer to emerge, rather than focusing on picking the best solution.
 
Solutions are great, they relieve a certain type of pressure, they give us hope, when they seem deliverable and fit within what people can get on board with. But as Peter Senge, one of the exponents of learning organisation models says;
 
“Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions”
 
The problem with solutions is that they come with an existing set of filters or said another way, bias. Time is precious, the demands placed on organisations is growing but unless we are willing to come to a conversation and NOT know the solution, we end up driving for what will relieve and not what is really needed. It is the ultimate way to limit creativity and deep thinking.
 
So, the alternative could be about stepping into the power of NOT knowing.
 
Being willing to deeply acknowledge the fact that after many years of trying, we simply don’t know! There are so many issues that society has not really moved the needle on and so many issues that we seem to need to revisit, time and time again.
 
“Burnout doesn’t occur because we’re solving problems; it occurs because we’ve been trying to solve the same problem over and over” Susan Scott
 
What would happen if we allowed ourselves the honesty, humility and space to dive deep into not knowing. The aim is not to build a morbid sense of defeatism but rather discovering that just how much we know about what we don’t know!!
 
Why is this problem still a problem – for your organisation or community?
What is the organisations role, what are other people’s roles? How many solutions have we tried and why didn’t they work or if they worked why didn’t they stick?
 
This is not about finger pointing but being humble enough to name what is and isn’t working. No one person carries the responsibility for something not working, leaders need teams, teams need each other. We all affect each other in overt and subtle ways. The key to this conversation is the focus on both collective and personal responsibility.
 
What does this problem, remind you of? – is this a trend that you have seen before?
 ​
Putting profit before people, fitting people into overly ridged systems, making decisions based without considering the people we are affecting.
 
There seem to be overarching themes to many issues, that are often dismissed as being part of the human condition, but what if there is more to explore?
 
It’s fair to say that NOT knowing irks most of us, and this is not suggesting we don’t deal with crisis or keep people suffering until they learn their lesson but recognising that something different needs a different direction in the conversation.
 
Sometimes we need to go backwards to go forward!
 
This can be hard to do once you have invested in getting a room full of people together that are well trained in solving problem and is about realism and not defeatism. Humans are naturally innovative and purposeful, so the answers will come but only when we ask the right question.
 
Solutions are not always what they seem and with today’s complexity we need to be able rekindle our ability to let ourselves NOT know
 
By Joel Levin

For the past 30+ years I have been working with groups of all shapes and sizes and there are a few golden rules for those looking to stretch their facilitation skills. Facilitation is an absolute privilege that requires care and consideration when stepping into the role. You get to be a fly on the wall in some incredibly and at times intimate discussions and with that comes a responsibility to take that role both seriously and lightly because you often need both! Here are some foundations in facilitation that sit at the core of the facilitators work to consider;

Our facilitation skills course focuses on all of these foundational qualities.

​Our advance facilitation skills course, takes the final step and begins to explore the outer circle. The moments when you need to step away from trying to control the process, trying to keep things on track and need to be able to rely on the most powerful tool in a facilitators tool bag…awareness.
 
Awareness of the group, of how the way any given process is working and of how you are throughout it all.
 
The reality is we do all of these things all of the time, and there is no place better to start developing your skills than to give it a go!