The Top 5 Myths of Facilitation with Bob Dick
Posted by Andrew 29 January 2012
Ever encountered the gap between what you think something might be like and the real experience of that thing in and of itself? Welcome to the world of myths, and at the next IAF Oceania Conference on March 7–9th 2012 in Melbourne there will be a session exploring and busting facilitation myths. What are some of the myths you’ve busted on your own learning journey in facilitation? What about “Brainstorming is a great way to generate ideas for a session”? Or “Facilitators are Neutral”? Or “Everyone needs to be happy at the end of a workshop”? Or “Facilitators are extroverts”?
Over the christmas break I was in Brisbane with my wife’s family and took the opportunity to visit Bob Dick – inveterate action researcher and oft quoted as the Grandfather of facilitation in Australia. And yes – I couldn’t help myself but ask him – in his experience of over 30 years of organisational work and training of facilitators what are some of the myths of facilitation.
Read on below to hear Bob’s top 5 myths of:
- There are people called “Facilitators”
- Facilitators manage the process and stay out of the content
- All processes need to be high energy and fun
- Facilitation is the same as Training
- We develop plans to follow them
Myth 1: There are people called “Facilitators”
“A popular myth for me is that there are these people called “facilitators”, and that they have this bag of tricks called “facilitation” and that once you’ve mastered that collection, then you’re in business as a facilitator. And I think it’s possible to work that way, but I think it’s terribly limiting to do that. It seems to me that a healthier way of thinking about it is that- you’re in a group of people for some reason or other in some context with or without some purpose and it’s not working and you have some skills or some processes that can get it working and so you do whatever it takes to do that. And sometimes that looks like facilitation and sometimes it doesn’t. And I think it’s a lot more useful than “facilitation”.
A piece of that – and this is a personal view, I don’t think everyone will agree with this – is that it’s important that we establish standards for facilitators and that we have courses to teach them the right way to do facilitation and that we have facilitators who are certified somehow or rather. I was trained as a psychologist and certification for psychologists put a straight-jacket on what psychology courses could do. Most of what I learnt in an undergrad program in psychology I haven’t used since. Most of what I use that you could vaguely characterise as psychology I’ve learnt subsequently to leaving university.
Most tertiary education is too narrow to equip people with the complexity of what they face in much of what they do. I don’t think you can do good research in the applied world, or good change work in the applied world if you accept the conventional boundaries of any one discipline. So not just facilitation but psychology, sociology or engineering or anything else you care to name. And not only that it seems to me that to take psychology as an example, there’s a particular language that psychologists use to talk to each other which doesn’t mean the same thing to other people. So a psychologist and sociologist having a conversation with each other about anything technical is pretty wild to observe from the outside, because they’re talking past each other, because they think that because they are both talking English they share a language. But in fact they don’t. One’s talking psychology and one’s talking sociology. And I think facilitation risks taking the same step, or is taking it already.”
Myth 2: Facilitators manage the process and stay out of the content
“A piece of that – every time we put a constraint on what facilitators do or don’t do, we limit peoples options. I really disagree with the reasons for doing that. Really prominent in that is the belief that facilitators manage the process and stay out of the content. That’s honoured more in the breach than in the observance in my observations. And there are times when it’s a really good idea to stay out of the content – even though many facilitators don’t – because when you intrude into the content it actually contaminates the process and makes it harder to manage the process. But having done that why would you close off the option of working in content when that will help the people you are working with get the outcome that you want. So to my mind that’s an unnecessary restriction.
Now I mostly stay in process in much of the facilitation that do because it gets me better outcomes that way but I have no objection at all to moving into content and there are times when what I do is a 50-50 mix of process and content and there are times when I’m acting more in an advisory role and so its heavily content but I’m still using the skills of a change agent or facilitator or something like that to make sure that the conversation goes where it’s supposed to be going.
I suppose the generic form of the myth is that the boundaries between disciplines are useful. And by and large I don’t believe they are. I think that they’re an unnecessary constraint. Why would you wear a straight jacket when there’s no point in doing so – is the point of view I view it from.”
Myth 3: All processes need to be high energy and fun
“Pieces of this myth about what facilitation is, and this isn’t universally true – not everyone believes this and I think our American cousins are probably more at fault than we are although we seem to pick up our American cousins bad habits more easily than their good habits. And that’s a belief that all processes must be high energy and good fun. I’ve got nothing against high energy and there are times when low energy can really kill a process. And I’ve got nothing against fun, but there are times when fun amplifies what you are trying to do and there are times when it’s actually a distraction from what you are trying to do. So again, the amount of energy is a design option and a facilitation option and you make that decision in the moment in terms of what’s good for the outcome that you’re pursuing and what’s good for the present process and it seems the same thing is true about fun.
A counter example: There are times when deeply reflective processes where people go inside and become very internal bring about real personal break throughs. An example for life and career planning. There are times when you want high energy and high group interactions so that you’re getting the cross fertilisation between people. But then people need time to go inside and make use of that in the context of who they are and where they’ve been in the story of where they are going. And that seems low energy. And often there are some moist eyes around and it doesn’t seem like fun either. And yet for that kind of process that’s where the personal breakthroughs happen. And often the moist eyes are a sign that that’s what’s going on.
Sometimes agony is where the breakthrough happens too. There was a study done by Yalom, Leiberman and Miles that found that 7%, if my memory serves me, of participants in T-Groups (this is from the 60’s) were – and in their words – psychiatric casualties. And as a result T-Groups were banned in universities throughout Australia, even though there were some really effective personal development and professional development courses that used T-Groups as the medium for development. And then an English academic whose name I should remember because he’s widely published in many different fields, he revisited participants who in the American study would have been classified as psychiatric casualties- 6 months after that, and found that these were the people who reported the most profound beneficial outcomes from the experience they had had in the T-Group. So once again, this says to me – anything that puts a rules or constraints around change work in complex systems – because that’s what we’re talking about – is closing off some possibilities that might be the best chance of getting a good outcome.”
Myth 4: Facilitation is the same as Training
“Some, maybe 20% or 25% of the people who come on my programs have had it recommended to them by somebody else because they “facilitate” in trainer mode and they recognise (or have been helped to recognise) that that isn’t always the best role to operate from, so they come along to watch someone who works in a much less structured way. So often I start workshops – if there are novices present- that there is a continuum of facilitation which at the one extreme is “don’t have any plans and go with the flow” and at the other extreme is “to know what you’re going to be doing at 13 minutes past 2 for what purpose”. And sometimes each of those extremes is appropriate, but not very often. And that my own preference – when I think it will work is to be about a quarter the way along from the unstructured end – with the proviso that I still do detailed planning. I just don’t expect to follow the plan. When I’m working down the unstructured end I don’t expect to follow the plan.”
Myth 5: We develop plans to follow them
“So maybe that’s a myth. Maybe the myth is that you develop plans to follow whereas the more useful mindset, mental model is. I think Dwight Eisenhower said it beautifully he said “planning is everything, the plan is nothing”. Or as that Russian general said 150 or more years ago “no plan survives the first contact with the enemy”. And I’m not suggesting that participants are the enemy although occasionally that’s been true. But no plan survives the first contact with a complex reality. So a really dangerous myth is that “we plan to be able to follow the plans”.
Plans are to get the right neurons firing so that we can be in the moment and so when there’s a requirement that we do something unplanned and unexpected we’re able to do that. It isn’t that we jettison the plan entirely it’s that, one way of saying it is if we are working with a particularly fairly robust process – processes that run themselves – like fairy story. Even with groups that you’d expect to be really nervous to start with, and even if they are nervous to start with, if they pick up the spirit of the thing – then it’s true that all you need to know is how the fairy tale starts and how it ends. And I’ve never had fairy story bomb out badly on me. I’ve had it start really awkwardly occasionally with lawyers in one case I’m thinking of particularly. But once the energy starts to pick up they do great things.
So a really robust process- means that if the process is doing the facilitation I don’t have to. And that frees me up to notice what’s going on. And I find it difficult to pay attention in the same moment to what’s happening to all the individuals in the room and to what’s happening to the group as a whole. It requires different mindsets to observe those two things and I have to alternate between them. And I kind of guess that’s true of a lot of people and if the process is running itself then it’s easier for me to do that because I can give my attention to scanning the room to look at each person in turn and deliberately defocus and look at what the configuration in the room is and where the energy is and so on because the process is doing some of the work for me. And what the suggests for me is that continuum that I sketched out before suggesting that unstructured was at one end and structured at the other, that there is actually a best of both worlds version of it, where some of it is structured and run by the process – as you say to free up the change agent to improvise in the moment when the moment requires something a bit different. Points of leverage.”
What are the myths you’ve busted? What’s true for you within your practice and learnings around facilitation?
I’d love to hear… 
Interested in becoming one of our Affiliates?
Posted by Andrew 19 January 2012
Over the years we have run a number of workshops and programs and each time we’ve always been really appreciative of how people have forwarded our links on to help get the word out.
Well now we have a way of thanking you!
And that’s called EventBrite. (So maybe we should be thanking them! 
)
We have a number of Affiliate programs available over the next few months that you might like to consider joining up. Here’s some info to help you consider whether this is for you:
1. Our affiliate members earn 10% on each referal ticket sold
2. If you love our work (or even what our works about) and have a network of people that you can tell about our programs this is a great way of us saying a BIG thank you back!
3. With a strong love of learning – I am fortunate to be surrounded by collaborators and mentors who have similar core values. What this means is that not only are all of our programs are based on many years of experience – we work hard to make them value for money too!
If you are interested in finding out more and becoming one of our Affiliates – browse through the list below and make your selection based on a geography that makes sense for you – or join them all!…
EventBrite will do the rest.
Our current Affiliate Opportunities exist for:
- Narrative Coaching in Melbourne with Pierre-Blanc Sahnoun being hosted on Thursday 15th March 2012 click here to become an Affiliate
- Culture, Story and Change Workshop in Brisbane with Bob Dick and Andrew Rixon being hosted on April 28th and 29th click here to become an Affiliate
- Culture, Story and Change Workshop in Perth with Bob Dick and Andrew Rixon being hosted on May 19th and 20th click here to become an Affiliate
- Culture, Story and Change Workshop in Melbourne with Bob Dick and Andrew Rixon being hosted on May 26th and 27th click here to become an Affiliate
Got any other questions?
Flick me an email!
Interested in Narrative Coaching? Want to become a Narrative Coach?
Posted by Andrew 19 January 2012
Seasons Greetings
Posted by Andrew 17 December 2011
What are your plans for the christmas/new years break?
I’m excited to say that as you read this, Sascha and I (and George- our dog!) are already on our way up north to Brisbane and then on to Thailand for a well deserved break. It will be great to spend the christmas and new years with Sascha’s family too. Nothing like the chance to view the “Group dynamics” of families over christmas! 
In the meanwhile, here’s a “year in review” by way of links to our newsletters of this past year. The topics explored this year have been:
- Leveraging Communities of Practice for Organisational Effectiveness and Change
- Do you value multiple perspectives?
- Working with Difficult Groups: A review
- Three tips for building a community of change agents
- Are you too hard on yourself?
- Fearless Journalling
- How do you create a culture for Questions?
- A leadership coaching fairytale
Do any of these speak to a particular problem or issue you are currently facing? What topics would you love to see in coming newsletters for 2012?
I’d love to hear…
And…
Best wishes for a merry christmas and happy new year!
PS: I’ll be back at work as of January 10th 2012!
The Danger of a Single Story
Posted by Andrew 21 November 2011
Leveraging Communities of Practice for Organisational Effectiveness and Change
Posted by Andrew 13 October 2011
Did you know that Communities of Practice can be a powerful vehicle for organisational change? Do you know what’s most critical to getting Communities of Practice working in your organisation?
Following on from a previous post exploring 3 Tips for Building a Community of Change Agents I thought I might re-wind the tape a little and go back to basics with exploring Communities of Practice and what value they hold when it comes to change and enhancing organisational effectiveness…and maybe more importantly – what’s the most critical blocker!
What is a Community of Practice?
As discussed in the book “Cultivating Communities of Practice: A guide to managing knowledge” by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William M. Snyder:
“Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis”.
This definition might start to bring into focus for you some Communities of Practice around you. They certainly aren’t new. In fact, they could be one of the oldest forms of organisation known to man. Communities of Practice come in many different forms and they can be small or big, long-lived or short-lived, collocated or distributed, inside or across businesses and organisations, spontaneous or intentional, un-recognised to institutionalised.
As Etienne Wenger says: “Communities of practice are not called that in all organizations. They are known under various names, such as learning networks, thematic groups, or tech clubs.”
Some of the Communities of Practice I belong to are: A Toastmasters Club in Cheltenham, The Australian Facilitators Network, The Story Conference, The Applied Improv Network, A Psychodrama Training Group… What are some Communities of Practice you belong to?
Structure of Communities of Practice
With one of my dad’s life’s turning points being to re-train and begin work as a Diesel Mechanic, I found it interesting to reflect on how it was during the study of Apprenticeship as a learning model that Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave discovered that learning was a complex social process involving a web of inter-relationships with other journeymen.
And whilst Communities of Practice may appear to be amorphous and “cloud-like” there is a characterising structure to them that builds on 3 key elements: A Domain. A Community. And a Practice.
Domain: The domain creates common ground and a sense of common identity.
What topics and issues do we really care about? How is this domain connected to the organisations strategy? What is in it for us? What are the open questions and the leading edge of our domain? Are we ready to take some leadership in promoting and developing our domain? What kind of influence do we want to have?
Community: The community creates the social fabric of learning.
What roles are people going to play? How often will the community meet, and how will members connect on an ongoing basis? What kinds of activities will generate energy and develop trust? How can the community balance the needs of various segments of members? How will members deal with conflict? How will newcomers be introduced into the community?
Practice: The practice is a set of frameworks, ideas, tools, information, styles, language, stories, and documents that community members share.
What knowledge to share, develop, document? What kinds of learning activities to organise? How should the knowledge repository be organised to reflect the practice of members and be easily accessible? When should processes be standardised and when are differences appropriate? What development project should the community undertake? Where are sources of knowledge and benchmarks outside the community?
Realising the Value of Communities of Practice
As discussed within “Cultivating Communities of Practice“ organisations that have taken steps to cultivate communities of practice have found that these unique structures have the ability to:
- Connect local pockets of expertise and isolated professionals
- Diagnose and address recurring business problems whose root causes cross team boundaries
- Analyse the knowledge-related sources of uneven performance across units performing similar tasks and work to bring everyone up to the highest standard
- Link and coordinate unconnected activities and initiatives addressing a similar knowledge domain
Think about the Communities of Practice that you are part of. They may be within your organisation – or they may be outside your working environment. What forms of value have these created for you, other members, and if within your organisation – for the organisation itself?
A Critical Dependency for Communities of Practice Approaches
Having spent over 6 years working with many different varieties of Communities of Practice, in a number of differing community and organisational contexts, there is – I think – one key critical factor for getting Communities of Practice working…
Sponsorship.
As Etienne Wenger shares in his paper “Knowledge Management As A Doughnut – Shaping your Knowledge Strategy through Communities of Practice“:
“It is crucial for the organization to provide adequate sponsorship for communities. Sponsorship is different from traditional management in that it does not involve reporting relationships: an executive sees that a community can deliver value and therefore makes sure that the community has the resources it needs to function and that its ideas and proposals find their way into the organization.”
From this paper – and my own experience – I’d like to highlight the following critical roles for the Sponsor to:
- Legitimizing the work of communities in terms of strategic priorities
- Channelling, enabling and facilitating access to resources
- Negotiating accountability and structural relationships between line operations and communities
- Giving a voice to the insights and proposals of communities so they affect the way business is conducted
Who are the possible (executive) Sponsors for a Community of Practice approach within your organisation?
How well can you articulate the value that your Community of Practice can bring?
How can you work to engage a Sponsor within your organisation?
Workshop on “How to build a community of change agents” in Sydney
Posted by Andrew 11 October 2011
As part of the 3 Pillars Network Behaviour Change for Sustainability National Congress 2011…
Here’s a pre-conference workshop on Wednesday 9th November that I will be facilitating titled “How to build a community of change agents”.
Do you have a tough problem / change initiative you are working to address? What if you could facilitate the development of not just one but a whole community of change agents?
Over the last two years working together with Sustainability Victoria Babel Fish have been doing just that – building a community of change agents in the field of Educating for Sustainability. Based on lessons they’ve learnt along the way – this workshop will help you to:
1. Develop ways for kick-starting and building a Community of Change Agents
2. Understand how the 7 principles for cultivating communities of practice can inform your own community building efforts
3. Build capability and leadership within your change initiative by leveraging Action Learning processes
This workshop will be experiential and interactive and you can expect to walk away with a host of practical and pragmatic ways for moving your own community building / change initiatives forward.
Click here to get yourself registered!
Last days to register for The Story Conference – October 5-7th 2011
Posted by Andrew 18 September 2011
Interested in “Creative Methods” ? Working with Story and Narrative approaches?
Check out The Story Conference…
There’s at least 85 things to learn… 
Into final days now!
Creative Innovation 2011
Posted by Andrew 12 September 2011
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By registering for a Platinum, Gold or Silver package before September 16th you will SAVE OVER $500, PLUS receive a FREE subscription to BRW magazine and one month subscription to AFR online valued at $344. |
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A rare opportunity to learn, think, connect and share ideas with over 35 of the world’s most influential thinkers under one roof. Inspire your leadership and achieve business success. Don’t miss this future-shaping event, which includes a two day Conference, Deep Conversations, Master Classes, Gala Dinner and performances. |
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Do you value multiple perspectives?
Posted by Andrew 6 September 2011
Do you have a particular problem you are currently struggling with?
With this being the last month for registrations for our upcoming Story Conference being held over October 5-7th – I thought I would devote this post to exploring what lies behind the theme of this year’s conference “Creative Methods: Widening the World of Work”. And in particular – draw somewhat on sections from a great book titled “Reframing Organisations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership” written by Bolman and Deal.
The Value of Multiple Perspectives
When it comes to “widening the world” in which we work, how often have you found it valuable to find a different perspective on a situation or issue you have been facing?
A new set of eyes. A fresh perspective.
Or on the flip side – how difficult can it be to hear another person’s (very different) perspective on an issue which you thought you had all sorted?
It’s interesting to read how multiple perspectives have been found to have significant positive effects for managers and leaders. Apparently studies have demonstrated that over 90% of managers and leaders find the ability to use multiple frames and generate different perspectives to be not only helpful but provides greater effectiveness and competitive advantage within their working environments.
So as the Proust quote invites “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes”.
But how?
The Power of Story and Narratives
As Bolman and Deal share in this worksheet on Reframing:
“Reframing is a difficult concept for many to grasp, especially concrete thinkers or people who, for developmental reasons, want the “one right answer.” Reframing demands a tolerance for ambiguity, an appreciation of how reality is socially constructed, and skills in relative thinking.”
Whilst reframing may be a difficult concept, I have found that we are all familiar with a particular genre of Storytelling … The Fairy Tale… And even better, when working with Story and Narratives “reframing” comes for free.
As I discussed in this article on leveraging Story for Change, it was through the humble fairy-tale and its natural “reframing” that helped a group articulate some very difficult and sensitive issues.
How does a fairy-tale begin? How does it end? Who are the characters within? What is the problem seeking resolution within the story? Where will the magic be needed?
The fairy-tale is but one genre of working with Story that provides a rich re-framing and generation of multiple perspectives all as part of the process. As one workshop participant once said “Fairytales are like Metaphors packaged ready to use”.
What if you were to write a fairy-tale about the current issue or problem you are struggling with? What struggles and resistances do you notice to this idea? What new perspectives will emerge for you once having completed your tale?
Expanding our Thinking
There is a great quote about how a critic once said to Cezanne, “That doesn’t look anything like a sunset” to which Cezanne responded “Then you don’t see sunsets the way I do”. Like Bolman and Deal suggest in their book – managers and leaders need to find new ways to shift points of view when needed.
I find it interesting to consider their observations on two contrasting approaches to management and leadership. One being a rational-technical mind-set emphasizing certainty and control. The other being an expressive, artistic conception encouraging flexibility, creativity and interpretation.
Whilst I am a great believer in the need for balance, I do often wonder if the scales tend to be weighted more towards the implicit value and credibility given to the “certainty and control” styles of management and leadership?
What opportunities will emerge in developing more artistic and creative leadership and management styles? Is this something that pushes your edges or buttons? Could this be something that “widens your world” of work?
And… with a recent IBM global leadership report flagging that the most important leadership skill of the future is Creativity… I have one last question for you.
Have you registered for The Story Conference?