Ever get that feeling that you don’t know what’s going to happen when you are facilitating the work of a group of people – whether they are trying to solve a problem, make a decision – or in my case this last weekend; create a vision for their organisation.
It happens all too often that we find ourselves as facilitators thinking we need to know it all. We need to know a lot, for sure, but it’s a bit arrogant to think we have all the answers.
But there’s the rub as a trainer or facilitator; you’re hired as the expert, and there is a psychological contract that occurs between you and the participants. That contract implies that you will dig them out of a hole, because you are the perceived expert.
Now, you’ve heard the saying ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’, That’s what I’m talking about; you can have all the right process, you can start the ball rolling, but knowing when to hand over the process to the group is the key.
That’s what I mean by working in wet cement.
As the perceived expert, you have to give up the need to be right, give up the façade as the perceived expert, let go of the control – and trust the group will do the right thing – trust the process.
That happened to me over the weekend, I was working with a group of volunteers striving to create a vision of their organisation for the next 5 years.
The leader of the organisation had a session plan of sorts, but I’ve coined the term ‘Wet Cement’ because the moment you’re wedded to that as how the day should go, is the day you should walk away as a group process facilitator.
This group was wrestling around with the realities of a small budget, full time jobs and familly’s to support, dwindling government support and private donors, and the need to expand and ‘professionalise’ and still be there for their client.
Their clients are children in foster care who need alternative means of ‘creative expression’ (like art and dance and music, instead of lashing out, running away and/or violence and crime)
As a group we’d sweated over the post it notes of nice words to describe what we did on a daily basis; we’d given the words a rating (for group consensus) and were ready to write up a vision when ‘all nothing broke loose’.
10 or 20 minutes of thrashing around trying to get the right words was torture for a healthy control freak facilitator like me ☺
But that is the point of this post, and what I am asking you to explore in your training and facilitation sessions.
[bullet_block large_icon=”0.png” width=”” alignment=”center”] [/bullet_block]We got there in the end (you can see the vision statement we created above). The whole process took about 90 minutes. The rest of the day was spent in more detailed action plans and accountability management.
Next time you find yourself wondering what to do when you’re expected to know what to do – trust the process – trust yourself.
Until then, practice ☺