Weimar Facilitation

The Art of Building Contact., Focus and Binding Commitment in Groups
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-7583-8924-5
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 146 Seiten

Accompanying groups professionally, Discovering potential, Enabling implementation Facilitation is the art of building contact, focus and binding commitment in groups. Facilitation provides spaces for dialogues in which fresh thoughts can be developed and decisions can be made that are supported by everyone. This way profound change processes become possible. In this concise manual, Jutta Weimar provides a compact, systematic overview of what is important for facilitators in practice to achieve exactly this. She describes both methods and the fundamental attitude that are essential for mobilizing collective intelligence, getting processes up and running effectively, and anchoring them sustainably. This opens up spaces in change processes in which all participants can become more involved. The guide provides plenty of practical examples from Jutta Weimar's wealth of experience, especially in relation to the international quality guidelines, provides support for practical implementation and also shows how other methods can be effectively incorporated as well. Discover the opportunities of this approach - and be curious about what happens!

Jutta Weimar has been working as a facilitator, trainer and coach for over 20 years. She is an internationally certified facilitator (IAF) and has a broad network of colleagues around the world. She accompanies a wide variety of group processes enabling organisational development. She is the owner of the Facilitation Academy in Berlin (Germany) and has been training facilitators for several years. Jutta works internationally. Homepages: www.facilitation-academy.de and www.jutta-weimar.de

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weimar, Jutta

Leseproben

2 The Nature of Living Systems
“WE ALL GO TO THE SAME DIFFERENT MEETING!“ (MARVIN WEISBORD/ SANDRA JANOFF) IN THIS CHAPTER YOU WILL LEARN: how we, as facilitators, look at people and groups as living, self-organizing systems, and what this means for our practical application of facilitation which concrete models, techniques and working methods I use in order to lay the foundations of successful process facilitation how we support self-organization in groups 2.1 Why we facilitate rather than „moderate“
The most important basic assumption we perhaps take to heart when facilitating group processes, is the nature of people as „self-organising systems”. They react in very different ways when facing the same external situation, doing what they feel makes sense. In doing so, they are oriented towards their own inner image of reality, rather than reality itself. This image is formed by everything that accounts within the individual: their own values, abilities, previous experience and much more. Our inner image of the world shapes our cognitive and emotional response to a situation and provides the impulse for our actions. As outsiders, we cannot directly influence the inner world of people, as they always feel and act autonomously. What we can do, however, is establish a framework for an incisive, creative experience offering meaning. We call this a „social container“, i.e. a space for meaning-making via communication. When forming this space, the understanding of individuals and groups as self-organizing systems is the basis for exact decisions about what we do or do not do within our facilitative role. AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE A medium-sized company aims to be more innovative and future-oriented, bringing new products and services to the market and generally working in a more customer-oriented way. Management has chosen to introduce agile work methods for the goal. To this end, Ms Stark, the Head of the customer service department, has been given the task of setting up her team as “agile”. Ms Stark would now be encouraged to study new ways of working, take some training, design a new departmental strategy, put it in beautiful powerpoint slides to present to her staff in a workshop to “take them along”. The workshop itself would be brief and focused, conveying reasons and goals. At the end of this 30 minute powerpoint presentation, Ms Stark asks, „are there any questions?“ – to which silence would follow in the room… What does this silence mean? How would Ms Stark best deal with it? How much have the employees been involved in the strategy development so far? Has the workshop goal and the expectations on the staff been made clear? Have the people in the room had the opportunity to talk about how they relate to the subject and how they feel about it? Has a check-in even happened? Have the “right” people been invited to the meeting room? As a facilitator, I pose Ms Stark all these questions, if confronted with such a situation (e.g. if Ms. Stark was to ask me to facilitate the follow-up workshop, after she feels that the team is not “following along”). Our insights are based on 20 years of intensive experience in processes facilitated within open event formats such as Open Space. This special experience of the “right here and now” and the passion for a topic reinforced by the willingness to take on responsibility, has shaped me personally and professionally for many years. An important “law” in Open Space: the “law of mobility” (formerly known as “the law of two feet”). This law of mobility simply describes the framework to be built for people to be able to work together effectively and sustainably: “If you find yourself in a place where you can neither learn nor contribute, simply move to a more productive place. If you notice your mind wandering, follow it.” Hence, it is important to interfere as little as possible with this mobility, the freedom of movement and the free will of people. This certainly sounds simpler than it really is, putting to the test both our inventive spirit and the mastery to repeatedly curb our compulsion to control. This practice often appears in small details, requiring a contrasting technique to make it clear, e.g. Do we ask people about their concerns and let them decide for themselves what they want to work on, or do we (or the principals) specify the topics and the process flow? Do we let the participants (as soon as this makes conceptual sense) divide themselves into groups or do we do this (for example, by „counting off“ or with the help of gummy bear sweets)? Do we give participants the opportunity to choose their own breaks (for example, as part of a small group task) or do we give them a precise time allocation? How open are we in the process to relax our agenda, when we realize that something different is about to reveal itself than we originally thought? – What is more important? The plan or what actually happens? And how do we assess that? EXAMPLE (CONTINUED) In our example, Ms Stark could have given the presentation and had the staff discuss in small groups what questions, issues and feelings they had about the content. The small groups might have written their questions on cards and shared them with the whole group. Ms. Stark would then (perhaps after a short break) have commented on the points, offered her feedback on those points she herself can or was unable to answer, what the company management may need to further comment upon and how she felt the team might contribute to a process of finding a solution. In a further workshop stage, she may now work with the team on initial options by having the members assign topics to themselves and agree to further work in small groups. Every now and again, Ms Stark would openly ask everyone whether this approach was comprehensible and practicable for them. She might also have constructively dealt with any so-called “resistance”. This counts as a facilitative approach. I usually encounter a different kind of behaviour In real life, (with both team leaders as well as managers or leaders of a meeting): after a maximum of ten seconds silence, the acting person assumes that no one wants to say anything about it. He or she comments, for example: “All right, if there are no questions, we can now move on to implementation…”. The approach of differentiation and integration (Lawrence/Lorsch 1967) is a central approach to use as both a framework for our work and simultaneously offer general theory of system development. DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION (ACCORDING TO LAWRENCE/LORSCH). DIFFERENTIATION involves distinction, classification, definition and separation of the same or similar elements. It means isolating, excluding and separating dissimilar elements. INTEGRATION involves unification, harmony and the merging into one unity. It also means centralising, directing, orchestrating and control. Lawrence and Lorsch put it this way: “Systems evolve when they differentiate without excluding and integrate without enforcing unity. This happens when differences in a social system are accepted without levelling them out” (Lawrence/Lorsch 1967). The challenge of organisations is how to achieve integration in an increasingly differentiated environment. Our practice is to create a space where exactly that can happen. The following passage by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff describes our facilitative attitude very clearly: 2.2 “Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! “
These insights are taken from Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff (2007) by kind permission of the authors for use in this book. A FACILITATION PHILOSOPHY Everybody does the best they can, with what they have during every minute. That includes each person, each group, and also the leaders/ facilitators. People do only what they are ready, willing and able to do. Diagnosing or explaining does not make people more ready to act. There need be no relevant “deeper” issues than what people volunteer to share. People change their behaviour when they can hear others’ perceptions and can state their own without having to defend them. We only move by moving. When people move around in meetings, they change the shape, flow, energy, and possibilities in the room. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Design meetings in which people find it easy to move if they choose. Experiment with your ability to tolerate statements you don’t believe, ideas you inherently oppose, and personal styles that make you inwardly cringe. The more you learn to hear all other views without reacting, the more a group is likely to express all sides of polarizing issues. Listen for the parts of each statement, with which you agree. If you act as if all statements contain value, groups find it easier to do the same. Allow for some faulty assumptions, stereotyping, mistrust, and anxiety on your own part and you will be less likely to surprise or disappoint yourself. Resist the tendency to manage anxiety by summarizing, talking, asking questions, explaining,...