As Simone Maus and I prepare for the next Zenergy Stage 2: Essence of Facilitation in beautiful Sydney in late January, I have been reflecting on the nature of power in groups. Power is a natural force that shapes how people relate, speak, listen, and make meaning together. When facilitators can see and name power clearly, they create conditions for transformation.
I find that every group I have encountered carries layers of difference in voice, confidence, and influence. Some are visible in roles or title, with positional power. Others are woven into the subtle fabric of culture and habit. Gender, age, ethnicity, sexual preference, intelligence, and disability all play a part in shaping behaviour, sometimes quietly and unconsciously.
There are some group norms that can reinforce us behaving in oppressive ways. In areas such as gender, age, ethnicity, sexual preference, intelligence, and disability these power differences are reflected in stereotyped behaviour, sometimes very subtle and unconscious. They can also be present within the very fabric of the organisations we work with.
I have always seen the role of the facilitator as being one that seeks to balance power in groups. To create space for the quieter voices and to coach those who are dominant by default to see what is possible when space is created. To seek to empower everyone in the team with equity, and to create choices.
A central skill we teach in the Stage 2: Essence of Facilitation programme is the art of ‘distinguishing’. To distinguish is to notice what is missing and then generate it in the group. Sometimes this happens through a timely question, a shift in focus, or by being more fully present to what is happening around the power dynamics in a group. The book The Essence of Facilitation: by Dale Hunter, Anne Bailey, and Bill Taylor (1999) describes power in the context of group facilitation beautifully – download a copy today:
Starhawk in her book Truth or dare: Encounters with power, authority, and mystery (1987) distinguishes three kinds of power: power-over, power-from-within and power-with. There are other kids of power we can distinguish, such as, positional power, assigned power, knowledge power, personal power, factional power, occasional power and more.
I’ve been curious about aspects of power as I reflect on how my upbringing plays out in my adult life. We are socialised as we are brought up to respect and to follow the power of others, of our parents, our teachers, our elders, those in positions of authority and command. This doesn’t always help as an adult. I notice moments when the impulse for power-over others arises within me, and at other times when I have given my power away and just followed the flow far too easily – without even being conscious that is what I’m been creating. Both patterns are familiar. They reflect how early experiences continue to influence my adult behaviour. Facilitation helps me stay awake to these movements, so I can choose my response rather than be driven by ingrained habit.
My colleague Simone Maus is writing a book on this very topic. She describes it as “…an attempt to shine some light on the unconscious authoritarian behaviour patterns that can sabotage our intention to work together well as a team in a time that requires collective intelligence to make intelligent decisions that help us all.” Her words remind me how easy it is to slip into patterns that limit others, even when our intention is collaboration.
Facilitation invites us to work with power differently. It helps us move from power-over to power-with so that a group’s intelligence can emerge. It is a practical, grounded way of working that honours both the individual and the collective.
When it comes to power dynamics in groups there’s a lot to explore as a facilitator. Facilitators have a lot of power themselves and ethically managing the exercise of interventions is not always a clear-cut science. In the Stage 2 programme we look at Power-With as a distinction. For a group to be really effective it requires everyone in the group to be fully empowered and participating – as peers. Personal power and power-with others is essential for a powerful group to be present.
One of the earliest aspects I notice in the groups I facilitate is whether there is the presence of powerful speaking and related to that powerful listening. Speaking has the power to move others and the world around us. In our programmes we coach people to practice speaking from the heart, or from the belly, or from their deeper knowing – speaking their own felt or deeper truth – their essence. Speaking from different body-locations like this gives us access to different ways of speaking powerfully to others.
Why I relate powerful listening to powerful speaking is that the power of listening often brings forth powerful speaking. Zenergy’s Mining the Gold process is a way of training facilitators to access ever more powerful ways of listening to the people they are facilitating. It’s interesting to note that there are many courses on speaking skills, and presentation concepts. I’ve been a Toastmaster myself for over 20 years to help develop my own voice in public groups, and yet, we are not very often trained in listening skills, let alone powerful and intentional listening.
As the facilitator, sometimes naming what you notice as missing can be enough to galvanise a team into action. For example, ‘I’m not noticing the deep listening that we will require to achieve the purpose’, or ’I’m not hearing the powerful speaking were are people at right now?’ Other times a process may help, or the facilitator can generate something in the moment such as shifting levels, getting the group into movement, drawing from the group culture, or making a challenge around intentionality.
The context is often important here and alignment with the purpose for distinctions to be useful. There is so much available in the key skill of distinguishing for a facilitator. A powerful tool for creating transformation in the groups you facilitate and lead. If you’d like to develop this competency yourself through experiential training with experts, I recommend starting with our Stage 1: Art of Facilitation programme and then taking the Stage 2: Essence of Facilitation programme to take your skills next level.
This December, in Sydney, Simone and I will be exploring these ideas in the Stage 2 Essence of Facilitation programme. Through dialogue, practice, reflection, and shared learning we will inquire into how power moves in groups and how we can work with it skilfully. If this something that interests you, we would love to have you join us.
— Stephen
Stephen Thorpe is a Director of Zenergy with a focus on teamwork and technology. He specialises in enhancing team performance in IT and agile project management, data science, and collective intelligence.
References
Hunter, D., Bailey, A., & Taylor, B. (1999). The essence of facilitation. Tandem.
Starhawk. (1987). Truth or dare: Encounters with power, authority, and mystery. Harper & Row.
