When I first started putting my Zenergy training into action I can recall a time when I offered to facilitate a friend’s flat dispute. They were four people who had lived together for over 3 years in two different flats before, however, a conflict had occurred regarding the spending of money from the shared flat account. They had all been really quite good friends up until that point, however, contempt and cold silence had become the dominant dynamic in the household for almost 5 months.

I offered to facilitate using the ‘Conflict Resolving Using Rounds’, from The Art of Facilitation by Dale Hunter (p. 198). I thought I had the skills to handle it and I didn’t. However, 12 minutes in I’d had someone swear at another, someone bang the table loudly, and another scream and storm out.

I was in a total panic – my heart was pounding in my ears, my mind was racing, my stomach all tight in knots – and, in that moment, I thought I was the worst facilitator in the world. I was so completely lost in my own distress that I didn’t know what to do for myself – fight or flight? let alone know what to do with the group of flatmates.  Surprisingly, a glimpse of clarity came through in that moment, and I found the words “So, I think we are all going to take a 20-minute break at this point and let’s come back after that.”  I spent that twenty minutes on the back step with my friend as she sobbed. I don’t recall much of what she said, as I was still in my own distress. All I could think of was running away. My imagining is that all of us did at that moment. But I wasn’t going to abandon my friend and had a sense that there must be an answer here somewhere.

This is an area of the Zenergy Model of Facilitation that falls under what we call ‘Facilitating Self’. When emotional competence is needed to create our own balance in order to be in best service to the group and its shared purpose. In this case, our purpose was to address the flat conflict over the account spending. 

All kinds of emotions surface in groups because people bring their whole selves, including their feelings, into the space. We have expectations about how others ‘should’ behave and they are not met. As the facilitator, we are at work helping the group to learn how to hold them.

Emotional competence is the capacity to notice, own, choose, and skilfully work with emotion so that a group can move toward its purpose rather than get stuck in reactivity. This is one of those facilitator skills that looks simple on the surface and is profoundly generative when present.

Why emotional competence matters

Groups may succeed or fall not just because of their IQ intelligence but also because of their social harmony and the group’s ability to use emotion productively. When participants can name what they are feeling, recognise triggers, and choose when and how to express distress or joy, the collective intelligence of the team grows. Conversely, a single person repeatedly triggered by past hurts, or a team or organisational culture that avoids or punishes honest feelings, will often block the group’s work. These are practical, not merely psychological, problems for any facilitator.

Emotions tend to amplify in group settings – so too can the repression of them. Reflecting on one’s own family dynamics can often show patterns of behaviour that we have learned and embodied as we have grown up – all the while considering them to be normal. Yet, they may not be helpful to us as an adult, nor useful in taking a group towards its purpose.

Personal Development Methods for Emotional Development

In Zenergy, we encourage our trainee facilitators to have a personal development method that can help them when they become triggered in a group situation themselves, and to also practice becoming comfortable with the expression of honest feelings as they will inevitably surface in a group that is working together over time. I’ve personally done Co-Counselling and Psychodrama and they were both highly useful in learning about my own triggers, and for me to become comfortable with the emotions of others. Regular supervision and debriefing with a fellow facilitator is also a core recommendation.

‘Yoga, Kirtan and Toastmasters have also been personally useful for me too. However, there are many approaches and methods that can serve a facilitator in strengthening their emotional regulation muscle: Mindfulness, peer-groups, breathwork, somatic grounding, reflective journaling, meditation, walking, compassionate communication (Nonviolent Communication (NVC)), compassion-focused therapy (CFT) techniques, trauma-based coaching, and supervised practice all help facilitators stay grounded when the emotions run high.

To become truly comfortable with the emotions of others, we believe that facilitators need ongoing personal development. Emotional competence isn’t just a one-off technique – it’s an ongoing practice. Like going to the gym or exercising regularly. These practices build our capacity to remain present, calm, and purposeful when we facilitate – even when a group’s emotions become intense.

Some core facilitation practices you could bring to your next session:

• Create a shared culture statement (norms, mores, agreements, team rules, team charter, a contract of behaviour) at the start, name how emotion will be treated in the room. Talk about and agree on what’s welcomed, what’s held for later, and how people will get support if they struggle. An agreement reduces confusion and reactivity.
• Help your group learn the difference between present-time feelings and past-triggered acting-out. This distinction is central to keeping process generative rather than reactive.
• Build EQ maintenance into your own practice. Have regular peer supervision, co-counselling or something equivalent as emotional maintenance strengthens the EQ muscle of the facilitator.

Stage 2: The Essence of Facilitation

In the Zenergy Stage 2: Essence of Facilitation programme, we work deeply with the practice of distinguishing ‘Emotional Competence’. Participants learn to recognise the difference between feeling, acting out, and reacting from past hurt, and to sense the subtle shifts in themselves and in the group when emotion begins to surface. Through experiential practices, supervised facilitation, and reflective inquiry, we explore how to make purposeful choices about emotion in service of the group’s purpose. Stage 2 offers a supportive, practice-rich environment where facilitators learn not only how to self-regulate, but how to remain open, present, and centred when others express strong or unexpected feelings. It is in this container that emotional competence becomes not just an idea, but a deeply transformational capability.

In Stage 2 we move from the learning of techniques that we cover in Stage 1: The Art of Facilitation to the deeper generative capacities of the facilitator. Distinguishing, safety, trust, and the art of making choices about emotion in service of purpose. These are not just theoretical exercises: through practice, reflection, and experiential inquiry you’ll learn how to hold grief, fear, anger and joy in ways that release wisdom rather than shut people down. If you want to grow your ability to generate collective intelligence and high group EQ, Stage 2 is designed for this.

An Invitation

If you’re a facilitator, team leader, or someone who wants group conversations to produce more than just agreement, I invite you to explore two easy next steps: join our next Zenergy Stage 2: Essence of Facilitation experiential programme in Sydney, or feel free to download The Essence of Facilitation book now and discover the ideas that underpin this part of our practice.

Both the training and the book have guided many practitioners from skilful techniques into deeper competence in working with emotion, power and other distinctions in groups.

So, back to my ‘facilitating the flat conflict’ story, well the 20 minutes had passed, and I was possibly a little surprised when everyone returned back to the kitchen table. I reiterated the steps in the ‘Conflict Resolving Using Rounds’ process, this time requesting that no one swear, slam the table or storm out. I made a little joke at the time that screaming was ok, and that everyone would have their turn. It broke the tension a little, but using humour like that is not something I would ever do now, I am a little wiser, nor would I advise it others to do so.

The rounds went and this time people spoke more intentionally about their view on what they saw the problem was. The depth of listening was so much deeper and powerful, by the end of the second round they had come up with a compromise that everyone was happy with. The flat dynamic transformed almost immediately.

I can highly recommend working on developing emotional competence – the deep and resilient muscle every facilitator needs.

– Stephen