Following on from my previous posting on the facilitator distinction of safety, another two important distinctions we explore in the Stage 2: Essence of Facilitation training programme and also in Dale Hunter et al.’s The Essence of Facilitation is Fearlessness and Compassion. The distinctions of Fearlessness and Compassion are the focus of today’s discussion as being fearless as a facilitator is important and fearless compassion in a group can be extremely transformative and can really strengthen the resilience of a team.
Fearlessness
First, let’s look at what we mean by fearlessness. Fearlessness is an important distinction because it addresses what stops us as facilitators. We may ask ourselves what stops us telling the truth as we see it? or what stops us from making an intervening when we sense it will move the group forward? or what are the internal conversations that stop us? Fears may arise within us such as:
- I might be wrong.
- I might look foolish.
- People won’t like me.
- I might do some damage.
- I shouldn’t initiate it.
- I might be disadvantaged if I say this.
- I won’t be asked back.
These types of internal conversations will always occur, and it is OK that they do. They are normal and at times can help us to test whether our ideas for an intervention are fully formed. When you have considered these conversations and chosen to intervene – fearlessness is required. The ability to say what is needed to move the group forward even if it involves challenging the group, or an individual, or it may make us feel uncomfortable. This takes fearlessness.
As described in Hunter et al (1999), “To be effective as a facilitator you must be willing to be fearless, particularly when you are afraid. You need to be willing to face your own fear and do it anyway. If you feel unwilling to challenge anyone in a group, you are facilitating it is not appropriate for you to be facilitating the group.” (p. 61).
Dynamics of power
Several aspects of the group dynamic can get in the way of the facilitator stepping fully in to making the intervention that is needed in the moment. There may be someone with significant power in the group. Whether that be related to reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, referential power or expert power amongst others including positional power and personal power (French & Raven, 1959).
If the aspects the group is working with involves expertise, then you can become overawed by somebody’s expert knowledge. Or it may be their position within the organisation. Others may consistently defer to someone considered highly important. There may even be public figures in the group including politicians. Some may be highly elegant in forming and sharing their opinion or be lawyers or expert debaters who may be highly experienced in forming and rebutting challenges. You feel unsettled and doubt if you are willing to effectively challenge them if needed.
If you find that you are unwilling to treat everyone in the group as your equal, then you must step aside from facilitation. It is OK to step aside. If you cannot stand for your own fearlessness in any group, you are not the best person to facilitate them. Be gracious and step aside as you are short-changing the group.
Several areas can present common challenges for facilitators where fearless intervention may be required to help the group move forward. These may include:
- A group that is reluctant to participate.
- A group that is in conflict.
- When managing time effectively and balancing between participation and results.
- Ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to participate fully.
- Handling different or polarising perspectives.
- Engaging with disrupters or interrupters.
- Being aware of your own perceptions as the facilitator.
When fearlessness is missing
Fearlessness is missing when:
- As the facilitator you don’t say what needs to be said or challenge behaviours that need to be challenged
- A powerful group member clobbers a weaker member, and you say nothing
- The group is consistently dominated by one person
- Participants have issues or unresolved history with one another and the truth is not being spoken
- Facilitating feels like walking over broken glass
- You have a strong feeling, an intuition, that something needs to happen and you don’t share it
Generating fearlessness
Fearlessness involves stepping out of the right/wrong domain of the ego and standing for enabling the group to achieve its purpose (Hunter et al., 1999).
Interventions are not right or wrong, they are either useful or not useful for the group. If an intervention proved not to be useful, it’s ok to drop it and try another until you find one that resonates with the group. Sometimes a process that worked brilliantly well in one group will subsequently result in failure with another. Groups are often highly resilient and may even simply ignore the facilitator’s intervention if it is not useful. Some interventions will work in the moment, and some won’t. Try not to be too attached to your interventions.
Fearlessness involves keeping going, particularly when a group has become stuck, and nothing seems to be working. Keep going, use your intuition and stand firmly in the group purpose. We have a saying in Zenergy facilitation that “when the going gets tough, the facilitator gets going”.
What is meant by compassion?
Dale Hunter draws on Milbrath (1996) in describing ‘love & compassion’ as an element of Truth in the FACTS Meta-model for Sustainable Co-operative Processes (2003) that resulted from her doctoral study:
Access to experiencing our whole selves, including all our emotions, without fragmentation and dissociation, allows us to connect with love and compassion to self, other persons, groups, cultures, other species and the whole transplanetary field (p.4).
Some of us are naturally more compassionate than others. In Zenergy we previously used to use the term ‘ruthless compassion’ and you will find that term in Dale Hunter et al.’s The Essence of Facilitation. However, after team discussions over several years the word ‘ruthless’ was considered too severe and dropped. The brutal, barbarous, and without pity aspects of ruthlessness might inadvertently attract the wrong kinds of behaviour in a facilitator. The facilitator does have significant positional power and members of a group will give deference to the facilitator’s instructions if they are forceful and unrelenting. Therefore, we now prefer to use the phrase ‘fearless compassion’ as it is both proactive and intentional as well as humane and heartful at the same time.
Compassion includes the heart, humanity, kindness, soft-hearted, fellow feeling, sorrow, commiseration, clemency, charity and mercy.
Roger Schwarz in his book The Skilled Facilitator (2016) describes compassion as having three parts. When you operate from compassion:
- You are aware of the suffering that people you work with face.
- You internally connect to their suffering, cognitively and emotionally.
- You respond to the suffering.
In this context Schwarz describes suffering as being about the daily frustrations and challenges people encounter, the emotionally difficult decisions they need to make, and the stress that results from this. He argues that compassion does not mean taking responsibility for solving other people’s problems or pitying them. He see that when a facilitator behaves with the value of compassion, they are more transparent, they are more curious about others and able to appreciate the situation from their perspective, they create informed choices for others, and they hold themselves and others accountable as a way of honouring one’s commitment to others and the results you seek to achieve (p. 72).
Fearless compassion
As a distinction, fearless compassion, means:
- Saying the hard things
- Being totally committed, full-on compassion (or being ‘all-in’ as I like to say)
- Beyond the nice
- Intentionally working in the group’s direction
- Maintaining focus
- Bringing compassion towards the purpose
When fearless compassion is missing
- When fearless compassion is missing as a distinction in the group:
- The group is tolerating unethical behaviour
- The group is consistently failing to live into the group culture that they have agreed to
- When one or more people are scapegoating a group member, and no one is interrupting this
- When one or more people are dumping on someone without intervention by the facilitator
Generating fearless compassion
- Declare a breakdown and use the Resolving Breakdowns process.
- Intervene clearly to stop unhelpful behaviour continuing (clobbering, scapegoating, dumping, especially when someone is vulnerable).
- Name what is happening in your perception and say you will not allow it to continue. If you can be as precise as you can about the specific observed behaviour that you experienced. Refer to the group culture if useful.
- Declare your own limits and boundaries and name that someone has crossed them.
- Be assertive: This behaviour must stop now, or I will call a stop the meeting.
Fearlessness and Compassion
Being fearless as a facilitator is important and fearless compassion in a group can be extremely transformative. Below are some process ideas that may be useful, Do you have processes or have tried things that have helped generate fearlessness in yourself as a facilitator, or have experiences generating compassion in the groups you have worked with?
Process ideas
Resolving Breakdowns
First, identify the breakdown. Name something the team is working on which isn’t occurring.
Declare the breakdown. There is a breakdown in …………… Then facilitate a structured round for the team to align on the breakdown or suggests a more powerful one until alignment occurs.
Check for withholds. When a breakdown occurs, there are often things that team members are with-holding. Encourage everyone to speak these.
Find the commitment behind the breakdown. Clarify the team commitment and state it.
Conversation for possibility. Standing in your team commitment, facilitate a brainstorm to generate everything the group can think of to resolve the breakdown. Write these up.
Conversation for opportunity. Choose one or two of the possibilities which call to you.
Conversation for action. Create a plan of action to realise the chosen opportunities. List the actions, when they will occur and who will be accountable for them.
Conversation for management. What management is needed for the action plan to take place – such as having a coach, a mentor, a manager, a trainer, a buddy.
Celebration. Celebrate your resolution with an energy release such as a “whoop”.
Sharing Withholds
Invite group members to each find someone in the group with whom they have a withhold and share it (the withholds can be compliments as well as criticism.) The receiver says only: Thank you. Find another person and continue until everyone’s withholds have been shared.
Invite group members to share withholds about the group.
Exploring Power
Explore these questions individually, in pairs or in a group:
• What are your beliefs about power and how it plays out in the group?
• How does it feel to be powerful/powerless?
• In what areas of your life do you feel powerful and powerless?
References
French, J. R. & Raven, B. (1959). The Bases of Social Power.In Cartwright, D. (Ed.). (1959). Studies in social power. Ann Arbor: Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan Press (pp. 150-167).
Hunter, D. (2003). The facilitation of sustainable co-operative processes. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Hunter, D., Bailey, A., & Taylor, B. (1999). The essence of facilitation. Tandem.
Milbrath, L. W. (1996). Envisioning a sustainable society. In Slaughter, R. A. (Ed.). New Thinking for a New Millennium. Routledge. (pp. 185-197).
Schwarz, Roger M. (2016). The Skilled Facilitator : A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Coaches, and Trainers, John Wiley & Sons.
