Leaders no longer are the smartest, loudest, most experienced, or the strongest. In today's professional environments, effective leaders are the ones who catalyzing their people. The shift is from top-down to bottom-up.
The top-down, command-and-control style of leadership inhibits group genius in significant ways. Facilitation of group genius is becoming a key characteristic of effective leadership in the emerging age.
Facilitators help groups move through issues when rank, politics, and power dynamics have sullied the situation. Whether your team, department, or organization is “flat,” a rigid hierarchy or claims to be “all kumbaya,” rank exists and facilitators help to remove the dynamics that rank introduces, and the ideation that it inhibits. Rank, whether inherited, achieved or formally defined, creates power. The more rank one has, the more impact that person has on others. For this reason, it is important to bring in neutral facilitators to help move important group conversations forward, effectively, without the power structures of yesterday impeding the possibilities of tomorrow.
To support you in thinking about how to facilitate groups to think beyond the sum of their parts, in the following, we explore skills great facilitators embody to support groups as they move through various processes effectively, efficiently and equitably.
Holding Space: Creating a respectful, comfortable, and focused environment for participants. Acknowledging and working with the mental and emotional states of the individuals of a group, and the collective. Holding space is about making people feel like their contribution is needed and supporting them in contributing. I like to think of “holding space” as tending to the container, not the contents—if the container has integrity, the contents are more likely to reach the desired destination intact.
Inciting Bravery: Brave spaces are those in which people can honestly express themselves, disagree with traditional thinking, challenge others, and share what they are thinking and feeling. Brave spaces are ones where listeners are courageous enough to digest not just the content of the words, but the context of the message. We need brave spaces so that the unknown can be shared.
Great facilitators support the group in setting the tone and navigating the boundaries brave spaces require to function well. Bringing one’s authentic self to the facilitator role is vital to group safety and inviting bravery. Injecting your quirky humor is one way to signal to folks that this is a brave space, using your full canon of gestures is another, and my least favorite and most used is making mistakes.
When people are brave in front of one another, it has a cascading effect. And if people are acting bravely, they are able to give light to the shadow, which is halfway to healing.
Preparation: Facilitators need to be clear and centered. In meetings, big emotions often arise. When facilitators show up with their own shit, it gets in the way—intentionally or unintentionally; passively or actively. To hold space for a dynamic group of individuals requires your baggage to be removed from the complexities of the group’s process. Each of us is different, and I have found myself able to best be present for my clients through cultivating practices of yoga, mediation, therapy, breathwork, and music.
Permission: Before you can facilitate a group, you need permission to work with the group. Not formal permission, like a security clearance or a contract (I’m assuming you already have that, if not, get out of the room before the cops come!) I’m talking about informal permission. Informal permission is the willingness members of the group give a facilitator to work with them. Without permission, members of the group will not authentically engage. Permission can be established through one-on-one conversations, soliciting input on the agenda in advance of the meeting, providing context as to who you are and how you intend to serve their individual and collective interests, and setting clear ground rules.
When in the room, it is important (whether you had the luxury of time or not) to greet each participant, and attempt to learn their names. Calling people by their names has a powerful effect on making people feel seen and respected—essential to getting permission from the group and the individuals that comprise it. The simple act of a handshake, a sincere look in the eyes and saying their name out loud begins to build the permission needed to do what you have planned with the group. Once you have gained informal permission, make sure to tend to it, fore permission is dynamic and can be lost just as quickly as it can be gained.
Facilitators have a direct impact on how a group operates. If you are vulnerable and loose, the group is more likely to be authentic and relaxed. If you admit mistakes and own what you don’t know, participants are far more likely to do the same. If you are graceful and generous with gratitude, your participants are more likely to engage with grace and flexibility.
As a facilitator, you are the bass of the group process—the instrument that sets the tone and rhythm for the group’s flow. Your state of being is the most powerful levers in changing the way a group engages with each other and the material. By shifting how a group interacts, the group begins to shift their operating norms. In doing so, patterns of being and doing can take root. These new patterns of being and doing are the green shoots of group creativity, trust, and performance.
