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Category Archives "Facilitation"

Working with cultural differences

February 11, 2009 By Facilitation 4 Comments

I have had an interesting few days working with Aboriginal leadership from around North America. In Michigan last week, I helped convene 24 folks interested in what indigenous leadership means, and today I am here in Port McNeil BC, hosting a community to community forum between First Nations and local governments.

One of the things that folks in the rest of indigenous North America don’t realize about the cultures of the west coast is how radically different they are from the cultures of the plains, desert and forests of the rest of North America. This is true in many ways, but especially true in the way the individual is perceived.

IN Ojibway culture for example, the individual is important. The integrity of one’s personal path is virtually sacred. So much so that Ojibway Elders never teach people by correcting them. Instead they will make broad pointers, refer to hypothetical people or talk indirectly about situations. Shaming is a very powerful force, and people will go to great lengths to avoid doing it. In general, hints are extremely subtle.

On the west coast however, the social world is very highly segmented, and in traditional communities, a strict hierarchical class system is in place from chiefs all the way down to slaves. Protocols are extremely important, and breaching protocols entails elaboration restitution and reconciliation before the natural order is restored. In this sense, west coast cultures are similar to Hawaiian and other Polynesian cultures as well.

I was faced with these two different cultural contexts in the last two weeks as I went about my work facilitating groups. In both cases, I experienced these cultural norms as participants were suggesting changes to process and the way I was facilitating.

In Michigan, we ran a circle process to help understand themes that were emerging from a cafe. In the circle, the conversation became more and more high level and eventually it came time for us to stop talking theoretically and start sharing stories. One man who was present, a Gros Ventre psychologist and teacher, made a very subtle hint about this saying “it will be good to ground these ideas and exchange stories.” It sounded like a very general comment, but it was offered, from his perspective as a very specific request: let’s move on.

When we didn’t move on, a Hawaiian professor spoke up, much more directly and suggested that I wrap up the circle and get to an Open Space process. That’s what we did and the energy began flowing again.

IN contrast today, while hearing a round of introductions, a young man was introducing himself but was going beyond the one things I asked people to say about themselves. At one point I interrupted his train of though with a friendly reminder about saying only one thing so that we could allow everyone to have a chance to speak. Instantly one of the hereditary chiefs rose, and in a big resonant voices said “point of order!” He then chastised me for “taking the talking stick out of that young man’s hands, and that is something we never ever do.” I apologized to the chief and the young man and he continued his introduction. It became a little teaching moment for the whole gathering, local politicians feeling their way into working together and the non-Aboriginal ones were quite nervous about protocol violations. Luckily I have no such qualms about making mistakes – in my 15 years on the west coast, I could never hope to be perfect all the time – and in apologizing, everything was set to rights and we continued, but the power was very visible in the room.

These kinds of deeply cultural ways of speaking and teaching and correcting are radically different between a Gros Ventre academic and a Gwasala hereditary chief. It’s one of the things that makes working in Indigenous communities so interesting and so challenging. Never make assumptions about what you think you know, and what is going on in the room. Every culture is different, has different thoughts about speech and different ways power is used. Understand that you can never hope to comprehend them all fully, not without years and years of living in the community, and even then, mistakes are made. Most important is to be yourself though, because although it is possible to violate protocols unconsciously, it is not possible to reconcile if you are anything other than authentic with people.

When all is said and done, that is probably the essence of the teaching for this week.

Qualities of noticing: building a personal self

February 4, 2009 By Facilitation, Practice 2 Comments

Following a great talk from Gil Fronsdel on how self is constructed, I had a nice insight yesterday about personal identity.

Fronsdel says that when something happens, there are three things going on:

  1. There is the reality
  2. There is what we think about the reality
  3. There is the “I” that is thinking.

These are conditional, that is, they depend on and arise from each other.   When I see something, I think something about it and my self in strengthened.   For example:

  1. It’s raining today
  2. I hate rainy days.
  3. I’m not suited to living in a rainforest!

In Buddhism, we get locked into suffering when we think ABOUT something and then believe that thought.   Who we are, our core identity, is in fact a set of stories we believe about our preferences about reality.

As a facilitator, this simple construction is a very important tool to use to reach clarity before working with a group.   Imagine this construction:

  1. People are yelling at each other.
  2. They are in conflict and I hate conflict.
  3. I am a peacemaker.

So yes, but in the moment, you are going to suffer some when the meeting you are running counters your experience of yourself.     You will think that you are failing if you are “a peacemaker” and yet your participants ar eyelling at each other.   As a facilitator, when I get caught in that kind of thinking, I notice that I immediately become quite useless to the group.   Why?   Because I have left reality and I am spinning around in my thinking about reality, suffering and self-involved as my identity and ego get challenged.

People who have no thoughts about conflict are incredibly resourceful when yelling arises.   They simply see yelling, they are able to listen and observe and notice what is happening.   But those of us that are still working on our comfort with conflict might shy away from it, shrink away in fear, try to paper over differences or deny the reality of the moment in favour of a temporary comfort.

This is why it’s always good to work with people, especially with people who are afraid of different things than you are.

Working on this stuff is a key personal practice for me.   I do it with meditation as well as working with Byron Katie’s method, called “The Work” to inquire into the thoughts and beliefs that are causing me suffering.   My partner Caitlin Frost uses The Work as a cornerstone to her coaching practice, and it’s a real gift to have that available in our little firm.   It lets me do much more than I ever could on my own.   I’m curious wht your experiences are and what your practices are to challenge the constructions of mind that limit your own work in certain situations.

Tomorrow, a post on what this process looks like at the collective level.

From a talk on community engagement

January 25, 2009 By Collaboration, Conversation, Facilitation, Invitation 5 Comments

Last year I was invited to give a talk on the shapes of community engagement for a conference sponsored by the BC Treaty Commission called Forging Linkages and Finding Solutions.   This is the slide deck I used and here is a transcript of my talk.

Helping groups to self-facilitate

November 25, 2008 By Facilitation

In many large group processes I use, small groups are asked to facilitate some of the process.   Recently, on the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation mailing list, there was a call for easy guides to help people facilitate these kinds of groups.   Turns out that there is lots out there, including:

And a few more that I use:

The idea here is resources that help conversations become deeper, more focused and more engaging.

Another Open Space convergence method

October 10, 2008 By Facilitation, Open Space 3 Comments

From my dear friend Peggy Holman:

A few weeks ago, I spontaneously created a new form of convergence with a group of about 20.   I think it can work well with groups of 60 or less, and perhaps with groups up to 100 or so.

I was intending to do what I always do these days – follow the energy and re-open the space for what has heart and meaning for taking a next step.  Instead, because the meeting  was intended to both give the group a chance to bond as well as set priorities for their work, something else emerged in the moment.  
This was a first meeting of a diverse group that was dealing with a challenging subject: the transformation of the field of corrections throughout the USA.  They had spent an evening sharing stories about their work and a day in Open Space, exploring, “How can corrections, in collaboration with other human services, help cultivate a strong and healthy society?”.  The last morning, we began with a conversation about their work together as a prelude to opening the space to identify their priorities (as established by the sessions that were called).
One participant was very concerned whether this “arbitrary” approach of following the energy would lead to the best priorities.  I suggested that we see what emerged and then determine whether a more rational approach should be employed.  Given the culture of the group, I sensed in that moment that the people in the room needed to know where each other stood – what each of them would choose as a priority.  And since bonding was part of the purpose of the gathering, I asked each of them to write on a sheet of paper the inquiry they felt was more important to pursue, the subject they personally felt most passionate about.  No one hesitated.  
Once they were done writing, each read his or her topic aloud. Then they physically got up and moved to join with others who had said something related to their topic.  The landed in 2 groups, split about 1/3 and 2/3rds.  This degree of coherence was quite stunning for them.  They went off to talk about their topics.  When they returned, we checked in, as promised, on whether these were the best priorities.  The group was almost giddy with excitement.  No question.  They were clear they had the right priorities.
another great day (or two) in Open Space,