As facilitator you can coach the group regularly to encourage them to be their best. In many groups there is seldom time or much enthusiasm for training. Although the group might benefit enormously from several hours of interactive training in group process, there never seems to be a time to do this.
One good way to accomplish this is just in time training. As part of the meeting plan you can add five minutes of instruction. If the group seems to have a consistent problem, start an agenda item with a brief, five minutes of process training. For example, if you know there is disagreement about aspects of a proposal, do a brief training for the group on how to use “I statements”. Then as the issue is discussed, reinforce those that use I statements, and remind those who do not, to do so. For example, you could respond to an individual that forgot to use an I statement by asking them if they could repeat their comment as an I statement.
A good exercise for the group, which takes only a few minutes, is to brainstorm up a list of behaviors and attitudes which enhance the effectiveness of meetings. Pick several and write them down for all to see. Remind the group at breaks or even as a pre-meeting intro about the ways to be good group participants. At each meeting, pick one attribute and write it on the chalk board for all to see as a reminder.
Here are a few ideas for how to be an effective meeting participant that are worth mentioning from time to time. There are lots of others.
Ask for clarification about why people think or feel as they
do. Never interrupt. Ask questions to clarify why the issue exists and what the
goals are.
Don’t just criticize, provide solutions and ideas for solving problems.
Look fairly and equally at all the pros and cons of all ideas. Don’t come with “THE PLAN” come with “ an idea”. Then see where the group expands it and be open to the change. Don’t own ideas, give them away to the group. Don’t lobby your idea, encourage the group to look at all the pros and cons. Don’t set limits.
Think out what you are going to say before you say it and then be brief. Don’t ramble, don’t repeat what others have said. If you think the same as someone else who has already spoken, then simply say, “ I agree with __”.
Others may need more time to understand, or need more information. Consensus is NOT a fast decision making process.
Just because you think you have the answer does not mean it’s the best answer for everyone, or that what meets your needs meets the needs of others. Learn to give away your ideas without attachment.
If you feel unhappy, or uncomfortable say so and try to pinpoint why. Also don’t forget to say you are happy or grateful as well.
Many decisions and proposals are learning experiences for things you have not yet done. If it does not work, you can change it later. Try things out. Experiment. Be willing to try on new ideas and processes. This is an adventure to be explored.
Many things a group decides can be redone later. Don't get hung up on small details, let the decision go forward and then examine it later to see if your misgivings were justified or not.
When you have things you want or need, tell the group what they are by using I statements such as “ I need covered parking because I have an old car that leaks”.
Whenever you state an opinion, you can add valuable information by giving others the reasons for your opinion. Be open to questions and comments about your opinions.
When you say the wrong thing, or act in a way that hurts, angers or alienates others, talk later to discuss what happened and why with those who were affected.
Don’t wait until the meeting to get or give information. Call people, hold small gatherings, etc. Read everything you are given closely and think about it before the meeting.
When you have defined a set of behaviors that positively influence the group the next step is to get group agreement to commit to using the behaviors. This is often done as a list of meeting ground rules. If the list is too long or complex people will not remember it, or may not clearly understand what a particular rule means.
It may be a good idea as you craft your ground rules to include as part of them the reasons why the behavior is effective. This helps members understand the value of each of the ground rules.
It is difficult to learn new behaviors. One of the best tools for helping members use the ground rules is to publicly positively reinforce the use of the ground rules by complementing someone as they follow a ground rule. You catch Sally using I statements and before transitioning to the next speaker you intervene and say: “That was a good use of I statements, which is one of our ground rules. Thank you.”
By publicly intervening you give notice to the group that you are paying attention to the ground rules and working to uphold them. Also, many people respond very favorably to positive feedback.
It is very helpful to post the ground rules on the wall at every meeting. If there is a graphic artist in your group see if you can enlist them to make a easy to read poster. If your groups group rules are buried in some long forgotten file, the odds of people remembering and using them are low.
A simple intervention is to watch the level of attentiveness. In a long and tedious meetings people have limits in how much time they can and be on task. In addition to setting time for breaks, pay attention to the human factors and if you see people drifting, call for a break. Some groups break up the meeting time to go outside and do physical work party efforts such as chopping wood. The exercise helps recharge the participants and they come back into the meeting with renewed energy and often new ideas and perspectives.
If things seem to be getting stale maybe an physical energizer, fun play activity will raise the energy again. For example, in the middle of a long and rather boring presentation about a groups budget, the facilitator interrupted the speaker at a good pausing place, put the groups checkbook on a place in the middle of the floor, and had all the participants come together and try to put one toe on the checkbook. This took a few minutes, got people up and moving and when they sat down again, they were much more attentive to the speaker.
Be sure to take into account the physical needs of the group. People can get irritable when their blood sugar is low. Have some juice or snacks available and break at least once every ninety minutes to stretch and get the blood flowing. A good rule of thumb is: the harder the chair, the more frequent the air. That is to say, if you have metal folding chairs, get people on their feet more often.
Recent studies on lighting seem to indicate that the type of lights in the room can effect peoples moods, especially in the winter season. Natural light is best, indirect soft light is good. If you are meeting regularly in a public place and have no control over the lighting, bringing a few lamps can help make even the most institutional spaces feel more intimate.
If the room is hot and stuffy you will find peoples attention span shorter than normal. If you can’t open a window, perhaps the participants can create some air flow by all simultaneously waving a folder at the same time.
Sometimes the meeting process is counterproductive and the group enthusiasm is low because everyone wants to be outside in the sunshine, or is feeling emotional over a group loss. Learn to gauge your meetings and get a sense of the group dynamic. If many people are feeling low energy, its probably not a good time to tackle a large complex issue. There is seasonal variation as well. Winter, with its short days and long dark nights, is a common season for depression and low spirits. Remember community is a long term project so sometimes issues can be postponed until they are more pressing.
Intervention: Working with
non-effective behaviors
One the challenges of being a facilitator is how to intervene when the behaviors of members are not contributing to the success of the group. For example, an angry, name calling exchange between two members typically is behavior that causes groups to abandon effective work together.
In a collaborative group you will want to involve the participants in the methods and types of interventions that are acceptable for the group. This is often done as part of creating group ground rules, but can also done in discussions or even a brainstorm. The Shelter scale is a good tool to determine peoples feelings about interventions. For more information about Shelter Scale <^>.
Every meeting is full of behaviors by the members. Some behaviors contribute to the success of the groups work, most have no direct effect, and others subtract from the groups effectiveness. There are obvious disruptions which can be immediately worked on, and then there are subtle and even hidden behaviors which will require much more thought before the facilitator should intervene. For example, when a person withdrawals from a discussion does it mean they are feeling threatened by the topic, or just not interested?
Interventions can be done in several ways, the grid below shows the options
|
Public |
Private |
|
Direct |
Indirect |
A Public intervention is one that happens in the meeting with everyone present.
A Private intervention is one that happens outside the meeting with just the people involved.
A direct intervention is done to target a specific behavior
An indirect intervention is where a whole set of concepts and learning’s are given which includes the target behavior
When a specific individuals behavior causes the group to malfunction, in order to fully engage the whole group in the process, it is helpful to use a hierarchy of intervention, moving from most general to specific. This gives the fullest opportunity for the individual to learn about behaviors and apply their own internal self correction. In following this approach, you would intervene in the following order:
Public Indirect: A group training: Often this sets specific processes that the group adopts
Private Indirect: A specific set of training assigned to an individual: For example, you give a review sheet of the processes agreed to the individual without specifically targeting any single behavior.
Private direct: A specific counseling with an individual targeting the ineffective behavior
Public Direct: Intervening in a meeting, targeting the specific individuals ineffective behavior
For example, Jill has an ineffective communications behavior which is effecting other group members ability to work with her and is disrupting the groups meetings. A public indirect intervention is set up as a workshop on general communication skills. The goals of this workshop are to broadly teach the group about how to communicate in more effective ways. The workshop include, as examples of ineffective behavior, Jill’s behavior. As a result of the workshop, the participants are given a list of ineffective behaviors. Jill’s behavior continues at the next meeting. The facilitator can then reference the workshop to Jill privately urging her to review the materials. The behavior continues, and so the facilitator meets with Jill privately, describes the behavior, and its consequences and works with Jill to identify alternatives, again referencing the workshop materials. At the next meeting, the facilitator finds Jill using the alternative behavior and praises her publicly for using effective communication behaviors.
By having information presented more than once, and having positive behaviors reinforced, the ineffective behavior and its consequences to the group are clearly understood by the individual.
This hierarchy of least to most direct obviously takes the most work and the most time. It also makes a fairly large investment of training in the group so the whole group gets the benefit from the work to remediate the ineffective behavior. This often pays larger dividends in the groups functioning, improving the groups work together. When time is short, or your commitment to group training is low, direct private intervention is the fastest way.
There is no guarantee that any intervention is going to correct a behavior that is causing problems with some or all of the group. Some behaviors are used by individuals for specific reasons, which they may very well not want to change, because the outcome pleases them or meet their own needs.
Direct intervention is a difficult process and requires a great deal of friendliness and empathy. Many facilitators feel uncomfortable or unable to intervene and choose not to. If you know you are having problems that need intervention but do not feel confident enough to do a direct intervention, you can use an outside mediator such as a family counselor to work with ineffective individual behaviors. Groups have differening expectations of their members and their commitments to the group. Asking a group member to make personal behavioral changes for the betterment of the group may be outside the charter or responsibilities of the group. There is fine line here sometimes between doing group facilitation work and personal counselling and therapy. Your commitment as a facilitator is to the group, and you need to be carefully decide how much personal work you can and want to do with individual members.
When the behavior of a member is not effective, or is even detrimental to the group it is important to keep in mind that people do not usually join groups with all the skills they need to be effective. In American competitive culture particularly there is not a lot of opportunity to work collaboratively with others. As you observe a behavior, especially if it is one that irritates you personally, keep in mind that your helping them gain skills they need to be effective. They are not bad people, they just don’t have the skills they need and you are helping them gain skills to be better participants in the groups process.
In the process of observation you may make an inference that a particular behavior means a particular thing. For example you might observe a member shifting around a lot with their body, and observe facial expressions which you infer to be reflections of anxiety. You need to check this before working on an intervention. The easiest way to do so is to state your observation followed by your inference: I see you moving around a lot on your chair, and also observed you making some facial expressions. I am inferring that you are anxious about this topic, is that correct?
By stating the behavior you observe along with the inference you can accumulate valuable knowledge that will help you diagnose things later. You can also just state the inference without stating the behavior.
It is important to understand that everyone is has different behaviors, that the same behavior may be used in other contexts, and any emotion or feeling may have a number of behaviors associated with it. So while looking for patterns is a good thing, it can be misleading, which is why you should check your inferences regularly.
Another way is to privately check with the individual about what a behavior means using the same technique. One very useful technique is to ask the group to help you and do a paper survey of how members react to certain feelings. For example questions might be: When I am angry I tend to: ______________. When I am feeling a conflicts I tend to ______________. Obviously not everyone will be able to fill out a survey like this because they simply may not know their behaviors. However a set of such sheets can help you figure out a lot of stuff, especially if you ask the right questions. <Note to myself: add the sample survey to the appendix>
Pattern sentences are a useful way to de-emotionalize an issue with an individuals behavior. The pattern most commonly used would be the: When you do ________________ I observe this reaction in the group _______
For more details about pattern sentences, see the Troubleshooting your meetings chapter.
When a problem behavior is repeated, make notes as best you can that describe the behavior, when it occurred, and where it occurred. If possible, make a note of what you observed the reaction of the behavior. It can be helpful to individuals in denial about their impacts when they have concrete data to show them.
When a problem behavior is the subject of a private intervention, it is very easy to come across as being very overbearing, and for the people you are working with to feel threatened or at least defensive. Use a collaborative approach the issue by asking for ideas for alternatives. For example, if the problem behavior is loud, angry shouting voice level ask for ideas of how to express anger in ways that do not frighten people. If you can work together to find alternatives, and especially if the participant comes up with ideas, they are much more likely to work on them than if you just tell them. Even if you have several good ideas, try to get the participant to come up with them first, or offer hints to help them come up with the ideas.
If you are having a great session, and the participant is clearly desiring to make changes, see if you can arrange a contract. This does not have to be in writing, but can just a simple agreement between you. Offer to help by given them hidden feedback in the meetings. For example, you might arrange to make a hand signal such as putting one hand over an ear to indicate a voice is too loud. By creating such a collaborative arrangement, you are telling the participant that you are willing to help them succeed.
If you observe positive behavior changes reinforce the behavior by noticing it. Be careful that you do this appropriately, such as making comments in private if that is appropriate. It can be a simple non-verbal acknowledgement such as a smile and a nod, a wink, or even a pat on the back during a break. Or, perhaps right after the meeting or at a break, do a private close conversation referencing their behavior such as, “Nice work on the volume level today, Sue.”