When you practice a skill, it stands to reason that you will, at least to some extent, get better at it. When working with a co-facilitator there is a point where you can anticipate each other’s moves and adjust automatically.
But there is a lot to think about when you are facilitating a group!
- Intrapersonal processes: the individual facilitator’s relationships with themselves, including personality characteristics, character traits, modes of defence, and levels of need.
- Interpersonal processes: the relationships between the facilitator and the members of the group, including communication patterns, flow of information, levels of conflict and trust, ways of relating, listening and establishing meaningful and viable alliances.
- Group level processes: the relationships between the facilitator and the group which influence the behaviour of the group as a system.
- Intergroup processes: the relationships between individuals or sub-groups which determine how people are treated and expect to be treated due to hierarchical or task positions, sex, race, age, ethnicity, and ideological differences.
- Interorganisational processes: the relationships between the wider organisation and its physical, social and cultural environment.
In co-facilitation, each facilitator is not only managing all of these levels of relationship as they perceive them but also the relationship they have with each other.
So how can co-facilitators “get good at” co-facilitation so that they can anticipate each other’s moves and adjust automatically? One way is to talk about your personal beliefs about the power of individuals and groups and the purposes of having facilitators or co-facilitators.
- Do you believe that a group will work together effectively if each individual in the group is present, active and contributing?
- Do you believe that an effective group needs group structures, group norms and a shared task?
- How should facilitators conduct themselves with a group? How much humour is appropriate? Is the role of the facilitator to support or confront?
- How do you use questions to elicit information from the group or statements to inform the group?
- When should facilitators provide solutions for a group?
- When should facilitators intervene?
How will you support one another? When and how might you:
- support an intervention (e.g. provide more explanation, repeat instructions)
- modify an intervention
- rescue a co-facilitator because you think they need help
- rescue a group participant because you think they need help
- correct each other
- confront the co-facilitator within the group session
- signal a need to speak privately
- help each other if one gets tangled in a conflict with the group or an individual
- walk away?
Facilitating Conversations 