Co-facilitation: It’s not magic

Throughout the interviews with research participants for my PhD, despite all their willingness to speak logically, rationally and analytically of their experiences of co-facilitation, there remained the thread of ‘co-facilitation is magic’. Research participants explained and defined co-facilitation, described co-facilitation in general, illuminated co-facilitation with stories of particular co-facilitation experiences and explored with me a plethora of knowledge, skills and values that made co-facilitation successful. After all of this, there was still something that was hard to identify, hard to describe and hard to define. This something was the phenomenon of ‘magic’.

Hunter, Bailey and Taylor (1995a) described this ‘magic’ as ‘synergy’: something a team achieves when there is purpose, vision, membership, ownership, results, structure, coordination, integrity, communication, intentionality, responsibility, rigour, leadership and management in place.

This did not seem sufficient to me. There are times when one of these dimensions is absent yet still the magic occurs. Moreover, the idea that all of this needs to be in place before there could be any magic is utterly daunting!

Shaw (2002, p.8) maintained that “the profession of organisation and development and process consultation has ossified in ways that have become more inhibiting than enabling”. Throughout her book, Shaw debunked the notions of establishing guidelines, developing structures, processes and techniques, managing conflict and, in fact, most of the dimensions of facilitation and collaboration I discussed in my PhD (and are the Core Competencies identified by the International Association of Facilitators)!

Shaw’s (2002) work on ‘self-organising systems’ was provocative in offered a different insight into this hard to define and elusive feeling of magic; a magic that I also experience with the Australasian Facilitator’s Network.

Some research participants were prepared to suggest that there are ways of creating magical experiences. One research participant used his experiences in improvisational theatre as a way of demonstrating that the conditions could be created in which that magic almost certainly would occur. Co-facilitators can take advantage of situations and improvise to support a group to achieve significant outcomes. This is ‘serendipity’, “planned insight coupled with unplanned events” (Fine & Deegan 1996, p.11).

I sought writers and researchers who would help me to explicate my assumptions and pre-suppositions and provide insight into the issues of describing the ‘magic of co-facilitation’. Five dimensions of complexity emerged that add to an understanding of the experience of co-facilitation.

Dimension 1: Co-facilitation is irregular, diverse, uncontrollable and unpredictable – the reality is that co-facilitators work at the edge of chaos  

Systems for working together evolve, emerge and are infinite. Preparation and the development of predictable systems enable co-facilitators to identify points of discomfort, departures from the topic, detours from the agenda and to notice the unpredictable so that they can “hold open the interplay of sense-making, hold open the experience of not-knowing…. and approach the art of gathering and conversing in ways more conducive to the emergence of meaningful action, creative endeavour and differentiated identities” (Shaw 2002, p.11).

Throughout the whole co-facilitation experience, co-facilitators are constantly improvising, adapting and changing their thinking and responses, as well as the structures and processes they may have planned formally or informally. This is a process of ‘organisational learning’, an ability to:

• receive, understand and interpret in various ways, signals from an external environment;

• respond in various ways to those signals, including creating new internal structures and organisational feature; and
• influence the external environment both proactively and reactively (Morrison 2002).

Dimension 2: Each individual in the co-facilitation experience is unique

“Not only is every person different – every person also has unparalleled possibilities and potential” (Hodgson & Richards 1974, p.20).  Co-facilitators need to expect that each experience will be different from others and work to be absorbed in it. In this way, they respond to the needs of their co-facilitator and the group from a position of creativity. Being positive about the differences has the potential to make them more acceptable.

Dimension 3: Co-facilitation is organised around relationships

Deegan and Fine (1996, p.7), in relation to ethnographic research, suggested that there can be many good relationships; “research can be conducted with many good contacts, rather than with a unique heroic one. The question is not about establishing relations with only the right person, but rather whether the researcher can make use of the relationship”. In the context of co-facilitation, if co-facilitation can be conducted with many good facilitators, the question is not about establishing relations with the right facilitator, only whether the co-facilitators can make good use of the relationship.

People draw on prior experiences to make decisions about how they behave, what they say, and what they might do in the future; in other words, people draw on their memories of history (their own and others’) to learn.  Over time, it is possible for co-facilitators to learn about one another, to appreciate their uniqueness as individuals, to develop ways of providing feedback that nourishes and to build a history of experiences that enables them to trust one another more and more deeply.

Morrison (2002, p.18) reminded me that “the root of ‘feedback’ is ‘food’; nourishment rather than simply information”.

From a complexity theory perspective, connections are important because “information, knowledge and meanings and their control” are distributed throughout the system (Morrison 2002, p.19). Working in a connected and distributed way is a more positive experience for co-facilitators and group participants if they can derive pleasure from working as part of a team. Working together to respond simultaneously, cooperatively and coherently to something that’s happening is a skill but in co-facilitation it is a skill that belongs to the team, not the individual.

As in improvisational theatre, when co-facilitators aim to improve their characterisation, sustain their roles, draw from themselves, get inside the script, respond to the rhythm of sound and movement and work together as part of a creative team (Hodgson & Richards 1974), they make each other ‘look good’.

And in those moments when they seem to be acting as a single mind, co-facilitators feel ‘larger than life’ and are able to create novel relationships for themselves and the participants in the co-facilitation experience.

Dimension 4: Co-facilitators interpret what is happening

In order to take advantage of serendipity, co-facilitators need to ‘work into the future’. The challenge of working with alternative possible futures, of course, is the capacity to be quite wrong. Schwarz (2002) described ‘key types of inferences’, including inferring the causes of behaviour, inferring emotions, attributing motives and making value judgements. He also considered that facilitators make inferences about the quality of the conversations and the effectiveness of the group’s process and structure. Schwarz’s (1994, 2002) ‘skilled facilitator approach’ encouraged facilitators to avoid attributing more meaning to behaviour than is warranted. The solution is to ensure that inferences are supported by the data available and can be explained clearly, and to check inferences with others. This means being prepared for others to see things differently. Shaw (2002, p.56) described this process as “prospective sense-making”.

Shaw (2002, p.51) suggested that when we converse “we are immersed in a sensuous flow of patterned feeling, a kind of ethos in which words ‘in their speaking’ have the power to ‘move’ or arrest’ us, shift our perceptions and actions because we are communicating as intelligence bodies”. The directions of our conversation are ‘tendencies’ that “give form to a feeling”.

Dimension 5: Co-facilitators keep their wits about them

Working into the future and identifying feelings of tendency require co-facilitators to tolerate a fair degree of ambiguity. Conversations may proceed in unforeseen directions, people may have conflicts with one another, personal challenges will arise. Co-facilitators need to remain alert to the needs of each other and the group, draw on their specific knowledge, skills and expertise as required and respond appropriately.

Co-facilitators are not perfect and ‘magical co-facilitation’ does not depend on them being so. Deegan and Fine (1996, pp.10-11) suggested that ‘serendipity’ “derives from those unplanned happenings that stem from one’s own hands. This involves the powerful role of mistakes leading to insight … Mistakes may be treated not only as unavoidable errors, but as events that uncover preconceptions and choices … Learning how to learn from mistakes is critical for using serendipity”.

For co-facilitators, part of the challenge of ‘magical co-facilitation’ is to keep their wits about them and recognise that experiences that feel ‘new’ have some similarities or differences with other experiences at other times and places.

CONCLUSION – CREATING MAGIC

Co-facilitation is unpredictable. History and experience may provide co-facilitators with information to support them in their future experiences. Co-facilitation is a developing event in which patterns of behaviour emerge. Identifying these and acting to keep the focus on the issues to be resolved and the team, can support the group participants and the co-facilitators.

The unique qualities of each co-facilitation and group of participants are to be enjoyed and valued. There is more than one ‘right’ co-facilitator, one perfect match. There is more than one ‘magic’ group or experience. Co-facilitators influence each other and the group, are influenced by each other and by the group. The combination of relationships, when valued and supported, leads to joint action. Relationships can be fostered through nourishing feedback, spending time and sharing history, knowledge and experiences. When one co-facilitator looks good, the team looks good.

The nature of facilitation is that facilitators are constantly anticipating what will happen next; they work into the future. In order to remain responsive rather than being prescriptive, facilitators gain impressions or feelings of the patterns that are emerging. They improvise processes and techniques in order to support the group and facilitate learning. Co-facilitators anticipate each other, respond to each other, identify feelings of tendency and improvise in relation to each other.

Learning can be gained from positive and negative events. Magic occurs in moments of illumination, at times of intuitive ease, when things are suddenly, dramatically in balance.

Magical co-facilitation depends on the co-facilitators being able to facilitate, being able to collaborate and being aware of their expanding relationship. It is being the right person, with another right person, in the right place, at the right time, seeing and taking advantage of the opportunities this affords, and creating a space in which novel and creative relationships between people, materials, space, time and context can occur.