In exploring how co-facilitators facilitate, collaborate, exist in an expanding relationship and manage the unpredictability of co-facilitation, seven underlying structures emerge, ‘things that co-facilitation cannot be without’. They do not individually describe co-facilitation, nor are they exclusive to co-facilitation. I argue, however, that from the perspectives provided in my research, co-facilitation cannot be called ‘co-facilitation’ without them.
1. Expect the Best
Facilitation requires facilitators to ‘make things easier for the group’, to be committed to the group process, optimistic, trusting and trustworthy. Collaboration requires a willingness to support, be open and maintain communication with each other. Positive ‘circles of influence’ reinforce each other. Positive starting points are more likely to lead to positive outcomes. ‘Expecting the best’ is an attitude, an orientation to the future, a strength gained from knowing oneself and one’s competencies and a willingness to enter into a relationship with others that underlies all of the dimensions of co-facilitation.
2. Pull from Trust
Common ethics, values and theoretical stance are important but, as research participants noted, underlying them is a sense of trust. Tolerance, awareness, being open to ideas, advice, suggestions and challenges require trust. Behaving predictably, communicating thoughtfully, supporting each other and trying to “make each other look good” build trust. Working together develops a level of emotional attachment, which both intensifies conflicts and supports the relationship in times of conflict. Co-facilitators need to ‘work into the future’, but they cannot afford to wait for trust to develop. They need to begin from a premise of trust, to “pull from trust”. Without that trust, unfounded and unconditional at the outset, although supported in reasoned ways, the relationship cannot build, and it becomes difficult to manage the ambiguities of the experience. Trust is future oriented, but draws on the past and present. It is a sense of heightened awareness of oneself and the co-facilitator. It exists in the negotiation of the “space between the co-facilitators” as well as the shared space of the group which they occupy.
3. Work into the Future
Co-facilitators work to make a difference, coping with ambiguity, listening intensively to the development of ideas and the striving to achieve outcomes. Working into the future acknowledges that co-facilitators interpret their own, each other’s and group participants’ actions, that the work of facilitation is speculative.
4. Think ‘We’ not ‘Me’
Co-facilitators share a vision for themselves and the group, share responsibility for the event, processes and outcomes and share the space in which they work. When co-facilitators focus on themselves as individuals instead of as a team they lose the ‘co’ of co-facilitation. ‘We’ are an enlarged ‘you’ and ‘I’, a blending of commonalities and complementarities. ‘We’ operate to make things easier for the group and ‘I’ can gain satisfaction from ‘us’ looking good. ‘We’ exist across past, present and future.
5. Be Prepared for Points of Discomfort
The differences between facilitators that are such an advantage to the group session will provide challenges for the facilitators. If there are no tensions, it is likely that the facilitators are bringing similarity to the group, they are facilitating but not co-facilitating. Discomfort is very much focussed in the present, yet the negotiation literature suggests that co-facilitators need to conduct themselves as though any conflict will lead to a future relationship. Staying in the present, the conflict seems larger and more important than it needs to be.
6. Have a Learning Focus
A learning focus acknowledges that co-facilitators can, and will, learn. It signals that growth and development will happen. Learning is not always comfortable. A learning focus accepts that there will be mistakes, tensions and disagreements but prevents co-facilitators from being trapped by them. A learning focus exists in the living of the moment, with an awareness of the present. It indicates to co-facilitators and the group that things change, needs change, and the ways in which the facilitators and the group are operating need to change. It announces co-facilitators’ flexibility, willingness to respond and commitment to facilitate.
7. Be Nourishing
Effective co-facilitation depends on specific, focussed feedback given in a way that it can be heard and attended to with openness and tolerance. Co-facilitators provide feedback to the group, the group provides feedback to the co-facilitators. Co-facilitators provide feedback to each other and the group provides feedback to the organisation or community. Managing the event, process, group and individuals, interactions with the co-facilitator, conflicts, and the achievement of outcomes, responding to circles of influence and coping with the developing event all depend on feedback. Feedback speaks about past events for the purpose of shaping future ones.
CONCLUSION
Expecting the best, pulling from trust, working into the future, thinking ‘we’ not ‘me’, being prepared for points of discomfort, having a learning focus and being nourishing are not steps to undertake in order to co-facilitate. They are structures which underlie the experience of co-facilitation, the ingredients which make co-facilitation ‘co-facilitation’ with emphasis both on the ‘co’ and the ‘facilitation’.
Without these structures, deciding whether to work together, determining ways of working together, negotiating roles and responsibilities, managing the event, the process, individuals, the group and conflicts and achieving outcomes are, at best, mechanical processes. Their absence limits the positive effects of having two or more facilitators with different knowledge, skills, abilities, personalities and experience to work with the group. While frameworks can describe the steps of the mechanical processes, the structures of co-facilitation are more personal, unique to each experience, with each co-facilitator and each group.
Whether or not the co-facilitators are seasoned facilitators, co-facilitators who have worked together or with a group previously and/or have developed a relationship, the structures underlie the experience. Their absence limits opportunities to negotiate solutions to problems and to create a novel space in which creative outcomes are achieved. Conflict resolution processes can provide a sequence through which differences can be addressed, but the satisfactory achievement of a solution relies on the underpinning structures.
These structures give deeper significance to the messages from the research participants’ stories. “Two devoted facilitators wanting to achieve the same goals”, “pulling from trust”, knowing that “their job here is the same”, working together on “one A4 piece of paper” and expecting that “to be human is to experience conflict”, are “the mitochondria, the power houses” of the group event. When the co-facilitators develop and use “robust guidelines, structures and processes”, being “aware of the dynamic” so that they can “give up the script”, they are “in service to the group’s success” and have the potential to “pull up the door to a wormhole”.
The absence of the structures is also indicated in the stories where co-facilitators recognised that “maybe their skills weren’t good enough”, or that they were “more stuck to the other facilitator”.
With the structures in place, co-facilitation is an expanding relationship which has the potential to contribute to the development of the community. Without them, co-facilitation is limited to being “a tool with a time and a place”.
Facilitating Conversations 