Category: Co-facilitation

Cofacilitation can take different forms. Here are tables comparing: * different ways of co-facilitating * facilitation, mediation, teaching and leading * facilitation and co-facilitation * ways of working with others * personal relationships * co-facilitation as facilitation, as a way of working together, as a personal relationship and as a professional relationship * differing ways of sharing responsibilities * co-facilitation using analogies

Even 30 years ago there was a lot of literature to draw from in exploring co-facilitation! Here is a list of the texts I referred to in my research. And I welcome you to contact me? I have structured a range of training events to develop co-facilitation skills – from 2 to 10 hours!

Is co-facilitation worth doing? Co-facilitation is a way of working with a group. Just as ‘facilitation’ is supposed to ‘make things easy for a group’, novice co-facilitators believe that co-facilitation will be easier for the facilitators. The difficulty is that this is belief not reality; co-facilitation is not easier. The research participants in my study clearly articulated the ‘dark side’ of co-facilitation and yet most of them recommended co-facilitation as a way of working with a group, whether it be “in the right time and place” or recognising that “not all situations need co-facilitation but most would benefit from it”.

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.

Co-facilitation is full of possibilities. Co-facilitators enter into the co-facilitation experience optimistically, hopefully and expectantly, wanting this co-facilitator to be the right person in the right place at the right time. This is an opportunity to “make a difference”, “to reach a vision”. They are there to “represent each other and the profession”, to “take a creative place in the community”. Every relationship is a possible recommendation, a lead to new contacts, an opportunity to build individual and collective reputations. Co-facilitators “commit to something long-term”, to something “enriching and worthwhile”.

Facilitators need to manage individuals and the group. And this is one of the advantages of cofacilitation!

One of the simple, but overlooked, ways of improving the experience of cofacilitation is to 'walk the talk': to develop guidelines, structures and processes that mirror your work with the group. Want to know more? Call me!