What’s a facilitator?
What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘facilitator’? For me, despite working in the field of facilitation and knowing the awesome results that can come from a facilitated collaborative process, the image that comes to mind is of a glorified master of ceremonies. This is the person who says who speaks next and when lunch will be served. Sometimes they make use do uncomfortable group exercises.
In the past few weeks, my various conversations and explorations have highlighted some very different pictures of the ‘facilitator’, ones that we know but don’t always recall. And then, one description brought them all together.
Managers of Process
Ryon Stewart and Christine Jenkins are Challenge Coordinators at the NASA Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI), which means they bring together the questions that need answering with the expertise to crowdsource potential solutions. They suggested that one of the greatest successes of the Center was that they had done the work to make the process of crowdsourcing available and easy to use for any agency in the United States Government. The Center not only supports its partners in delivering the various crowdsourcing challenges, they track success, measure savings, and effectively promote crowdsourcing as a means to good collaborative solutions.
In this picture, the facilitator is the manager of a process meant to help participants on their journey.
Shapers of Conversation
Kim Hyshka of Dialogue Partners reminded me of how we shape the conversations toward a purpose and how we sometimes (ok, maybe often) need some help to shape the conversation so that it can achieve its purpose. As Kim sees it, some of our biggest challenges can be overcome by working to deepen the conversation, creating a relationship between participants that allows them potentially to work together to find a path forward.
In this picture, the facilitator helps shape the conversation so that it becomes more about the path forward than about the individuals in the conversation.
Removing Obstacles
And then I read Adam Kahane’s most recent book: Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together, and I had a “come into the light” moment.
In the book, Kahane describes transformative facilitation as “not getting participants to work together but helping them remove the obstacles to doing so.” Facilitators unblock what Kahane describes as the “three essential ingredients to moving forward together: contribution, connection, and equity.”
The book goes on to describe how facilitators should work in this space to remove obstacles, but for me the shift to frame the facilitator as one that removes obstacles to moving forward together felt like a key turning in a lock.
With this lens, the CoECI Challenge Coordinators become the people who are removing obstacles that prevent everyday people from being able to contribute to big problems and that obstruct effective internal government working connections. In conversation, the facilitator becomes the one removing the obstacles to effective and equal connection between people. And the beauty is that the participants themselves are part of removing barriers to contribution, connection and equity.
I am looking forward to thinking more about collaboration through the lens of transformative facilitation. How would Adam Kahane’s frame of reference affect how you think about facilitation, engagement, and collaboration? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below or by emailing scott.millar@collaboration-dynamics.com.
Happy Collaborating.
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together.
Season 2 of the Cool Collaborations podcast is here. Join Scott as he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
