stages
of Facilitation from Awareness to Activity
An
example of deconstructing a Design Shop is bringing overwhelming
resources to the doing. You can take the whole process and use the
principles to design. Make sure you have sponsors, you understand
the issues, etc. But what does that give you? You can create through
design, environment, support, so the burden on facilitation is minimal.
If you understand the form, process, rules of an event, you can
design effective environments.
As
a facilitator, you need to avoid getting into something that is
fifty feet above your head. Part of that is awareness about your
own limits. If the design is weaker or the team is smaller, there
will be more facilitation in the traditional sense. If the thing
gets out of bounds, there will be more facilitation. If it is
set up right, it will run itself.
The
Army has a model with awareness, familiarity, competency, and
mastery.
awareness
Awareness is everything you should know about. Go to a good movie
and reverse engineer it. There are people out there crafting messages.
Really take what you know about people and deconstruct and reverse
engineer what that system tells you. There is little I can tell
you, but I can help alert you to the awareness of that.
familiarity
Familiarity
is to understand the methods, the tools, the tricks, and how they
flow together. This has to do with the forms of an event.
competency
There
are spiritual and physical energy, psychology and philosophy in
the room. We should think through and be aware of the ideas and
where they come from in your organization. Competency means that
you study that. You have to like people. It is fascinating to
watch people solve a problem. To be competent at this, you have
to be interested in how it works. There is much that is extremely
mechanical, and there are many models that help you understand
that. You have to study to get these frameworks.
mastery
Mastery
is about understanding yourself. You have to know why you are
doing something and be at ease. You have to be willing to make
a mistake and be wise about doing that. You have to know when
to hold them and when to fold them. You begin to realize that
you are not the most significant part of it, but that the job
will be done. You have to be comfortable with taking those risks.
If
I were to make up a book list on these four parts, there might
not be one book on facilitation on it. If I go into an IT organization
and ask if they know Johnny Von Neuman, and they don't, I know
they do not have the historical context of their industry. It
does not make them incompetent, but they do not have the context.
They may be doomed to make mistakes that others made and resolved
decades ago.
Facilitation
is not a field but a process that should be built into all levels
of the organization. It rests in neurolinguistics, psychology,
and health. Study things that make facilitation possible. You
have been facilitating all of your life. Do not ignore your own
history.
000706.Matt
Taylor
