There are a couple of techniques. Never talk to a room. Talk to a person. Reach into a person, find sympathy with one person and make that link. Once I have connected, I can build awareness. If two are opposed, I can be with each in a sympathetic way and then I can find a common connection and bring that out. That helps them to make the connection. That creates a context in which the harder stuff can be dealt with. People get alienated.

We tend to critique strangers more than our family. But we can live with the strange habits of our own families. Much of the cause of conflict is the alienation of "otherness." There is no sense of humanity. The military has to get people in that mood to kill people. Thirty percent of combat casualties are people who have never fired their weapons. It takes huge systematic propaganda and entrainment to get people to kill other people systematically.

It is easy to put someone outside of your circle that is not your family or friends. Part of facilitation is pulling people together. There are a lot of things you can do as a facilitator to bring people together. Use of tone, sensibility, and what is in and what is out is key. You use that awareness to help yourself and to help the people work better. Facilitating is stripping away some of the layers that hide people. Most people are good, smart, collaborative, and creative given a chance, a context in which that can come out. That idea was not where I started as a person.

The facilitation process is creating a language together, realizing together, helping all of us become a little more human together. When we are human we work pretty well. We have to get rid of the not useful models about what the organization is, who we are, etc. These are obstacles to the group process, even if the perceptions are accurate. They are a real barrier to communication, which is the only way they will change.

000706.Matt Taylor