Facilitation Basics

Facilitation - Self

The most powerful and influential tool effective facilitators bring into a room is themselves. Facilitation is much more than having a bag ful of useful tools and activities.   Effective facilitators know how to use themselves as an instrument to help groups be more sucessful.   What does this mean to use yourself as an instrument?

First, it means using your own experience of a group at a particular moment to better understand or question other group members' experiences at that moment.   This is a much richer knowing than simply assuming everyone else is having the same experience.  

Second, it means using yourself to model the types of behavior you expect of other group members.   This is a deliberate choice of how you will interact with others so they have concreate examples of the most productive ways to work together.

Effective facilitators know themselves.   Knowing yourself is recognizing your own values, beliefs, needs, perspectives, and capabilities, and understanding how they affect your facilitation.   Each of these has impact on the behavior of facilitators, and the most effective facilitators have taken the time to examine each to better understand themselves.

Facilitators find self-knowledge most useful when it actually helps them become more effective.   The real test of the usefulness of this knowledge is whether or not it results in choosing behaviors that help groups be more successfu.   Effective facilitators who are conscious about themselves use all of their resources, more accurately interpret group dynamics, and recognize how groups impact on them.   This self-awareness helps them choose helpful actions and model desired behavior.   Facilitators must use their self knowledge to consciously create an impact on each group.