Introduction
I remember the first time I stepped into the SPOT on FacilitationTM training by Facilitators Network Singapore (FNS). I thought most would be professional facilitators who worked regularly with focus group discussions, strategic retreats, and board meetings.
Instead, I found professionals from a variety of fields. From researchers at government statutory boards, to staff at Microsoft, to quality control engineers at a pharmaceutical company. I don’t say this to boast about the quality of alumni of FNS’ programmes (and I certainly get no commission for promoting their courses!)
But it forced me to think:
Why were they here?
Was facilitation really that important a skill to have?
Why is it important?
Anchors in our fluid modernity
By now, you may already know that the world is changing faster than you will ever know. That isn’t new. What may be new to you is that surviving, or even thriving, in a different future would involve skills that are more similar, than they are different.
There are many who talk about how our increasingly digital economy will involve you learning digital skills such as data analytics, technology application, or market research.
Yes… and yet a digital economy cannot distract us from the fundamental thing upon which all things turn.
Make a guess.
It’s not bytes. Or computers. Or pixels.
It’s people.
If COVID has shown us anything, it’s that we still crave people. Despite all the advances in teleconferencing technology, we still want to sit in a physical room, face to face with someone, to talk through something difficult. We want that sense of camaraderie that comes from being in a shared physical space with someone else. And if we truly touch our hearts, no matter how sleek the Zoom interface is, we know that it will never replace the richness of a person-to-person interaction.
And because of our deep yearning for human relationship, I believe more of our work in the coming years will involve a return to a focus on human relationship, amidst the growing push to deliver a digital experience.
It is our skill with people which will move us into the next decade.
Don’t just take it from me. Take it from the former President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, who authored the UNESCO reset on education for the 21st century in 19961.
In 1996, he observed that the four pillars of learning would be:
- learning to be
- learning to be together
- learning to know
- learning to do
Note how the first two pillars were around learning to be around people – firstly, with yourself, then with others.
But why is this aspect of being with so important? And how does the skill of facilitation, for lack of a better word, facilitate this way of being?
I believe it’s because learning to be, allows you to build greater congruence in a world that’s constantly shifting. When you learn to sit with yourself, you learn to listen to what’s inside you and then make sense of what’s happening outside you.
Congruence is the harmony that comes from having a close fit between what’s inside and outside. It is congruence that helps you to anchor yourself in shifting sands. It is congruence that helps you to connect what’s external to what you feel internally, and to find coherence.
A few weeks ago, my friend pointed out how incongruent I was. He observed how I seemed relatable and personable through the articles I wrote. But in person, there was a distance that formed between me and the other person. It was almost as if others couldn’t connect on a deeper level with me.
Was I truly the same inside and out?
And maybe that’s your struggle today. In a world that’s shifting beyond recognition, you’re being asked to make changes beyond your comfort zone. In fact, the time spent working at home, away from your colleagues, has forced you to wonder who you are, and what you stand for, outside the traditional confines of an office. If you can work from anywhere, anytime, if all you need is a WIFI connection to work, then what keeps you tethered?
Working from home, you’ve shown personal aspects of yourself to your colleagues – your children screaming in the background, a messy room even friends don’t see, your unfamiliarity with tech platforms.
When you work from home, it’s even easier to hide aspects of yourself. You no longer have colleagues in your ear checking if you are okay. You can build an impression that everything is okay, even when it’s not.
Why facilitation?
Can I share with you a story? The story of how I stumbled on facilitation?
It couldn’t be more ironic. I had sent Janice an article about how to facilitate transformation for millennials, drawing from my own experience of how hard it had been to engage millennials in online meetings for her to send to her network if she finds it useful.
She invited me to the SPOT On training she conducted. Before I went, I thought I knew everything about facilitation. After all, I had spoken in different international contexts, had engaged international audiences, and even had a YouTube channel!
But Prabu said something during the training that struck me. I’m paraphrasing here. But he said,
how much change are we really having on audiences when those global speakers speak to you for hours and decorate their CVs with yet another conference they have spoken at?
That’s when I realised that in a world of noise, I was always focusing on how to amplify my voice to make myself better heard.
- More social media channels to post on!
- More certificates to make myself look reputable!
- More things to say!
It’s tempting to fall into the trap of shouting louder and louder, rather than sitting down and taking the time to truly listen. It is this posture of truly listen that facilitation imparts.
Not just another skill to acquire
Facilitation is important, when we look at the SkillsFuture report2 on the 16 Core Critical ‘Skills to build skills’. Facilitation gives us the skill to interact with others and to bring out the skills of others to build better solutions.
But looking at facilitation as yet another ‘competency’ to acquire may not be the way forward. We risk carving up the competence required to thrive in the 21st century into parts, rather than looking at it as a whole.
As the OECD recognised in their 5-year study of key competencies for the 21st century, competence cannot be understood as abstract achievement, but instead ‘the ability to meet important challenges in life in a complex world.’3
Please don’t see ‘facilitation’ as yet another ‘hot skill’ to acquire for 2022. It’s not.
Instead, see facilitation is a way of being.
Facilitation is a way of being
Can I tell you a secret? I struggle with arrogance. I used to think that I had the best ideas in the room. Okay maybe not the room… but every room I went into.
I would get so upset when people didn’t value my ideas that I would end up sulking like a 25 year old baby.
Then I met Facilitation.
Facilitation has taken me on a humbling journey. She has taught me to take a step back, to let the group take a step up. She has taught me that success isn’t when I come up with a better idea. It’s when the group comes up with a collective idea, that they own, and they feel invested in.
She has taught me that actually, I don’t know anything.
It teaches you to adopt a posture of not knowing.
As a facilitator, you are thrown into places where you are not the subject matter expert. It is from that position that even greater ideas are born. Great facilitators spot the fragment of an idea, oft-discarded because it sounds too crazy, and invite participants to question their assumptions about how ‘stupid’ that idea may be.
Facilitation teaches me that together, ideas are better.
Facilitation is being with people
If you’ve sat in meetings with a not-so-good boss (it’s okay, I won’t tell him you said that), you may have noticed that he was the one who spent the most time talking. It’s what Brené Brown calls the ‘halo effect’ in her book ‘Dare to Lead’. We put a halo around the ideas of the people whom we think are more influential and end up not questioning them.
Facilitation teaches you to bring out the ideas of all, not one. It helps you build inclusivity. During my time serving as a board director of a British student charity, I was the youngest. It was easy to feel awed by the others in the room. After all, what could a 21 year old add to a conversation filled with other captains of industry? But our chair, always took time to intentionally cede the floor to me. He built this space where no one felt stupid, even if it was a clarifying question.
You’ve been in meetings where you feel like you’re a fly on the wall, watching, breathing, and never contributing. Don’t let that happen to others. People have taken time to be at that meeting. The least we can do is to see them, sit with them, be with them and listen to them.
To sit with the problem
Hold on, what is the problem really?
Every board director in the room had been animatedly sharing their opinions about the response we should take in light of the latest series of cuts to our grant. But one director paused us and forced us to think.
What, really, was the problem?
What is the question we are trying to solve?
You’ve probably been in discussions where everyone seems engaged. But deep down, you know that people are talking around the problem, and not about the problem. The problem.
Maybe it’s a toxic colleague. Or an incompetent boss. Or poor management. In other words, we are all acting in a drama where we are pretending to solve the problem, but that isn’t the real problem.
Facilitation teaches you to first define the question, before trying to find the solution. It forces you to define the question in a way that is safe enough for people to talk about and engage with.
Thus, rather than asking,
How can we ‘right-size’ our organisation to make it more effective?
By now, you probably have checked out. You know ‘right-size’ is just another nice sounding word for ‘redundancies’. You go into the meeting, scared, wondering if a poor performance would lead you to be the one who’s right-sized.
Instead, we ask,
How might we thrive, rather than just survive?
Facilitation looks at the magic of miracles, the realm of the impossible. It asks,
How might we…, if we could have no limits, make something ‘crazy’ possible?
More importantly, it teaches you to be comfortable with not knowing. It forces you to realise that sometimes, at the end of the discussion, there won’t be a straightforward, easy answer. But committing to the process of having the conversation was the first important step in finding an answer.
Conclusion
Today, I don’t think our world is calling you to stay comfortable. It’s challenging you. It’s calling you to adventure. You may probably have sensed the winds of change. And deep within, you know that the actions we take as a human race in these years can end up determining the fate of humankind.
What if you could bring out that Braveheart in yourself, who dares greatly, sits with uncertainty, and questions certainty? What if you could bring out the daring dreamers in your team?
What if you could be the hero? What would you do?
Byline
John is excited about helping young people to brave challenges of the 21st century and writes about how young people can flourish in work at liveyoungandwell.com.
Do you want to facilitate or do you want to be a facilitator? Eileen Dowse, the previous chairperson of the International Institute for Facilitation once asked. This question stuck with us. If you desire to learn not just to facilitate but to be a facilitator, check out our SPOT on FacilitationTM and Virtual Facilitation WorkshopTM. To be a better facilitator, please contact us at admin@fns.sg for more information. You will find it to be the greatest gift for yourself this New Year – Happy New Year!
- Delors, J. (1996) ‘Learning: The Treasure Within’. Geneva: UNESCO
- SkillsFuture Singapore (2021) ‘Skills Demand for the Future Economy: Spotlight on Singapore’s Key Growth Areas’. Singapore: SkillsFuture Singapore
- OECD (2003) ‘THE DEFINITION AND SELECTION OF KEY COMPETENCIES: Executive Summary’. Zurich: OECD
