229 - Mastering Facilitation to Navigate a Fractured World with Jo Nelson

What does it take to make workshops work? And how can we facilitate collaboration that sticks and leads to results? My name is Myriam Hadnes, and with the Workshops Work podcast, I'm on the mission to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work. Today with me on the show is Jo Nelson, and we speak about the origins and the essence of facilitation, as she is a co-founder of the IAF, So stay tuned. By the way, if you want to support the show to remain free and accessible to all, why don't you consider a small donation via workshops.work/support? And now lean back to enjoy the show. Jo Nelson, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

I am so excited for this conversation and to learn about your perspective and experience of what facilitation really means. And before we're getting there, I always start with the same question, and I'm really curious where this will get us. When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

That's a really good question because I think I was facilitating long before the word facilitator meant group process facilitator. So 1970, when I graduated from university, I started working with ICA, and I was leading meetings on our staff meetings and things. But more we were doing training. So it took a while before people began to separate training from facilitation. And then in 1976, we did participatory community sessions, town meetings we called them, all over the United States and North America. And I'm not sure where else on the planet we did them, but we were actually talking with communities, actually asking questions of the community, what they wanted to see, their vision, and then some strategies, some obstacles and strategies. And so that's when I really think, for us, the facilitation field began to be a separate field from training.

Mm-hmm.

Where you're asking, not telling, where you had no message, but only questions for the group's wisdom to come out. But we didn't call it facilitation then. And the first time I remember calling it facilitation was, I think, 1990, when we tried to start working on facilitator competencies within ICA. And then later in '94, when we started the International Association of Facilitators, some of us ICA facilitators were part of that, a great part of getting that organization founded. And then we were doing a broader set of facilitator competencies. So really, the field of facilitation only got really, um, how would you say, formalized in probably '94.

Yeah.

So then for sure I knew I was a facilitator.

Yeah. And I have a few questions emerging from that, and one is, what was the mindset shift that was necessary for you and the other trainers to then grow into the space of facilitation and actually Give up control.

It was a big one. The mindset that had to shift was that we had answers. Now, for me personally, I grew up with a reputation as a talker. And I mean, a serious reputation as a talker. After I started facilitating, I found it a real gift to be able to let go of that image and let go of that picture of myself that other people had told me about and really listen. And I discovered this, the secret, which was if you ask people for their wisdom and you really listen, they think you are wise and you don't have to know a damn thing. You just ask a good question. Of course, the real secret is if you ask people for their wisdom and you really listen, you get more wise.

Yeah.

And that took some time, but it was letting go of having any ideological ideas or any right answers that was necessary to become facilitators, to become good facilitators. And there was a transition for us because in the very first community forums we did, we had little talks, a couple talks about the future. And we gave those up after a while and realized we didn't need to have those little talks. We just needed to ask people what they wanted.

Because usually every— well, the wisdom is in the room, right? And everyone loves to speak.

Yeah.

When they're really listened to. And I love what you said about the wisdom and that they believe you're wise when you listen. And at the same time, I wonder whether you do need to be wise to actually really deeply listen, because it's this kind of humility that you can only deeply listen when you're really curious in understanding and open to absorb the other person's perspective. And You cannot do that if you're not aware of your own limitations, of your own not knowing, and if you don't have the curiosity.

Yeah, I discovered that once. I was in a session where there was a very wise, very, very, very deep, profound teacher, and she asked me to give a presentation on a topic that I knew about. And as I was doing this, which she never did, she didn't ask other people to give presentations, it just happened to be It was about Aboriginal culture and spirituality, Aboriginal Australian culture and personality. And I lived in an Australian community and doing community development projects. And so as I was talking, I had this incredible image shift where I could see that this 100 people that were sitting out there listening all had something that they could share with the world. And I became intensely curious about what that was. But if they had had the support that I'd had to develop it, that somebody to ask them to talk about it and so forth, you know, all the opportunity. And suddenly I wanted to know. And it was only after that, that in the next 2 weeks after that, that several people told me what a great listener I was.

Beautiful. What a growth moment.

Oh, yes, it was. It was just before my 40th birthday when you've got kind of this transition time. It was very powerful, actually. And I think that's when I really truly became a great facilitator, a master facilitator, maybe. I mean, that's saying a lot. I mean, I don't mean that in an egotistical way, but I mean, that's when my facilitation capacity deepened powerfully.

Through the listening?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I was curious. And then every time I stood up after that with any group, I would say to myself a little mantra. I am curious, what is this group going to come up with?

Yeah, falling in love with the group so that we can really be there with curiosity and care. Yeah, and I love that because it really shows or highlights what facilitation at the end is all about. It's not so much then about the activities and the methods, but more about the presence you bring in I think it helps to have methods.

We have methods that are based on many years of observations and study and actual observations all over the planet and how people think clearly when they think clearly.

Mm-hmm.

And so methods do help the listening because you can ask questions that allow people to think more deeply, or you can use methods that actually help people listen to each other's wisdom and bring it, look for the patterns that connect rather than to have an argument or even a discussion, which has the root of percussion in it, right?

Yes.

So methods do help if they are thoughtful, deep methods, but not gimmicky. Not just cute things that make people, you know, not just fun things, but things that are fun because they are helping people think deeply. Yeah.

And I think what I hear also in your And what you say is methods that help to look into themselves, so really that facilitate the wisdom of the group and the wisdom of the individual. So how do the methods help someone to look deeper inside of themselves?

Yes, and find their own wisdom and then able to articulate it to the group.

Yeah, and then the method is, um, is a vehicle, and I wonder, I would be curious about your point of view if you can have A facilitator who has only knowledge about the method or only the presence and the listening?

You have to know enough about the content that you can ask good questions. I had a client once that asked me to come and do something with oil companies and the provincial regulator, and it was about capping thermal wells, which I knew nothing about. And I thought it was the same as fracking, which I did know a little tiny bit about, but it wasn't. And I did not do the research ahead of time to know what the topic was. So a lot of the time was spent with them trying to teach me how to ask the questions.

Ooh.

We did in the end, which was really amazing. The companies and their regulator did come to consensus at the end, but it could have been a lot better had I known enough of the content to have designed the right questions the first time.

I see that.

Yeah. So you have to be, you have to know the group you're working with and know what they're gonna talk about a little bit. But then you have to detach yourself from any opinions that you've created. Yeah. And just kind of hang them on the doorknob as you walk in the room.

Yeah.

So that you're open to their wisdom.

Very true. And I wonder whether this isn't a 3rd component, that there's a method, there's a content, and then there's a mindset or presence of the facilitator.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. I would say that was true. Yeah. And everybody's presence is different. You have to think consciously about your own presence. So, for example, I'm 5 feet tall, and nobody's ever threatened by me, at least physically. So when I stand up in the front of the room, I've got to stand up so that— I mean, and then I always make a joke about, you know, Oh, I can't reach this far on the wall. Can somebody help me? Or, you know, I'm standing, I'm not sitting, you know. But I have a friend who, a colleague who is about 6'4 and built like a football player. Big guy, really big guy. And what he does is he sets up a metal wastebasket close or something like that close to the door. And just before he starts, he goes out, you know, whatever. And he comes back in and he trips over the wastebasket and there's this big clang and everybody laughs. And that brings him down to size so that he's not threatening. He's a presence in the room that is able to laugh at himself and ask questions.

That is beautiful as a strategy.

Isn't that great?

Yeah.

I learned that I had to create a big aura so people don't actually notice how small I am. Well, I'm not small anymore, but I'm short. And I learned that teaching school years ago, that I had to create this aura so that people would not just run over me.

Yeah. And isn't it funny that we can play with our presence and that a dominant presence doesn't need to be loud or big in terms of mass, but can also be almost spiritual?

Yeah. And I think it has to be conscious. If you're going to be a really good facilitator, you have to choose intentionally the image that you're presenting to the group, the presence that you're presenting to the group.

Yes, because sometimes it is important to have more, let's say, authority almost.

Yeah. And sometimes less. So if I work with indigenous groups and I have white hair, they will trust me Because I look like a grandmother who has authority. So I have to be really careful that I don't do anything stupid or superficial because I'm already invested with that.

Responsibility.

Yeah. Responsibility. Exactly. If I work with a bunch of engineers or university professors, I'm much more rational and strong because a little woman leading a bunch of engineers or university, male university professors needs to have a strong presence in order to be able to guide the room.

Oh, yeah.

So it's kind of fun that way. The other thing I discovered, and you said something about spiritual in terms of presence. One time I had what I experienced at the time as an utter disaster of an event. And afterward, I had this— I probably was clinically insane for a couple of days. Because I had this visionary experience over a piece of cheesecake with my, with one of my, the client who was actually paying for the thing, who was a colleague who understood. Anyway, I had this vision. Anyway, the short story is that what I learned then was that it wasn't me doing this work. It was whenever I thought it was me, it wasn't going to work. But it was something that wanted to bring people together, something larger than me that was using my hands and my being to work through. And when I remember that, I trust my intuition, and then things work. When my ego gets in the way, it collapses.

Where the facilitator becomes almost like a medium?

Yes.

For something to emerge, but it's not us, it's through us.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't pretend to know what that is. I just, I mean, everybody has different language for what that is for them.

Mm-hmm.

But it is when you're open to healing forces to work through you, then you, then it can, then something powerful can happen.

Yeah. And this is, I think, a very interesting area in the entire facilitation conversation where it's a slippery slope to become woo-woo. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm absolutely not on the woo-woo side of anything.

I can tell. But still there are these elements.

Yeah, yeah, they are, there are. Yeah.

And I think this is a nice bridge because it's so opposing to the early days of the IAF, the International Association of Facilitators. You just mentioned that it was the moment where you realized that there is a different way to train, and this is facilitation by acknowledging the wisdom in the group, and that this process facilitation needed some Structure and guiding principles. How did you know that it was time to standardize? What was the driving force behind it?

That's a good question because it wasn't just me. This was a group of people, right? This was my colleagues, my ICA colleagues. Actually, the first thinking about it, I was a facilitator for my colleagues and I'd never been asked to facilitate my colleagues in a way like that before. I think we figured we weren't making enough impact on the world and we needed to be connected with a larger, with the larger community, with a larger sort of movement, so to speak, of participation in communities and organizations. And I mean, we were doing participatory community development when everybody was still talking about top-down development.

Hmm.

We were kind of out there forging things. I mean, you know, we never went into a community where we weren't invited and we didn't go in there and say, oh, you need a school. Or, you know, we're going to build a health clinic for you. No, we sat down with the community for a week and talked to everybody in the community and helped them bring together what they wanted, and then we would do it. But that wasn't getting very much further than the places where we were working. And then there were those who said, wait, other places where change needs to happen is not just in communities and villages, but in organizations, in companies. in nonprofits, in, you know, all these places. And so we realized that we needed to create a larger movement, if you would, toward participation in society. And I think that was really where the idea for IAF came into being.

And then basically, if you want to create something that is larger than just the direct impact, you have to standardize to make sure that you have some quality control or that you have more impact with less friction because everyone is applying the same mindset structure?

I think it was more that the image that of facilitation is a real major mind shift in people because usually you expect that somebody at the front of the room is gonna tell you stuff. It still goes on. I mean, how many rooms do you walk into as a facilitator and people expect you to have the answers? We're still struggling as a global culture to separate authority and participation and figure out which is necessary when.

Mm-hmm.

And to expect that the person up front is not going to have an opinion is disconcerting if you think that they should just tell you how to do things. And so I think it was that we wanted to have a major impact that way. And so we needed more colleagues. And then the structure itself came because Because at that point, the structure needed to be created by a larger group of people as well.

And was it then a sort of self-organized approach? Because, I mean, as facilitators, we know that facilitating facilitators is like herding cats, right?

Squirrels. Squirrels.

Squirrels.

Cats. Yes. Oh my God, yes.

What triggers this laugh?

Oh, well, even just recently I had an event with, with my, some of my colleagues, and of course they not only have ideas about content, but they had ideas about how you should do the process differently too. And I just have to laugh because I, I ask a question of a group and one of my colleagues said, oh, I don't have an answer to that question, but I have an answer to a different question. Put it in the chat. Put it in the chat. Then I had to ask that question. I mean, yes. All kinds of experiences facilitating facilitators. It's hilarious.

And isn't it funny that there's some ironies amongst our profession? One is we facilitate collaboration and still most of us facilitate alone.

Yeah.

And we believe that the wisdom is in the group and that as facilitators we don't own the outcome. But as soon as we put our facilitator's hat off and we're part of the participants, it's all about us knowing exactly what to And how to do it.

It's kind of like a volcano, right? When you're facilitating, your opinion is sitting over there on the doorknob and you're not accessing it. So you never have answers. When you get out of the facilitator role and you're a participant, there's this volcano of ideas that you've never, haven't been able to express because you've been listening only for so long. So that's, I think that's where I put it. It's just that volcano of wanting to participate.

Yeah. And that's why I think communities For facilitators are so important.

Yeah, exactly.

To create an ecosystem for them to release, but also to nurture and to exchange.

Inspire each other too, and to inspire each other. Yeah, I think that was what the founding of IAF was really about, was creating the larger community. In fact, the first year we had one meeting in '94 or '93 or '94, and then the next year we somebody created a newsletter and we called it The Facilitator. And there was another group of electronic meeting support people that was kind of headquartered in Dallas, I think, or at least one of the people was in Dallas. And they said, wait a minute, you're trying to steal our name. And we said, no, this was simultaneous, but how would you like to join us? So the next year in Denver, we had ICA folks and we had these electronic meeting support people. Now, there was a lot of of challenge for bringing these 2 very different cultures of facilitators together. But that's where it began to grow, and it's grown and grown and grown since.

Yeah, beautiful. So what was— just to first look back and then look ahead— what made it possible to— or what process or method did you apply to bring this group of squirrels to align and build something so impactful like the AF?

You know, I don't know what the magic was, but I think it was that there was a lot of people really needed colleagues and really needed a place to express their ideas and listen to others and get inspired by other people. I remember somebody coming to me, one of the very first conferences. We'd go to an IAF conference and you'd be sitting in the hotel and somebody'd come in with their badge or their little bag in hand. And I would just, you know, greet them in the hotel coffee shop or something and say, oh, you must be here for IAFF. Welcome, welcome. Well, the first few years, that was the biggest comment, was that this was the most welcoming professional association they'd ever seen. I think we just really needed to grow the colleagueship because so many people do work alone.

Mm-hmm.

We really needed the collaboration that way. And so there were lots of struggles, and the first few years were tough. And some of it was letting go of how things ought to be done and growing a larger way to do them. There have been many difficult stages, you know, in the development of the organization.

Yeah, which is— there's a good reason why we have this change curve and the team storming and norming curves that every organization or community goes through.

Yeah, and there's been so much creativity. from various angles and various cultures, various parts of the world that have created so many different cool things that have really enlarged the profession. I mean, there was an online conversation that created the ethics and values of facilitators for IF, which was very powerful.

Mm-hmm.

And it took a long time because the conversation around neutrality alone took like a like 6 months or a year of all of this impassioned conversation online. I mean, then this was what, early 2000s? So it was like, you know, basically we had email and that was it.

So what's your perspective on neutrality, facilitator neutrality? Because I'm surprised that the conversation is already over after only 2 decades.

Well, it's not that it's over, but if you look at the ethics and values, there is something on it. I mean, I just had a conversation, a mentoring conversation with someone. We have an advanced facilitator program in our, for the organization. And even though I'm retired, I still get to be a mentor. So this is for ICA, not IAF. I'm not an IAF mentor because I'm too busy being an ICA mentor. This was a woman who had a group where somebody was mimicking somebody's accent and she decided to let it go. And then the person who was being mimicked left in the middle. And she was saying, well, I'm supposed to be neutral, but neutral doesn't mean that you don't stand your ground and create a safe place.

Yeah.

But the interesting conversation— so I was asked, she had done something that other people observed, and they asked me to talk to her about it. Well, she's a Black woman and she's a minority, you know, standing in front of a group. And she did not feel that she had permission to stand up and say that. And I got it. I understood for the first time how she had made that choice because she herself didn't feel safe enough to intervene to make the place safe.

Yeah. Thank you for this example.

Mm-hmm. And so I said to her, you know, yes, you're, I think, what I think neutral means, it means you're detached from the content. And, but you are the guardian of the process.

Yeah.

And you're the guardian of the safety. And she used my, the working assumptions that I use. She had used that at the beginning and she referred back to them. But people, she didn't actually call anybody's behavior or even mention what the behavior was. She said the rest of the group couldn't hear it. There was only 2, 3 people, 3 people, uh, counting her. Let's see, 1, 4 people counting her that that actually heard this, and this was a group of like 20 or 30 people. There was the person who had the accent, the person who was mimicking, and another person sitting there who tried to tell the other— tried to tell the person to be quiet, shut up, you know, stop it. But nobody else besides the facilitator heard this, so she didn't want to call attention to somebody and call them out publicly either. So we talked about how you might do that, you know, just say You know, this is, you know, how you might do this without actually calling out a person, because that would've been also not safe for that person.

So how would you?

I mean, I gave her several options, or we came up with several options. One was to just say generally, here's the working assumptions. Everyone's wisdom is important, and whether or not it has an accent or something like this, so that it was an indirect but clearly aimed at that person. Another one might be to just call a break and have a conversation with the two of them, which is more often, I think, what people would do. But whatever it was, she needed to stand firm and just not allow that kind of behavior because the person eventually left that was being mimicked.

Yeah, for good reasons. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think the story really shows that in order to be able to create a safe space for the group, We first need to feel safe ourselves. And if we don't feel safe, we cannot hold that space and hold our ground.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the same is true then with moments where we might feel triggered.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. This is— you asked me to think about a practical method. Maybe this is a place to bring it in because this practical method works for solitarily as well, noting things. You know how people use what, so what, now what as a kind of a thing? they've left out an important piece, which is gut. So after the objective data, the what, that you get clear on what is really going on, Mm-hmm. the next level of questioning is, so what was triggered for you by that? What memories? What associations? What was, you know, your gut-level reaction? What made you angry? What got you excited? Asking people those questions as a facilitator then allows you to build the interpretive, the so what, on not only the external data, but the internal data, which is gold. People's previous experiences, you don't want to repeat a horrible experience. And memories and associations or something somebody's read that was triggered, that's really important, you know, or their personal experience. So then when you ask the interpretive level questions, you can get much deeper. And then finally, you ask decisional level questions that have a couple of roles. One is to bring the conversation to close. Sometimes it has to do with action. Sometimes it has to do with summarizing, but it has to do with decision about what you've just been talking about. And then working with that until you get to a group decision or individual decisions, depending on your aim with the conversation. That is the Focused Conversation Method. The underlying phenomenological process is ORID, objective, reflective, interpretive, decisional. And this is, for me, is it's a life method. It's something I use all the time, and I use it in my own personal reflection. So to decide what to do next as a facilitator, right on the floor of the room, I just use inside my head. I just use it, bam, bam, bam, bam. But I also use it with the group, and I design it ahead of time to use very practically to discuss any matter and to create the space where people can talk about their own You know, I hated this part, but I liked this part. I mean, nothing is either or. There are more perspectives on it, and you get a whole lot of inner wisdom when you ask those questions.

Yeah.

And in that order. And brain science, the emerging neuroscience supports this. This came out of looking at phenomenology. It was extracted from Husserl and Heidegger and Kierkegaard and all of these lot. But it works in any human situation. And so it's a practical method. If you want, if people want to know more about it, just Google ORID, but look for ICA folks to do it. People, some people don't really think that the reflective level is only feelings, and it's more than that, and much more than that.

Yes. And since you're mentioning it, you mentioned ICA a couple of times. Can you just give us a nutshell of what ICA stands for and is?

Okay. It stands for Institute of Cultural Affairs, which doesn't tell you much more, but it We had done an analysis of the social processes in any culture, in any part of the world, economic, political, cultural. And then we went down 6 levels in each of those. It's a triangle. It's a triangle. And each of these is triangles within triangles. It was intellectual to absurdity because it goes down 6 levels. But then we used it to analyze where there were imbalances in society. And One thing that we came up with, and this was years ago, but it's still pretty much true, the economic is the dominant dynamic. The political is the ally of the economic, and the cultural is generally the collapsed pole of a society. And so we became the Institute of Cultural Affairs because not only did it need energy, but it was also a— could be a catalyst to deal with the economic and the political. Political, small p political, not big P political. Yeah, yeah, all the decision-making and ordering of a society.

Thank you. Thank you for— I think it was a, a good piece for the audience that might not be familiar with that.

We used to teach that in a 2-day course, so there's a lot behind the social process triangle.

Yes, but I'll put the link into the show notes for those who want to go deeper.

The Institute of Cultural Affairs then This is how we came to participation and working with people's stories and, and yeah, working with cultural, with groups within, you know, not so much in the politicalism and decision-making so much, although that happened from it, but to bring people together.

What I like about that also in the way you just explained it, that they're not only two sides, the pro and the con, the love and the hate. Because these strong emotions don't happen in a vacuum, right? So there's always a context, there's always a story, and this context and story are usually related to what you call the gut. Yeah, it's what we make them mean, and then my story of what they mean is very different from yours.

Exactly, exactly. And if we have all of those different experiences to bring to exploring the meaning, then we get much richer meaning and much more valuable, much more long-lasting.

And now I also understand how from this intellectual process of you coming up with this theory and method, IAF had to emerge. Because how to actually guide through such a process, how to help a community to find the balance and to have that conversation needs facilitation in its purest form.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm— the reason I, I'm at the reflective level here, because when you say that, I'm remembering standing in an Egyptian village. I didn't ever really— I mean, I have some Arabic, but really just basic stuff, because I mostly talked to the women and worked with the women. And one of my colleagues, an Egyptian colleague, is standing We're in a room without ceiling, without a roof, mud walls, a door leaning against the mud wall, a piece of flip chart paper on it with a dandelion, picture of a dandelion on it, because Amal is describing that they are going to look for the deep roots of the issues that they were experiencing.

Mm-hmm.

And we couldn't get the word— I see I used the word contradiction, and we— it didn't translate well into Arabic. So we created the visual image instead. And she led the group in, in looking at some of the deep root issues that were holding them back.

Beautiful. And it—

I said there's a reflective level on why that's important, because that story, that memory in my mind illuminates something new for you to think about.

Yeah. And it's funny, when I think— when I just imagine, visualize your story, I immediately saw the baobab, which doesn't grow in Egypt but lower down in Africa. And I remember a story told in Namibia that the San said that the baobab was a tree sent by the gods.

Mm-hmm.

So it's the other way around so that the roots are outside. And for me, so the roots, the origins, everything that is fundamental being outside is for me the understanding of facilitation to turn the implicit explicit, to turn what is below the iceberg, below the surface, To the surface.

Mm-hmm. Now, you see, there's a reflective level for you because my story triggered a memory and an association for you. Now, if we were to go to the next step and say, then, so therefore, what is the meaning of being a facilitator? We would have a totally different answer than we did before we shared the stories.

Yeah.

A more profound answer. Yeah.

Thank you. What do you think has changed over all these decades in facilitation? And especially now that I think since the pandemic facilitation has become kind of a buzzword.

Here's what I think. I think in the '90s we were exploring what facilitation could be, what it was. We were getting used to all kinds of different processes and we were kind of getting our toes into corporate culture and giving people a chance to see these things. I think that the field of facilitation has matured so that we are confident in what it can do and that people, there are people in important places that know what we can do, what facilitation is about and how, I mean, there are a lot of people who have no clue that if they're a CEO and they ask people for their wisdom, that their people would think they were wise and they would work harder. There are people who have no clue. But there are a lot of people who do. The field has really matured. I mean, the IF methods library is one way to see that there's a lot of methods that are shared. And I think it's matured just in time because the world right now is so fractured. And I think that for me is what the pandemic exposed, was the fractures in the society and the polarization.

Mm-hmm.

And facilitation is absolutely critically needed right now. And I think the field is mature enough to meet that need.

Hmm.

We just have to understand how deeply and powerfully we're needed and be willing to get into those places where it's needed. There's a group that fascinates me. They're not facilitators exactly, but there's a group in the US, a nonprofit group that does storytelling, that gets people together to tell stories. And sometimes they get people who are on opposite political poles, for example, to talk to each other. And there is facilitation going on, but it's usually one-on-ones. You know, it's not like facilitating a large group. It's, it's, it's one-on-one conversations that are going on. People are talking with somebody that they would never talk to.

Mm.

They come out of it almost all the time with a new appreciation of the other. Well, that's the role that facilitation can play in this polarized time. And yeah, there are places we can't get into. I mean, there are global conflicts that are not easily dealt with, with facilitation, but the prevention of them, of those things, can be. I mean, I think facilitation is to conflict resolution as health promotion is to the medical model.

Hmm.

It's about preventing conflict. It's about creating understanding and respect.

Where asking curious questions would be the washing hands with soap?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good one. Good one. Or maybe even getting vaccinated. Bring up a topic, bring up a topic that itself is polarized. Washing hands with soap is probably safer.

Yes, which then is interesting that you said that it's the storytelling group, they're facilitating one-on-one conversations, and still I think there's so much more going into that in terms of facilitation to make these one-on-one conversations, polarized conversations, constructive and meaningful and impactful. Yeah, because I guess it is about asking the questions, providing the environment where both feel safe, creating an environment where they wouldn't go into judgment and finger-pointing.

Somebody has to create the process for them to have that conversation and provide the atmosphere and the safety. Yeah, there is some facilitation going on. It's just a kind of a different kind of facilitation. Anyway, that fascinates me because I have cousins who have polarized opinions to mine that I, they're on like Facebook or something and I, I just don't talk to them. I don't respond to their stuff because it's—

Hmm.

I did discover one thing to say, which was when they say things that are really evil, I will just say something like, that's not my experience. I don't say what I think is right. I just say, that's not my experience. And the trolls don't come after me because they can't tell me that it's not my experience.

That's a very good strategy.

It worked. Yeah, discovered it by accident.

But because it also brings it to— it almost shuts it down. It's like, yeah, what else is there to say? They could share their experience. They could, if they were interested, ask you for your experience.

Yeah, exactly.

And then it would be the invitation to have a constructive conversation, but very often they're not interested in.

Yeah, exactly. They can't.

And still you're standing your ground.

Yeah. And they can't attack, but they then can see that whatever they've put there is not everybody's answer.

Yeah.

Which they convinced themselves of. Yeah.

Beautiful. What remains your number one facilitation challenge?

Well, I retired because physically it's harder and harder for me to stand up all day. And also to go without having to take extra bio breaks. And it was not fair to the group anymore. So that's one of my facilitation challenges. But I mean, it took me a long time to let go of my opinions. I'm a very opinionated person. Just ask my kids, who are not kids, by the way. They're in their 40s.

I think every child on this planet believes their mother is opinionated.

And probably should be. I mean, there's probably nothing wrong with it.

But anyway, I think it's just human nature.

But letting go of that and becoming curious, I think, was my biggest challenge in my career and learning to do that. And then, oh my God, everything got so interesting after that. Now, it gave me more opinions too, but then that's another topic. I have opinions about process, right?

It's good to have opinions. And I think it's wise then to have the mindset to be curious to be proven wrong. And that's something that I deeply admire in other— in those who are able to do that, who would enter a space and then look for arguments to be proven wrong instead of confirmation.

Yeah, I'm not very good at that, partly because I don't think it is right and wrong. Europeans' culture developed the dualistic mindset that there's good, bad, right, wrong, black, white, you, me, et cetera, right?

Paradise and hell.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think that the 21st century and globalization, not capital G globalization, but just the fact that we're connected with each other so much more, has expanded that to a multidimensional view of the world, like a diamond.

Hmm.

And a diamond, the more facets there are, the more valuable it is. And we all see things from— some of our ideas are opposite each other, some of them are next to each other, some are on a very different plane from others. But when we provide an atmosphere to listen to all of those, then richness happens. So arguing whether an idea is right or wrong is not something I like to participate in, but creating a third perspective or a fourth or a fifth perspective on the topic is something I like to participate in. The what-ifs are more important than the right or wrongs to me.

Yeah. And thank you for sharing this picture again. I remember that you mentioned the diamond in our exploration call, and I think I quoted you on a podcast recording last week because it resonated so much with me, with me. And especially then the, the picture that you drew that a diamond becomes more precious the more angles it has, so the more perspectives, facets.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I really love that.

That is another practical thing that I use at the very beginning of every session I facilitate. I created them once because a group had taken 3 years to build enough consensus to have a consensus-building workshop. And I knew it was going to be difficult. And I, this was 35 years ago. And I, so I thought these were working assumptions and I came up with them. And then I realized, I mean, I thought they were ground rules, but they're not rules. They're not do this or do that. And there's certainly no nos in them. So then I realized they were presuppositions.

Mm-hmm.

But who wants a 5-syllable word at the top of a flip chart? So I realized that translating that into ordinary English is working assumptions. So the first one is everyone has wisdom. That doesn't mean everything everybody says is wise, but it means that underneath what we say, we have life experience that we're bringing to the table. The second one is we need everyone's wisdom for the wisest result. And that's where the diamond image comes in.

Mm-hmm.

The third one is there are no wrong answers. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't answers we disagree with. I have never been in a room where everyone agreed, even if I was the only one in the room. My father was a champion debater, and he learned— taught me to take the other side and take it against myself. But what it means is that when there's an answer we don't agree with, underneath there, somebody is coming from some life experience that brought them to that. And so we're going to listen for the wisdom, not to the surface level. The 4th one is the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which is trite. It's a cliché, but I found out Socrates said that originally, so no wonder it's a cliché. And it really works if you're trying to build consensus where you're building something larger than anything else.

Mm-hmm.

And then the last one is everyone will be heard and will hear others, and which is really just the application of the ones before that. And I said, you know, it doesn't mean everybody has to talk all the time, because if everybody talks all the time, nobody's heard. And it doesn't mean you have to talk up loud in the group. We will provide opportunities for your voice to be heard, even if you don't, you know, want to talk.

Even if you don't speak. Yeah, thank you. I was waiting for that one because I loved your— there's a sentence and then there's a sub-sentence that is maybe counterintuitive. And I love that every voice will be heard even if you're not speaking. Because there may be different ways.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a visual for that, but I don't think a visual works really well. I mean, I could share it, but I don't think the visual works really well on an audio podcast.

That's true. Then we would have to direct everyone to the YouTube. I can put a link to the visual if you have one.

It's in my Dropbox. I can send it to you.

Perfect.

A little bit trying to do it now. Yeah.

Yes, let's do that.

Yeah, so there's 2 practical things. So I see I exceeded your expectations on that one. Yay!

I think there are more than 2 practical things. I can think of at least 4 or 5 already. And another of my standard questions, I'm so excited to dive into that one, is what makes a workshop fail, especially in your non-dual world? I'm sure that you'll start with a workshop cannot fail.

Oh no, I've had big failures, but they're great learning experiences.

Tell us.

So one of them is if you don't spend enough time understanding what the group really needs before you come, not only the sponsor or client, but the, the whole group. If you don't spend enough time on that, a workshop can fail because you're doing a workshop on the wrong topic. And I've had groups who just refused to do what I said because they said this is irrelevant.

And how did you learn to prevent that?

By just spending some time with the client and asking a series of questions about what they're thinking about and what they want and what the results are, what, how they want the group to be different at the end, how they're going to take these results into the future, all kinds of questions. And the ones that I didn't ask the oil company people, which was, you know, tell me some of the language that you use that I need to know about. What is a thermal well anyway? Anyway, that's one thing is just not knowing what your client, not only client, but the participants really need.

Mm-hmm.

Another one is accidentally having an opinion and then going to facilitate because the group's image doesn't change. I did this once. This was a horrible disaster. I was working with a school group and principals and some community people and talking about participation in schools. And principals always say, well, the parents won't come to the events. They don't want to be involved. So I made this little talk about, I don't go to things that I just see a poster on the wall. I go because somebody invites me. So anyway, I sort of had this little talk and then I said, what do you think are some of the blocks to participation? Well, they thought that I was trying to get out answers that I already had. And they rebelled and they called the whole thing to a close. And then for lunch, I mean, decided it was lunchtime and they were going to close and they wouldn't answer my question. And then after lunch, they created a circle and I put a process on the flip chart that they could, you know, debrief what had happened in the morning. But no, no, they weren't going to do that because it was my process. There was a policeman that was one of the family One of the community people, I sat close to him because they sat and they went around the circle and just told me how horrible I was. Yeah, this was a real disaster, but it was because I had mixed my opinion role with my facilitator role, and they didn't— even though I said that I was open to anything, they did not shift the image. So yeah, that was a real disaster. Those are 2 really important ones, I think. Yeah, there are, there are others that, that you can't necessarily predict or do something about.

And isn't it— I love your examples, and especially the second one. I assume that if they had called you in as a consultant, then it would have been your role to lead with your opinion and an idea and then say, okay, what do you think about it? How can we make it your own? But you were wearing simply the wrong hat.

And they probably called it consultant, but they didn't think when I asked the open-ended question that it was really an open-ended question. They couldn't make that. I can't, I mean, it was such a long time ago and I never, I had done a series of things with that particular school board and that, that was the end. I never did another one with that school board.

What a traumatic experience.

Oh yeah. But that was a learning experience, right? I mean, this is how you learn. That would be why there are no real failures, because there's a learning experience you had to have. But the group probably thought it was a failure. There was another one that I thought was a failure, the one that created the mystical experience where I thought it was a disaster. 3 months later, I went back to the city for another client, and the person that picked me up at the airport said, oh, I know you. You did that meeting with us. And I went, and I managed not to say, oh, yeah, it was a real disaster. He said, oh, he said, you know what was really interesting? He said, all the different groups in the room, we came together after that meeting and we've made so much progress in our neighborhood. And we've been— we're so much more inclusive than we were. I went, oh my God. For me, it was an utter failure, enough to send me into a weird psychological place for 3 or 4 days. I was seeing things that weren't there. And yet for the group, it was actually, or at least some people in the group, it was actually a A success.

Yeah, which reveals that we cannot foresee what may emerge from our sessions, and sometimes the real value comes up ways after we have left the room.

Yes.

And everyone's experience is different.

Yes, yes, exactly. And again, there are multiple facets of who experienced what in that meeting and afterward.

Yeah, and there is no right or wrong experience.

Right, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, what I came up with as a golden rule for facilitation when it comes to asking questions is never ask a question for which you have an answer, or for which you have only one answer. Yeah, or a question when you're not curious about the answer. And I think that's exactly what this group felt. If someone asked a question That feels as if there was an answer already. It feels like an interrogation or a testing situation.

Exactly. And especially if you're a school teacher, that would be—

Oh yes. Yeah. And I think school teachers are kind of allergic to the situation of being in the student role again and being tested.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And they only see hierarchy because that's what they have in a classroom mostly. I mean, the teachers that do facilitated learning, are in the public school system are few and far between.

And I wonder whether then asking questions is tricky in general, because I think especially in the, in more conservative school systems, they are still in the space that we ask questions in order to test knowledge, whereas in the facilitation space we ask questions to, yeah, add another—

And another knowledge to create knowledge.

Yeah.

Yes. And I think that was part of the image shift because I couldn't make that clear that I shifted roles. Because they couldn't see the shift. Yeah, you're right. They saw it as a test and they saw it as I was trying to confirm my opinion. And I had actually probably offended a few of them too, because some of the things that I said were things that they probably were already doing that I was saying, this doesn't work. So I probably offended them, first of all. And then secondly, they didn't understand that the question was really an open-ended question.

Yeah.

Interesting. So anyway, having an opinion as a facilitator is a very, very dangerous thing. You've got to hang your Opinions on the wall. You cannot confuse the two.

Yes. And still, what are you doing if, if the group is running in a direction? And don't you also have a responsibility to, if you know something or you have the experience, to save them? Sort of.

That's where the neutrality thing is a little complicated. So I have done that. Where I put my fist— I'd say, I'm putting my participant hat on, and I go away from the front of the room and I ask the question. Or I say, this is what I see from my experience. This is what I see going on. And then I go back and say, somebody else. And I stand in the front of the room and I open my arms and say, somebody else.

Yeah.

I've done that a number of times. Yeah, I've— 4 or 5 examples are coming to mind, but they're long stories. But yeah, there are times when you have to use your own intelligence and experience. You know, you can say— you stand to the side or you go to the back of the room and you say, I had an experience, it was— and this is what happened with mine. And then you go and you say somebody else. I mean, you've got to open it up again and make it really clear that you've let your opinion stay back there. And then somebody says, what do you mean? I didn't get that. Then you go back to the back of the room, put your participant hat on and say, well, this is why. And then, okay, so where do we go from here? I actually did this with my own staff one time. It was a very— it was a topic that I had a passionate opinion on, and my colleague asked me to facilitate it. And I said, you know, I have a passionate opinion on this topic. And he said, yeah, but I want you to facilitate it. Okay, fine. So I'm facilitating it. Nobody comes up with my answer. And so I go to the side of the room and I say, you know, don't you see it's got to be like this? And I go back to the front of the room and say somebody else. And so they, what, where the heck did that come from? So I walked to the side of the room and I said, because it's this and this and this, and this is the reason behind it. And walked back up to the front of the room and said, where do we go from here? And in fact, what happened was that they did incorporate my, my wisdom into the final work.

Beautiful.

But that was our own staff. And they also trusted and they knew that they, well, they would've attacked me well if I had come back to the front of the room and tried to Manipulate them. They're facilitators, right? They're very— they're allergic to—

They smell that. Yeah. So what I hear is to be extremely explicit.

And physically change role, change the place in the room, because you can't just do it with words. Yeah. Change the place in the room. If you have an opinion, move to the side. Say, I don't get this, and then move back.

And then say, somebody, And maybe even bring a hat.

Literally, I have a colleague who had— I think he's lost it now, but he had a hat that said facilitator and another one that said participant. I love that.

Yeah, especially when working with facilitators or being in a workshop with facilitators, then to put the facilitator's hat on for the more meta conversation and sensemaking.

Yeah, yeah.

Looking back now that you're retired, what would have been the advice you had loved to receive when you just started your career as a facilitator?

I think the advice to be curious. And that thing about if you listen to people's wisdom, they think you're wise. I think that would have changed my perspective much earlier. I mean, it took me a long time to learn this. I mean, you know, I mean, I I started working with ICA in 1970. So there was 50 years, more than 50 years that I was doing facilitative type things before they, before the field even existed. But I didn't know that those things, those things took me 20 years and failures and other things to learn these things. Right. I mean, yeah. And I'm still learning.

Yeah.

So I really have had the opportunity, you see, We lived in Egypt, so a village in Egypt. We lived in Nigeria in a village. We lived in Mexican South Texas, close to the border, the same county as Uvalde. You might have heard of the recent, or last year, the shooting in the school, a mass shooting in the school in Uvalde. That was the same county that we lived in years ago, 40 years ago. Then Houston a little bit, and then an Aboriginal Australian community in outback Australia. And then Sydney a little bit, Chicago a little bit, and then Jamaica, and then we came to Canada. So I've facilitated people in all these cultures and had an opportunity to reflect on what worked and what didn't. Personally, I've had that, not just the organization has. But Wayne and I, and my husband worked also, was a facilitator, and we did work together. So we didn't— neither one of us were— I mean, he would do the documentation and I would do the facilitation often because he was a very quiet person. But we would have conversations about the process and what we were learning, and we'd have all these horrid conversations about what's happening, what's going on. And so yeah, it was a real opportunity to learn what worked in many places on the planet.

And is there something that you would say this is inherently true independent of culture, and this is different for every culture that we have to have some sensitivity?

Well, I think this, this ORED process, this is human. It is biological, and it is— but every culture prefers different level. Every individual and every culture, even within a particular geographical culture, prefers different levels. Like if I'm working with indigenous elders, the one that people really dwell on is a reflective level.

Mm-hmm.

If I'm working with engineers, it's the objective and the interpretive. You know, so both and, right?

Mm-hmm.

There are human patterns. The pattern of gestalt, where you bring ideas together, and we have a method that we do that, consensus workshop method. Europeans have a very difficult time, particularly English-speaking European people of European and North America, have a hard time seeing creating larger patterns. They want to sort things into categories. So to create new knowledge, to bring things together is a struggle. Once they've done that, then naming it is easy. When I work with Indigenous groups here in Canada, the clustering is easy. The gestalt— we changed it to clustering because people said gestalting is not a word. Okay. So the clustering is easy because people are used to looking for patterns, but the naming is hard in English. English is a very difficult language to do big picture patterns. Name a few words. So one, I've had experiences where people— I said, if who's really fluent in the language, take this idea, name it in the, in the language, and then translate it back into English. And brainstorming, for example, the word brainstorming in English is a dumb word. It's even worse in French and Spanish where it's rain of ideas. Well, we translated into Cree And back again, and it came up harvesting ideas.

Beautiful.

Isn't that wonderful? Well, if we hadn't translated that into Cree, we would not have gotten that insight. My image is a canoe with wild rice bent over the canoe, and you're, you're beating the stems, and the ripe wild rice is falling into the canoe, and you're collecting it.

Oh.

And it's nurturing.

Yes.

You know, okay, so though both of those patterns, looking for both of those things, looking for patterns and naming the patterns, human things, but that some people, some cultures do them better than others and some prefer another, you know.

And then it's good to be aware of that because then it's the role of the facilitator to make it easier depending on where the, the obstacles or the limitations are.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And to delight in that somebody else sees these different ways of thinking.

Yeah.

And delight in the different ways of thinking. That's one thing that gives me a lot of energy is just watching how different groups think together.

Yeah. And then also, I just imagine, I'm thinking back to the groups that I have, I would now say facilitate, but back then I was conducting research.

Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah.

In African villages where it was totally normal to sit in a circle under a tree.

Yep.

To have all these kind of connection moments in the beginning, and first the socializing, the icebreaking, the checking in that was so inherent to the culture that nobody had to introduce it or to facilitate it.

Yes.

Whereas in the Northern Hemisphere, you do have to actively break the ice.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And remove the tables. Yeah, and I think that's maybe something that is— that we have to just unlearn, that it's still somewhere there, but it feels more scary.

Yeah. So what African villages did you work in?

Um, I was in Namibia for— oh God, this was in— for my master's thesis, around Windhoek in the townships, and then in Ovamboland north, uh, close to Close to the Angolan border. And then I went to Burkina Faso.

Ooh, wow, that's a big shift from Southern Africa to West Africa.

Yes.

Not the same culture at all.

And the reason was that I met a Burkinabé in Namibia. He was there with his French wife and supporting me in my research project. And then at the end of it, they said, Myriam, you know what, if you want to do research in Africa, Come to Africa.

This is not Africa.

You have to come to Burkina. So I came back home, wrote a research proposal to do the next project in Burkina.

Wow, nice.

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Wow.

When I— we left Egypt to go to Nigeria, we flew straight down the Nile to pass the Aswan High Dam because at the time Egypt was not getting along with Libya right next to it. Right. So we came all the way down and then we flew directly across the Sahara all the way to just north of Nigeria and made a 90-degree turn and went down over the savanna into the rainforest and, and to Lagos. And so we went from where it rains only 1 inch a year to where it rains 100 or, or, or 200 inches a year in, in a 5-hour flight.

Oh, wow.

Incredible to see the whole Sahara, you know, the stone parts of it. I mean, it's not all sand dunes, it's stone patterns. It was just incredible. Yeah.

Yeah.

It was one of the nicest. Beautiful.

Beautiful. It's a flight you don't wanna have, um, take at night.

No, no.

And what have these experiences taught you about your facilitation practice?

It's taught me to figure out first how to become a human being in any cultural place, whether it's culture between geographical cultures or whether it's a culture in a particular kind of organization. And you have to look for the clues for how to become a human being. So in Egypt, the story is Sheikh Mustafa was a big man in the community, and we were just setting things up. And we'd already done the consultation with the community, but now we were doing things. So we were setting up the preschool, and Ragia, who is an Egyptian, and I Went to talk to Sheikh Mustafa, and he said, "What right do you have to come and tell me what we should do in our community? You're you're an educated foreigner, an abla." I said, "La, for one, we're not coming to tell you things. But for two, أنا مش أبل. I'm not an abla. أنا فلاح. I'm a farmer." He said, "La, مش ممكن. You're not possible. You are you're an educated foreigner." I said, "I'm a farmer. I can I can milk a cow." He said, "Right. You go in my back room and you milk my cow, and I'll give you milk in your tea," which is a big thing in Egypt. I went in his back room and I milked his cow. My goodness. Not only did he actually think— he went to my husband and offered 2 buffalo and a cow for me. He was a joking kind of a guy, but I thought, wow, that is really high respect. He actually sees me as a human being now.

And he's—

Able to communicate with my husband about that, which is cool. So that, you know, then I could work with him. I could work with people. I was also allowed myself to be called Om Haroun. My oldest son is Aaron, which translates into Arabic as Haroun. And so I was Om Haroun to the village women, although I don't like to be called— I think village women should be called by their own name, not by their sons, right?

Yeah.

But so they would call me Om Haroun and I would call them, you know, Fikreya or Mariam or whatever. But that became— we were human beings together. Right. When we went to, um, Aboriginal Australia, I learned that by accident that you don't knock on somebody's door and walk in and, and go in. You just stand outside the door, which is usually open or unlocked anyway, and wait till somebody recognizes you.

Mm-hmm.

And then they call you into the conversation. They call you in, and then you can take part in the conversation. That's not native to me. I'm a bloody extrovert. I'm an American by birth. I'm not, I mean, you know, and I, I like than the stereotypical American. And I, so I talked to people, but I learned to stand at the door and wait until people invited me in. I became a human being then because I was doing things culturally properly.

Yeah.

Is that so? In a corporate environment that, or, you know, so I, I use engineering as an example, but, you know, In a corporate environment, I try to dress and act in what I understand is the corporate way of culture. And in a nonprofit, completely differently. I wear jeans.

Yeah, thank you for the examples. And what immediately came to my mind in your first example in Egypt was the meaning of language and the parallel to the oil company. By learning the language, By learning how to apply it and how to address people in different terms, and also yourself, you show that you understand them and can meet them on eye level.

Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. Or in my case, usually below eye level.

Yeah, and isn't that funny? It's, um, yes, below eye level, and depending on how you come in and how you're respected. I remember So I came to the African villages as a white woman being a researcher.

You were an abla in that case.

And I had to— it was quite difficult to actually, yeah, be a human with them in the sense that I don't have the answers. I am curious. I want to hear from you. There is not one right answer. There's not right or wrong. I'm not here to tell you. I'm here to listen. So I also learned a little bit always of the local language. And then usually I would be the one to welcome them and serve them water and a snack as they arrived. Ah, yes, I would be immediately in the role of the servant.

Yes, yes.

And welcoming them just with a few words in their local language and thereby become human with them.

Yes, exactly. And that, that opens the door to being trusted facilitator. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you for bringing this back to my mind. I've totally forgot that piece.

You see why the reflective level is so important, why that gut level is so important? Because the learnings come from not only what's going on outside there, but what's going on inside and putting that together just to look for the meaning.

True. Because we might remember other people's stories, but we only connect to our own.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Thank you so much.

You are welcome. Thank you for giving me a chance to tell stories.

What a beautiful conversation. So rich.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And I'm glad— thank you for telling me the stories of Burkina Faso and Namibia too. Yeah, that's good. And the baobab. I will not forget that story.

Thank you. Thank you for staying tuned and for listening until the very end. I hope that you found The inspiration and the wisdom that you are looking for. And I hope that you will subscribe to the show so that you never miss any of the interviews with another inspiring facilitator from across the world. I am devoted to continue this podcast and to deliver weekly an episode that maintains the quality that you expect and you deserve. And if you would like to help me to maintain this quality and to keep the podcast free, Please help us visit workshops.work/support to make a small donation to keep the podcast free. Thank you so much. I hope to be in your ears next week.