Aristocracy of the capable in facilitation - Post 2
- Jan 3
- 18 min read
Updated: Mar 6
Extending a co-facilitation team to include participants
Introduction
A separate post introduces the concept of “an aristocracy of the capable” as it applies to facilitation of events and processes. (Link to INSIGHTS page of facilitateit.ca.)
This post explores how the approach to facilitation taken by a lead facilitator can open scope to include capable participants. The goals are to:
tap into the widest “aristocracy of the capable” for process management from both the organized facilitation team members and a participant group, and
through strategic design and support, reinforce and strengthen the collective capacity of a group to manage its own processes.
Why? Because it strengthens the experience, process quality and results
The most capable people in the group who are willing to take a co-facilitation role from within can help realize a strong process, and they generally stay engaged, encouraging by their behavior others to do the same.
A strong design serves as a shared container that shapes people’s contributions, reinforcing and amplifying each within a meaningful structure.
Working together for a purpose, efficiently and effectively, needs to be designed and structured, or when it occurs it can be superficial or miss the mark.
The competencies gained are transferable to many situations and contexts, so are a kind of investment. If you’re working with the same group of people over time, the benefits multiply until a group in fact is managing its own process.
Engagement, participation, and a sustained sense of ownership are part of the benefits.
How? With a range of steps and measures
The methods below fall into four overlapping categories. You won’t use them all in every process. Scan the set so you know what's there and can access details when you need them. Choose what fits your context, group, purpose and goals. And keep your toolkit full so you can be ready to guide a quick pivot when the unexpected happens, drawing on the extended team. For checklist and expanded details, see the link at the end for practical supports.
1) Design for purposeful inclusion from the start
Cornerstones are 1) making the flexible open approach part of design and 2) giving participants the opportunity to choose the process contribution they want to make. After that, develop a set of measures that support this goal, drawing from the list here and your own experience.
Include representatives of each main group of participants in the on-site core facilitation team. Task them to consult with participants in that group and bring collected inputs to daily debrief meetings so the needs and views of each group are factored into process evaluation and adjustment decisions.
Invite “eyes and ears”, two people from the group of participants, to be part of the on-site core facilitation team, tasked with checking in with a cross-section of participants and combining inputs with their own assessed experience, bringing the conclusions and suggestions to daily debrief meetings. Or in case of aspects that require immediate attention, bringing inputs or concerns directly to the lead facilitator.
Make “troll and poll” an integral part of the evaluation strategy, for the whole team. Informal checking in and touching base with a cross-section of participants is an excellent way to stay in touch with people’s interest levels and specific connection points. Use that intelligence to craft the informal extended facilitation team.
Tips: be prepared to get any kind of feedback, and welcome it!
As part of your facilitation approach and engagement strategy, integrate into design a number of different feedback loops. Use them to triangulate your own impressions and check for accuracy.
Different connected factors influence whether and how people volunteer feedback. Some mechanisms need to make it standard practice for all to provide it.
Cultural norms may significantly influence what you get and what you need to learn to expect and interpret, triangulating against other influences on dynamics.
People from The Netherlands and South Africa have a deserved reputation for being direct and sometimes blunt, even outspoken, which may seem critical or negative. Australians too. In some cultures, deference to sex or age influences people’s openness to giving public feedback or appearing to contradict a person seen to be in a superior position.
People from cultures in which relationships and status are priorities to respect and preserve may be hesitant to bring forward negative feedback which they may see as criticism, or be unwilling to bring what they experience as bad news to those in positions of authority.
You and the organizing team need honest feedback, a point to stress with “eyes and ears”. The “eyes and ears” opportunity and role extend the natural inclination of people in similar situations to talk about how they feel and whether they’re getting what they need. Equally important are these kinds of integrated methods:
Anonymous “dots” exercises to establish priorities among available options, for example
Use of quick polls and consultation apps for digital anonymous profiles of group views; integrate use of quick polls into the substantive part of sessions as well as for process management feedback and stock-taking;
Assignment of key contact people who already have a relationship with them to systematically get feedback from designated contacts important in the process (which could be everybody, aligned to the team you have, informal and formal. Only so many quick “How are you doing?” and “What do you think?” conversations can be managed comfortably and without being excessive in relatively short break periods.
2) Identify and invite contributors from within the group
Draw on and include people who are contributing positively to be part of in an informal extended facilitation team
The goal is to draw on and include people who spontaneously contribute positively to an aspect of a process to be part of an informal extended facilitation team, and expand that co-facilitation role as they choose.
That direct inclusion can be through recognition of a contribution and an invitation to continue to play that role, perhaps combined with other logical specific tasks. An example is when a participant proves to be an able summarizer, capable of capturing nuances and the big picture. Touch base with them at the next break to see if they would like to be part of the communications and reporting function on the facilitation team. Including more people distributes the work and lessens the burden on a small number of people, which is the typical support arrangement.
Start with a focus on the participants who are present, engaged, contributing, following the programme and the norms and supporting the process from within.
Recognize them: respect them: use their names, acknowledge appreciation for their contributions. Give them positive feedback about their inputs and contributions.
Touch base with the people you notice for these assets and attributes in breaks and have informal conversations with them. Probe a little: have they facilitation experience? what’s their background? What’s particularly interesting to them about the current event or process? what are their expectations for it? Insights their responses yield provide entry points for shaping a contributory role that matches what they bring and validates what they may be doing informally anyway. Build from there, with their inputs. Highlight some specific areas of process that you have noted are not robust and ask if they might be interested in strengthening them from within, as an active participant (with a possibly expanded defined role).
Pay particular attention to those who a) follow process norms and b) make space for others to contribute. Concurrently, pay special attention to those who tend to dominate and repeatedly intervene – for different reasons. In the case of the former group, you want to involve them as part of an extended cofacilitation team. In the case of the latter group, you want to find ways to minimize their efforts to dominate and equalize their participation, which can usefully include considering drawing them in with a request to take on a specific role or function. (See section below).
For spontaneous positive contributions, when finalizing plans for subsequent sessions, invite the people who contribute positively to the process to take a more defined facilitation role.
Examples of co-facilitation roles for participants integrated into design
Support small group work. Small group work may be part of an agenda, but without internal support such as assigned facilitators. Ask active, engaged participants if they would be willing to take on a more structured facilitation role in a working group or table group discussion. Be prepared with a brief set of guidelines and invite those who agree to a 10 minute briefing, with the aim of bringing some basic consistency to how small groups are supported. One advantage of this approach is it draws on the most capable participants – those who enable others to contribute – rather than relying on those who volunteer, people who may tend to dominate or superimpose their own opinions rather than enable open sharing.
Summarize. Effective summarization is an art that usually combines substantive knowledge, active listening and effective communication. Invite people who demonstrate these sets of skills to take on the role of summarizers for specific sessions. This method has worked particularly well with communities of practice – groups of people with responsibility for the same professional subject area – when participants are from different positions within an organization. Assigning the summarizer role to people with the most knowledge and experience elevates substantive coverage and can help surface strong patterns and new trends in thought leadership while recognizing the full set of inputs.
Track a priority theme. When a specific theme in a meeting or process is of high priority to a person, they track it anyway. Include them in an informal extended facilitation team to make the results of the work they are doing available to others and the wider process. Aim for not more than 2-3 meta-level themes, but if a group is fragmented with disconnected interests, adjust for an intermediate level of tracking, intelligence organizers need to have as they guide a way forward.
3) Engage challenging participants strategically
Have at the ready in your tool kit measures to actively involve people who are not engaging in the process as designed or expected, or who may seem combatively ready to take on the whole group with a different set of perspectives or opinions.
Rather than feeling challenged, treat this mode of engagement as an opportunity. Diversity fosters excellence: you want everyone to be engaged, participating, and confident they will be heard. But containing and channeling the full range of inputs is both a design priority and an in-the-moment facilitation choreography.
Three examples of measures that can help manage challenging people who tend to dominate and not listen well are:
seat them with senior people who will help keep them in check, or with peers of equivalent experience and strength
use more mixed methods than question/response; when question/response is most appropriate for the objectives, explain the process you’ll follow of collecting 3-4 points at a time and pausing for time to respond; keep a speakers’ list and at the end of each set repeat the names of the people you have in the order they’ll be speaking so everyone can relax
adjust activities so everyone has equal opportunities to participate; an excellent resource in this respect are the methods known as liberating structures, a sequence of which could require independent reflection, exchange in pairs, discussion in groups of four, sharing as a full table group, followed by succinct report-back to the full group. https://www.liberatingstructures.com/
These incremental steps calibrate each person’s inputs to be more or less equal, although in some groups participants may continue to defer to the most aggressively vocal.
If people who dominate are in senior positions, there’s little a facilitator can do as the pattern reflects work dynamics beyond an event or process facilitator’s influence.
Wisdom of the group. The “wisdom of the group” is a principle that works when people of independent thought and diverse opinions are enabled to pool their thinking. It does not result from homogenization of views or an artificial consensus. An “artificial consensus” is considered to exist when people in a group are influenced by others to the point where they lose their independence of thought. A genuine consensus can be built with a group of people, deliberately and systematically, by using a structured consensus decision-making model, but this is seldom the way in which people use the term.
Watch for subtle or indirect as well as direct power dynamics. As lead facilitator, watch for the human tendency to agree with someone stronger or more opinionated, sometimes more aggressive. What began as "fight or flight" has expanded to cover two behaviours just as important for you to be on the lookout for: freeze, and fawn. You want to encourage diversity of thinking and opinion, not diminish it. You also want to maintain civil and mutually respectful exchanges. Not everyone is fully aware of the impact their particular style of communication has on others. Sometimes privately sharing your observations can be invaluable professional development feedback, and a direct support to people on the receiving end of a power play. If you think some power dynamics are negatively affecting engagement for some participants, or process and results, propose a pivot or set of actions to lead organizers as soon as you are concerned. Don't wait.
A person with a unique perspective is a precious participant in a group. Try to find ways to make space for those views without obviously favouring that person. Have a private conversation with the person and explore sources of the unique views: do they come from a different context or background? Is their training in a different field? Have they had different types of experience, for example in conflict zones or direct experience with violence and conflict? What they know and bring may be valuable for the rest of the participants to hear.
A note on resistance to new ideas: As innovation analysis and research show, often the most vocal and active resistance in professional and organizational settings can come from peers. The resistance to change is often deeply embedded in our ways of knowing.
An example that made a lasting impression on me was the rejection experienced from their medical peers by Drs. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren who first identified the true case of stomach ulcers as Helicobacter pylori. Their research was rejected by journals, and they were reported laughed out of professional conferences. To prove the bacteria caused ulcers, Marshall took the risky desperate measure of drinking a petri dish culture of it. The proof, and further studies, led to a full shift in medicine in the 1990s, with antibiotics becoming the standard treatment.
The lesson for facilitators: a person with a genuinely unique perspective may be carrying something the group needs to hear, even if the group isn’t ready to receive it. Your job is to create safe passage for that voice. Sometimes you may have to speak to participants about rolling their eyes, or laughing, or huffing and puffing in reaction to a person's point. Sometimes these non-verbal communication tics are unconscious, but generally not. If no-one has held them accountable for such behaviour in similar contexts, they may believe it's acceptable.
Examples of ways and means to bring the full range of uniqueness to proceedings
Seek ways in which the unique views that participants hold can both be profiled and integrated into the proceedings. For example:
Invite a person who has presented a unique view to be a respondent after a panel or near the end of a session. From the distinct perspective they bring, what observations can they share about what they have heard?
Offer such a person the opportunity to facilitate a separate discussion or work group with people who are interested in learning from their experience. That session could be an option in a set for which participants select where they go, or scheduled outside of the structured agenda but still as part of the programme. Either way, when you introduce the option, explain why it is being included so those with whom that experience or background resonates will be informed enough to consider choosing it.
Include such a person in the sub-group of communications / codification leads, those who provide interim summaries and contribute to incremental distillation of key outputs that will be the basis of an event or process report. Go to the first meeting the person joins and explain your reasoning for including him or her in the group, encouraging others to welcome inputs as an integral part of their internal collective process that adds unique value.
Be cautious in distinguishing a person with a unique perspective from a spoiler. Human beings are different in so many ways. Some may have had experiences that inform their points of engagement in a particular process – positively, or negatively. Their interventions may be perplexing to you, when you don’t know the background. A key lesson is within your professional best practice, don’t take what may be experienced as negative or aggressive inputs personally.
4) Navigate the white water of political dynamics and spoilers
Almost all events have some degree of sensitivity and political pressures. Awareness of those and attention to them in design and facilitation is part of the art. Some degree of diplomacy and ability to ‘read the room’ comes with the job.
In highly sensitive and politically charged events and processes, the process antennae of every person on the facilitation team need to be tuned into the subtleties of engagement. It will need to be, to match the extent to which participants with a political interest or agenda will be doing the same. Beyond “reading the room”, you need to know what’s at stake for people and what positions have already been taken or committed to. The dimensions of a facilitator’s role in these circumstances move firmly into terrain of moderator and mediator more than process conductor.
Typically, the final agenda for such events and processes has to be agreed by all before the event begins. Surprises can still pop up. Spoilers come in different guises.
The word “spoiler” is one I first heard in relation to peace and security negotiations, where one side in a violent conflict might pretend to engage in negotiations but with no intention of finding a solution or path to peace. I’ve seen so many different varieties of the type since then that I now think it should be covered as a priority topic in all facilitation training.
Example 1: fine tuning your sense of when people are not being fully truthful
Some people are careful to only contribute what they sincerely know to be true. Others may have a private agenda and mix opinions with facts, or worse, misinformation and disinformation. Some may be so intent on being heard that they don’t listen.
Examples of forms this type of behaviour can take include exaggerating, leaving out the negative, advocating for a specific view or outcome without a balanced view, and negotiational positioning that can happen on multiple levels, with private codes known only to a few key people.
Several facilitation good practices can help:
Paraphrase and ask for validation to ensure that key points are satisfactorily captured.
Invite and push for evidence: on what is the input based?
Ask for sources that can help people verify.
Links points that feel “out there” with previous points already made or briefing points in the preparatory documents: the concept note, relevant strategies or policies.
Post references and resources on chart paper as part of the dynamic.
Be more skeptical and cautious about what is accepted in a group exchange and how different points are received, handled and codified than you might normally choose to be. Some people have a powerful internal agenda driving them that over-rides a balanced view. Some people mislead. Sometimes people are convinced by their own version of things and unique memories. Consistently reference shared ground and validated sources. Be respectful as you invite people to clarify, corroborate, and provide evidence for their contributions, as part of what helps you gauge the relevance and value within the bigger picture.
Best practice is to consistently request an evidence base, sources and references that can be triangulated to confidently separate facts from opinions.
Facilitation experience widens your ability to recognize ways that people can perform as "spoilers" even in contexts that are not politically sensitive and charged. When some participants fully support a new direction while others resist change, the behaviours can manifest. The "spoiler" role may not be restricted to a meeting or event but be part of those who do not support a change they feel has been imposed following their own longer-term strategy of resistance.
Example: The ally who wasn't
In work with the an international organization on capacity building for gender mainstreaming over a period of several years in the early days of the related policies, a group of male allies formed a men's group in support of gender equality policy to inform development work. Most were young and genuinely committed. An older man in the organization joined the group. But not for the same reasons the younger ones did.
The Gender Unit team that led the work found out months later that the man's participation and inputs undermined the group to the point where it disbanded. Those inputs included telling the younger men that if they really wanted to progress in the organization, they had better not choose to be associated with this issue. Recently through a hard divorce and bitter about the increasing autonomy of his ex-wife, he didn't support the policy direction or aims of gender equality and took them deeply personally. His reason for joining the men's group was to end it, not strengthen it.
Considerations and what to watch for
Political pressures and positions. In events and processes with representatives from several organizations, the broader history and relationship of the represented organizations may mean that although people are polite on the surface, part of their aim in participating is to ensure that no organization other than their own looks good or gets attention.
Listen for:
“Yes, but …” comments, superficial agreement but in fact a 180 degree pivot to a different position.
Contradictions and illogical chains of points.
Implicit or direct refusal to listen to points that do not align with one's own views - repetition of a point until it feels like harping.
Watch for:
Repetitive claiming of equal floor time when a person has nothing new to say but sees air time as a platform rather than a medium of communication and exchange.
Private table conversations: who engages in them, how long they last. Be ready to reinforce norms as soon as a pattern of disruption is clear, or sometimes even semi-clear.
Organizers or participants doing their own work while presenting an impression of being in the room when in fact they are absent and distracting.
What to do if you hear or see these patterns
Before an event with potential to be sensitive or politically charged, develop a strategy with the organizing leads and senior representatives about who will respond to what. Some inputs are beyond the usual role of a facilitator: co-facilitation between a process lead and an internal substantive/political lead is most effective. Some substantive exchanges demand the inputs of a senior substantive expert to influence a group or the direction a process is taking. To be smooth, this has to be planned for ahead of time, even though it is in part trying to plan for the unpredictable.
In an event opening, set process norms that align to the event purpose and organizational values. Support all to adhere to them. Take the time to finalize and validate these collectively.
When members of your own team or lead organizers seem to be acting as spoilers, meet with them separately and specifically identify actions and behaviour that are undermining norms.
Not all push-back comes from spoilers: “Trying on new thinking by pushing back against it”
People who take a contrary position on a topic are not necessarily spoilers. Some may be “trying on” a new line of thinking or exploring what it might mean in relation to their current knowledge base. One reason it is critical in successful processes to allow enough time for potentially contentious or new topics to be discussed in full, iteratively, with reflection time, is because a group needs that space and time to calibrate its own views. Such collective views don’t “exist”; they need to be nurtured and facilitated into reality.
Your responsibilities as a facilitator
As a facilitator, you are not responsible for clarifying or “correcting” inputs any participant makes. You do, though, share some responsibility to:
design and manage a process so the group has the scope and opportunity to make its own corrections
trust the group to do so, avoiding overly prescriptive and top-down noninclusive design: keep the positive experience of the group as well as purpose and results in focus
treat opportunities for participatory interaction as contributions to a consolidated collective view – in the process, equalizing inputs and aligning them to purpose and results for maximum value
ensure regular distillations of emerging thinking and quick summaries of patterns of points, trends
provide incremental updates on progress towards the outcome and impact level of result, with direct reference to outputs and plans to transfer them forward; invite the group to validate or adjust these in a sequence of opportunities, not just a too-short wrap-up at the end of a packed event
use apps for quick polling and consultation to regularly set the terrain, validate emerging directions and trends, and confirm agreements, commitments and recommendations for action with the group to ensure outputs reflect the group’s diversity within a consensus frame of reference.
Some facilitation tips and measures support high standards and ability to handle the unexpected parts of the above responsibilities.
Reframe statements that position themselves as opposites: by “rejecting the dichotomy”, you create a third option.
Paraphrase what you hear from a factual point of view, stripping away the emotion.
Actively listen for the nugget of pithy meaning in a person’s contribution, and distil and paraphrase that point immediately.
Confirm it with the recording team, summarizing with key words at recording stands to create a “group memory”.
Use graphic facilitation / graphic recorder support where you can get it, enlivening word-based summaries and records and turning them into compelling graphics of highlights.
Keep summaries posted, as wallpaper that captures the process of the group. Refer to them regularly, to carry forward main emerging themes and help solidify them.
In closing
The post illustrates how complex some facilitation experiences can be and the importance of developing an equally multi-faceted approach to facilitation. An approach that makes the most of available process capacity and harnesses it for shared purpose gives a rocket boost to collaborative processes.
With participant engagement and focus a consistent goal and pre-requisite for gold standard experiences and results, find a bouquet of ways to engage participants as active members of an informal extended facilitation team. Working together with those in assigned functions, you’ll be nurturing and supporting an “aristocracy of the capable” when it comes to process lift and success.
As you enable and empower participants to contribute in ways they choose, within the facilitation approach and methodology, and strengthen a co-facilitation approach through participant group, the result is internal and external process leadership directed to purpose.
See the INSIGHTS page of the Facilitate It .ca for more posts on the aristocracy of the capable with respect to processes and other aspects of facilitation. (Link: https://www.facilitateit.ca/
The feeling of successful achievement is a collective one, providing an energy that buoys up everyone involved and helps sustain the motivation to transfer agreements forward into action and results.
Plus, you’ll have a lot more fun!
Instead of feeling harried or burdened by some aspect of facilitation, you’ll be the connection point for many different contributions, fitting them into the bigger picture in ways that amplify the quality of the parts and the sum or final product. Positive energy sizzles. Quick succinct steps add up to a picture to which everyone involved appropriately feels they have contributed and in which they are invested going forward. You’ll have advocates and champions, not just event-specific participants. It gives you all more to celebrate.
For additional details and a checklist on extending your co-facilitation team, see the Support post on the series Aristocracy of the Capable on the INSIGHTS page of the website Facilitate It . ca.
