As part of our new training newsletter, 'The Involve Insight', Carly Walker-Dawson, our Director of Capacity Building and Standards, interviewed one of our Senior Project Officers, Dom Ward, to address a frequently asked question in our training: "How do you remain impartial as a facilitator?" With many years of facilitation experience (including Climate Assembly UK and Scotland’s Climate Assembly, to name a couple), this is something Dom has encountered many times, and was happy to share his insights.
CWD: Dom, let's start off by you telling us a little bit about your experience as a facilitator.
DW: I have been facilitating group discussions at deliberative processes that Involve runs for, I would say, five years. I was lucky enough to observe a number of other skilled facilitators early on in my career and learn how they approached the role and what they thought was important. I've done a lot of group facilitation, table facilitation, breakout group facilitation, online facilitation — and across a whole range of processes like Citizens’ Assemblies, Citizens’ Juries, with groups of people with lived experience and workshops.
CWD: Brilliant, thank you Dom. And what do you enjoy most about being a facilitator, would you say?
DW: I enjoy most the feeling of a group of people working together well where I get to joke with people that they don't need me there at all, and that they've actually figured out how to self manage, they're supporting each other and the group is working harmoniously together.
CWD: So on the flipside, what would you say you find most challenging?
DN: I would say responding in the moment to harm being spoken. This will often be careless language, like leaning on a stereotype without realising it, rather than someone intentionally trying to hurt someone else's feelings by what they're saying. How do I make sure that I'm looking after the needs of everyone in the group without jumping in with some kind of saviour complex, or interpreting or assuming that someone is feeling harm or feeling threatened when they’re not? It's those grey areas where you feel like someone might need some support or an intervention that I struggle with.
CWD: So how do you view the role of a facilitator if you compare it to other roles like a chair or a teacher?
DW: I would say a facilitator is the most impartial of those roles. In the role of facilitator, you're not holding the content. Whereas in all of those other roles that you described, they actually have some ownership of the content and there is a space for them to insert their own perspective or opinion. So a chair might say “okay, I've heard all the views, but I'm in a position of authority here and I’m going to help make the decision”. That's stepping into the content side, whereas in the facilitator role you don't ever do that. You are only ever holding space for other people to explore their views.
CWD: Sounds good, but how do you do that?
DW: You have to behave quite carefully to ensure that you don't portray your own views. Because it's a myth to pretend that you don't have your own personal views on every topic that you will ever facilitate on. But the skill is in being able to put those to one side in order to honour the space that other people need to express their views.
DW: What I had to learn was that nodding can be perceived as affirmation or agreement with what's being said. It’s a real skill to learn to show that you're listening and value someone’s contribution but without actually passing any explicit or implicit comment on the content of what they're saying.
CWD: Great! And what advice do you have to help other prospective facilitators so they can do this?
DW: First of all, introducing who you are and what your role is, making sure that the participants are really clear about why you're there and what your responsibilities are the only reason for me to be speaking is in order to look after that process, and people's experience of the process — in essence my role is to support the process and make sure it’s working. Then when you get into it, make it very clear that you're asking everyone to contribute and find ways to invite those to share who haven't been speaking very much. Sometimes that can be a bit of trial and error. And then on the types of questions that you ask, it's really, really important to keep questions open and avoid asking leading questions.
CWD: So earlier you referred to a challenging situation for you is handling situations where harm is or could be being caused. So how do you do that while remaining impartial?
DW: So this is where the principle of being impartial but not necessarily neutral is the guide for me. So impartiality relates to the content. So, for example, as a facilitator it's not my role to have an opinion about whether case study one or case study two would be a better solution for my local areas.That's not my responsibility. I'm impartial to that content, but then it doesn't mean that you're therefore neutral when harm is being done. And where you would intervene is, and not be neutral, is where you see harm being done by how people are behaving. Now that could be behaviour directly towards each other or where you can tell that someone is not listening to what someone else is saying.
CWD: I imagine it can be hard to play that role. What sort of ways would you challenge something like that when it happens?
DW: For a lower level thing you can just remind people about what the expectations are and conversation guidelines you’ve created as a group. And you can do that in a number of ways. You can do it verbally, or you can do it through your body language of demonstrating and looking around. Often that's enough to prompt people to be mindful about what they're saying. When it's harm being spoken, then you can start to escalate it or intervene directly.
CWD: And any other words of wisdom for us, Dom?
DW: The best sentence that I've seen that describes the difference between impartiality and neutrality is stolen from our training materials. So impartiality allows a facilitator to care about the participants rather than remain neutral in the face of unproductive or damaging communication patterns or power imbalances.
If you found this interview useful, why not sign up to our training newsletter, 'The Involve Insight', here?