This week, I’m shifting gears from “curated content” to “facilitation tips from the trenches,” to catch you up on what I’m learning in the rooms I’m leading.
As a facilitator, I find it much easier to help groups articulate their divergent ideas than to converge around a single idea. So maybe I’m just taking the easier road, but I find myself delaying the search for convergence these days. Here’s why:
Even when working in a small group, it takes energy and attention to work toward a shared position. Our listening skills and creativity can get short-circuited by our desire for social approval and consensus, especially under time pressure. In recent workshops, I’ve been removing the need for teams or tables to develop a shared position. Instead, I encourage participants to gain insight and sharpen their own individual opinions based on the group conversation rather than spending any of their scarce time trying to persuade others of anything. It allows them to focus more deeply on articulating their opinion and listening for understanding to others’. After the conversation, people put their personal perspectives on the screen (even in in-person sessions, using a digital tool such as Mentimeter or Slido), and the whole group can visually gauge the existing level of consensus in the room without actively trying to force it to emerge too soon.
A small tweak, but a powerful one. It lowers stress and directs people’s attention to where it most needs to be. Plus, it avoids the dreaded “report backs,” which are almost always awful.