As the Facilitator, how to you make sure your desire for harmony doesn't skew the process when debate may be beneficial / necessary? Or you might be just the opposite - how do you make sure your desire for debate doesn't hinder agreement and moving forward?
Here are some things to consider:
(1) Explore potential areas of conflict in advance. Check with the client what is likely to be
contentious and why. Inform yourself as
much as possible about the potential conflict, and determine with the client what
conflict needs to be carefully avoided (e.g. careful wording so as not to
aggravate sensitivities) and where it is essential to address the source of the
conflict in as safe a space as possible.
(2) When debate and potential conflict is on the cards, design
for it using great techniques for exploring contentious issues whilst
maintaining a generative group process. If
people aren’t provided with an environment to share contentious issues, they
will likely emerge nonetheless - and if they feel the process is repressing the
emergence of issues they may throw out your process providing you with little
room for manoeuvre. It’s safer to design
for it.
(3) Co-create principles for your time together, and hold people
to these (e.g. making sure comments are constructive and solutions-oriented,
listening to one another and trying to understand the perspective of others). Giving these a number, you could then task
everyone in the room with the job of ensuring adherence to the principles,
asking people to hand a card with the corresponding number on it if ever there
is an infraction. (This takes the
pressure off you being the only one in the room trying to manage the conflict.)
(4) Challenging participants to think with different ‘hats’ -
exercising / flexing different thinking muscles and showing their intellectual
dexterity. (De Bono’s Six Hats is a
great example, others include using tools from Systems Thinking, and
methodologies such as Thiagi’s Point-and-Counterpoint activity.)
‘Externalizing’ thinking is central to many of these techniques.
(5) Use techniques to ‘externalize’ thinking. This helps participants move from an
emotional state where it is about me and my issue (versus you and yours) to ‘an
issue’ which is a little more ‘out there’... something happening in the system,
amongst many other interacting things happening. Getting all the information ‘within’ or
‘held’ by participants ‘out there’ - and especially written somewhere for
posterity - is a great way of re-assuring people their concerns are being
heard. It also opens them up to better
hearing what others are saying, and they look at the system of interacting bits
and pieces (‘variables’) with a more objective perspective - as can
others. This often creates an
environment for more generative conversation to follow. Such techniques may be getting people to draw
what is happening in the system as a series of causal loops. Or use sticky dots to respond to statements and
then stand back and look at results, and explore reasons for those results
(rather than stating one’s own position).
(6) If conflict does emerge unexpected, have a break taking
people ‘offline’ and rethinking how to proceed.
Determine whether resolving the conflict is essential to achieving the
desired outcomes or not (sometimes it is between just two people on a related
but tangential matter), and plan accordingly.
Note: in some instances, you can create a sub-group for people to debate
a specific point or resolve a specific conflict, whilst the rest of the group
work on something else.
(7) Remind people from the start of the event of why they are in
their room and the commonality of their objectives. Keep coming back to shared objectives.
(8) If you are a subject matter expert who likes to debate, this
aspect of the facilitation role may be particularly challenging. Not only do
you need to maintain your neutrality; you also need to know when to stop
debating (which may be something only a few of your participants are doing
anyway) and to move things along. Again,
remind people of why they are in the room, coming back to shared objectives,
and how the process is going to get you there.
Related blog posts:
Practicing Creating Conflict:
