Phase 4: Exploring Possibilities for Action
Ideally, dialogue processes prompt people to move from talk to action. The final phase of a dialogue explores the possibilities for action. Some groups may choose to express either personal or collective commitments to address the issues. If the dialogue has reached its potential for transformation, people often feel energized and motivated to enact change. Sometimes people begin projects or make plans to work together. Building relationships across lines of division and increasing understanding of a situation can help people see what needs to be done to address the issue and find ways to work together.
Depending on the dialogue’s purpose and the group’s internal dynamics, a focus on moving toward action could be a relatively short portion of the dialogue, an entire session, or a set of sessions. Regardless, it is important to help participants recognize that they have some degree of influence to change the situation and address the issue.
As the dialogue winds down, participants often value reflecting upon the process and sharing what they have learned. Even in the most contentious dialogues, most participants describe a positive effect. Facilitators may want to explicitly prompt positive responses by asking “What are one or two positive things that you have gotten out of this process?”
Lastly, in this final phase, participants often want to express appreciation to each other. In many cases, this happens naturally,
| Sample Questions for Action Planning What should we do about this issue now that we have built relationships with each other, shared our experiences, and deepened our understanding of the issues? What can we do individually and as a community to improve relationships among ourselves and address the needs in our community? Of all the ideas shared, which two or three ideas seem most practical for us to work on together? What resources do we already have available to us? If there are existing policy options on this issue, what do we think of these existing options? (Facilitators can offer a handout with three to five policy options to address the problem.) Which of these policies do you think will address everyone's needs in this issue? What other policy options can we brainstorm together? |
with no prompting from the facilitator. But creating such an opportunity — without demanding more appreciation from people than they want to extend—is helpful in provoking a sense of closure.
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6. Facilitating a Dialogue
The role of the facilitator may be the most important element of a dialogue. In fact, a skilled facilitator can often create an effective dialogue even if the other important elements are missing. Choosing a facilitator is critical.
“Natural leaders” or people who play important leadership roles in other activities may make excellent candidates for serving as facilitators, but not always. This chapter discusses competency skills for facilitators and explores how facilitators compare to other types of effective leaders.
Key Facilitation Skills and Tasks
Facilitation is a learned skill in which many people can become reasonably proficient. Following are some of the key tasks required of effective facilitators.
Establish the purpose of the dialogue.
Everyone in the room should clearly understand the purpose and focus of the dialogue. Put this in writing and say it verbally. Check that participants understand and ask if they have any questions.
Foster dialogue.
Remind participants of the difference between dialogue and debate. Help them grasp the importance of listening deeply and speaking respectfully and honestly, and how this differs from ways they may be used to talking with others.
Manage the agenda and guide the process.
Be as self-confident as possible to assure the participants that you know how to guide the process. Keep the discussion focused, and keep your focus on the process. Ask open-ended questions that explore the complexities of the issues.
Develop ground rules.
Either explain the ground rules or ask the group to develop them. Ask participants if they can agree to the rules, and invite them to monitor how well they are following them. When the ground rules are violated, give gentle but firm reminders.
Listen actively.
Demonstrate verbal and nonverbal listening skills that show people you understand what they are saying.
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Monitor group dynamics.
Pay attention to ensure that everyone has a chance to speak and that no one is dominating the conversation. Check in with participants who seem quiet or withdrawn. Ask how they are feeling. Remind participants to “share air time” so that everyone feels responsible for monitoring the group’s dynamics.
Communicate interest in everyone’s perspective.
Help to bring out views that aren’t represented. Participants in a dialogue should feel that the facilitator is authentically interested in understanding their experiences and ideas.
Help deal with difficult participants.
Keep one-on-one arguments from taking over. Prepare for participants who talk too much, refuse to participate, or disrupt the workshop. Respond to the situation with confidence and grace.
Summarize and paraphrase.
Help people feel that their unique experiences and ideas are heard and understood by summarizing and/or paraphrasing what is said. This skill can also help with long-winded participants who have lost their own key message.
Stay impartial.
In order to maintain everyone’s trust, facilitators are very careful about sharing their experiences and usually refrain from expressing their beliefs relevant to the issue. The facilitator’s role is to help participants wrestle with the similarities and differences in the views they express.
Model the behavior you expect from participants.
Facilitators should model deep listening, respectful and honest speaking, and other ground rules at all times through their words and body language.
Close with a summary.
Summarize the discussion and help focus the group on talking concretely about next steps they want to take individually and collectively.
Advanced Skills and Tasks
Some facilitator characteristics—whether learned or natural—are important in leading highly effective dialogues.
Facilitators inspire confidence in their leadership.
Dialogue requires a facilitator to lead the dialogue and decide where to guide the conversation next. For much if not most of the time, participants are so engrossed in the exchanges that they lose track of the larger flow of the dialogue process. On occasions where the group’s attention is drawn to the process itself, it is important that the facilitator not appear incapable of making a decision. The group must feel that it can trust the facilitator's judgment, and that the facilitator trusts his or her own judgment.
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Natural charisma to inspire confidence in others is useful in the facilitator’s role as the leader on the journey. He or she will need to constantly make decisions about which topics and comments are important to pursue, and which are not. A personality that inspires trust certainly helps create an atmosphere that people feel is safe and productive.
Facilitators are good multi-taskers.
Facilitators need to keep track of many different and competing objectives at once. For example, articulate but long-winded speakers often bring important content to a discussion. But in order for a group to benefit from their contributions, a facilitator must keep track of the relative values of what they are saying, people’s level of apparent boredom/interest in the ideas, how many people have yet to address the topic, and how much time is left in the session.
Facilitators are flexible and not overly controlling.
Since the facilitator’s job is to create a setting in which many people feel empowered to listen, talk, and learn, the facilitator must be careful not to overly control the dialogue, because this will make people feel boxed in and not truly included. Facilitators provide guidance but also listen to the group and observe participants' level of energy when deciding whether to be flexible or keep on schedule.
Facilitators see a situation from many points of view.
Many facilitators engage in dialogue as part of their commitment to broader principles like justice, peace, and democracy. In some cases, competent facilitators have an unconscious (or even conscious) bias against participants that hold more political, economic, or social power. Facilitators need to do a great deal of self-reflection to process their own biases before facilitating a dialogue in which their biases might affect their ability to manage the process. Facilitators must be able to empathize with the experiences of all the participants. The capacity to understand all points of view is essential.
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Facilitators stay calm and engaged.
One test of a facilitator’s skill level is his or her reaction to emotional intensity within a group. This may take the form of anger, tears, rudeness, expressed frustration, or other intense emotion. In these conditions, a facilitator's primary task is to maintain the group’s focus of attention in spite of the charged emotions. This can be very difficult, especially if the emotions are directed at the facilitator. Staying calm in the midst of anxiety or tension takes a great deal of practice and inner strength. A wise facilitator stays emotionally present and engaged while thinking about what is best for the group rather than formulating a defense or attempting to stop emotional expression.
Facilitators pose provocative questions.
A highly skilled facilitator uses the dialogue design as a guide and spontaneously asks questions of the group to move the dialogue forward and attain a deeper level of honest analysis. The ability to improvise and generate questions that help the group see commonalities or disagreements is an important skill. (See Chapter 5 for suggested questions facilitators might ask.)
Facilitators connect with people.
A final important quality of first-rate facilitators is the ability to emotionally connect with participants and continually invite them to stay engaged in the process. Highly skilled facilitators convey that they understand how participants see the issue, and that everyone in the group can learn more from each other by staying with the process. The challenge for facilitators is to stay engaged in the process as participants learn and transform at their own rate without seeming to be smarter or more evolved than the participants. The facilitator reminds participants that they all are on a path toward a higher understanding, and that the facilitator is only a half-step ahead.
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