Every profession has its hidden perks:
A doctor gets to detect what is going on in their body and that of their people around.
A maths teacher gets to calculate and play with numbers, figures and geometric figures like no other.
An interpreter gets to communicate with (some) locals and tourists more easily when travelling.
A facilitator gets to organise their life, conversations and collective endeavours like a pro! Let me examine all the hidden perks, in your personal life, of facilitating for a living.
I was warned by Ed (Rege): Facilitating is meant to extend to our personal life!
Facilitation brings clarity on dynamics, objectives, power and roles
The most obvious advantage of having honed your facilitation skills is in the clarity that it brings on various things. Looking at my life:
- I systematically enter any new pathway (for whatever it is, a hobby, a piece of work, a trip, a personal project etc.) with a clear sense of ‘why’? What is the bigger thing that this is part of? What am I trying to achieve with this right now? Why is that? And why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why?
- I am no longer surprised at the dynamics that can unfold between people, I’m in fact scanning these dynamics, and related tensions, to anticipate what might be coming up…
- I am acutely aware of the positions of power and privilege and what that means in terms of the impact it has on other people. In some cases it allows me to intervene to counter such phenomena…
A lot of elements that might have garbled my vision before – even when talking about something as mundane as looking to go out with a group of friends – is clearer and easier to deal with than it would be without my facilitation and process design experience…
No more ‘shitty pizza moment’ and less cringe about disagreements
In fact I’m even working with a friend on this: the all-too-familiar scenario of a group that wants to have dinner and neither is there one person with more experience and more authority to suggest the whole group goes to a particular address, nor is the group equipped to deal with its set of contradictory ideas, fake politeness, swelling emotions etc. As a result, the group ends up eating at a bad pizza place way later than they should have. United by the lowest common denominator instead of a common good…
My facilitation experience helps me navigate a group decision-making process, even when there are strong opinions about what to do and what not to do…
And similarly, whenever there’s a conflict – I still don’t like conflicts – it gives me less cringe, because I know how important a conflict or a strong misunderstanding can be for breaking up a stale dynamic and pump some energy into the situation…
I am more at ease with conflict, more at ease with confusion, more confusiastic thus, it makes my life easier and ensures there’s no ‘cadavre dans le placard’ or elephant in the room… Something bothering? I can call it out…
Little lenses and tools that change your outlook on things
There are so many participation formats and little tools and lenses that a facilitator gets to know over time. And these tools and lenses help navigate a great many situations in our personal life too. I will probably write a specific one about how I use Liberating Structures for my own, but meanwhile here’s a few ideas:
- Using Min Specs to organise your next trip or buy a car or a house…
- A simple ‘Lean Coffee‘ to host a conversation about various topics without making it stale
- A ‘Time to think‘ conversation when a conversation in the couple or between friends or relatives becomes too heated
- My ‘ecocycle planning‘ to review my list of clients, my daily rituals and routines etc.
And I’m not even mentioning in details how active listening (paraphrasing, drawing people out etc.) has helped countless couples and families get over some thorny discussions, or just enjoy another level of quality. I still use ‘stacking’ a lot to manage my kids wishing to talk at the same time.
A positive mindset
Perhaps one of the most useful aspects of facilitating is the mindset that it brings about: I already mentioned confusiasm and the ability to stomach conflict, but facilitation is also a great doorway to:
- Curiosity, empathy and patience – to help everyone do their best thinking we are brought to be patient with challenging communication styles and to accommodate space for everyone, to become empathic with them, and to patiently invite them into the space because we genuinely believe that everyone has a useful piece of the puzzle
- Appreciation and gratitude – we are led to routinely create a positive atmosphere, and that helps us emulate that in our personal life. I am appreciative of the efforts that others are making, and point it out to them. And I am extremely grateful for all the inputs and help from everyone around, knowing that many good things in life happen thanks to combined efforts
- Flexibility and open-mindedness – while process design puts the emphasis on strong planning, as I do and many people who facilitate do too, I am aware that my plans are only a good start, not a recipe to follow from A to Z. It helps me think on my feet and as the little magnet on my office says here ‘turn panic into magic’. In the process I am also aware that I need to remain open to other peoples’ ideas and to other ‘data points’ to find a promising new track…
A renewed sense of energy and purpose
Last but not least, facilitating allows me to meet many people, hear about many domains, create many opportunities for now and for the future. All of this provides me – perhaps not everyone – with a lot of energy.
Perhaps most importantly, because facilitating brings me to help other groups, it generates a lot of positive energy in the simple fact of focusing on others and giving to others rather than focusing on myself. It contributes to my sense of purpose and to the fact that with process literacy I have found my ikigai…
And so all in all, facilitation invites itself in my everyday life, and every day invites process literacy and facilitation…
So if any of these aspects resonates with you, if you feel you are stuck in what your’e doing, if you would like to experience some of the energy and ‘feel good’ vibe that I’m describing here, you might consider getting into facilitation also 😉 I know very few people that want to branch out of it or want to stop using the skill…
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