Invisible Facilitation

I have blogged before about Invisible Facilitation (here and here) and was reminded of the idea this week, when I ran an awayday(-and-a-half) for the senior team of a University.

As before, some of my most valuable work was done beforehand (getting the agenda cast as questions, for example, and agreeing the whole approach with the Vice Chancellor, which informed how he introduced the day and ran various discussions). On the event, I said very little.

One thing I did say was a brief (10 minute) introduction to Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment (qv) and the implications of the 10 components as they might apply to this awayday.

I also sorted the groups for the group work, managed the timing and so on; but 90% or more of the talking was done by the participants, and (and this is the important thing in terms of the Thinking Environment) the airtime was shared pretty evenly between them.

At one stage I also passed the VC a note about a change to the meeting process, when I thought the Thinking Environment principles weren't being honoured (ie a few were doing all the talking). He changed the process, and the thinking took off again.

The last thing I did was invite them to comment on what they had taken from the event, and their reflections on the Thinking Environment as a methodology for such meetings.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive: indeed a number of them said it was the best awayday they had ever had as a team.

So once again, nearly-invisible facilitation proved a very valuable approach: and fortunately the group were sophisticated enough to recognise the correlation between my (very few) interventions and the success of the event.

Another blow struck for introverted facilitators!