Facilitation Stance

Finding Courage: Ready to Develop and Master your Facilitation Stance?

What is courage?

cour.age

– the ability to do something that frightens one

In chapter 6 of my book “The Art & Science of Facilitation” we discuss ‘Developing and Mastering your Facilitation Stance’.

What the title of chapter 6 doesn’t spell out is that you, the facilitator, have to find your own source of courage. Courage to say what you see, to inquire about difficult subjects, to not walk past the elephant in the room.

It Takes Courage To Lead!

If finding courage in leadership and facilitation is something you are actively seeking, start here:

How courage can create safety

The five cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance explained

How to gain true mastery in Agile Team Coaching

About leadership, horses and the importance of trust

How to gain agility by giving up control

Each of these articles from the TeamCatapult blog touch on courage.

Courage is needed when leading.

What’s at the heart of wisdom is candor, honesty, authenticity, and vulnerability. In other words, being a real human being who is tapped into their inner wisdom. Teamwork and facilitation is not for the faint of heart. Tools, structures, agendas, and post-it notes only get you so far. We all have to do the rest, individually and together!

Building Self-Awareness and Self-Management

The process of self-awareness and group awareness is always on-going. There is a natural progression, an unfolding, in developing your ability to stand confidently in all five cornerstones of your facilitation stance while in the moment.

These five principles include:

To learn more about each of the guiding principles, I invite you to check out my book “The Art & Science of Facilitation” in which I’ve dedicated one chapter to each of the five principles.

How to Get Clarity and Be Grounded in Your Own Practice

I’d like to give you 7 lessons to help you with the self-work needed for facilitation, lessons that will be on-going throughout your career.

1 Work with a Co-Facilitator

One of the best ways to get better at the practice of facilitation is to co-facilitate!

2 Start a journaling practice and ask yourself tough questions

Journal after each time you facilitate. You will start noticing patterns in your facilitation behaviors and default actions, which will deepen your self-awareness in the room.

3 Change “roles” in order to share your opinions and perspectives

The trick to sharing your opinions and perspectives is learning to share in a way that does not make you right and the team wrong.

4 Work with a supervisor

No matter how developed your practice, your facilitation skills can always be deepened through outside perspective.

5 Intervene to break patterns

Sometimes what a group needs is something to disrupt their familiar habit. Yet disrupting habits, naming things that the group is unaware of, or surfacing topics that they might not want to address come with high stakes – for you, and for them.

6 Articulate what’s happening in the group

Being neutral does not mean that you are passively standing by and watching. When you have the impulse to jump into the content, practice using your model for team dynamics. Name what you see, without judgement.

7 Develop your model for facilitation

The notion of model building, applies to you in your facilitation practice as well! As you practice, you will begin to feel constrained by some of the guidance offered. It’s a good indicator that you’re ready to define your one stance for facilitation!

My Final Word of Guidance

As you embark upon the journey of facilitation, remember that responsibility in facilitation means owning your part and helping the group own theirs!

How to Help a Team Become More Agile: Upholding the Agile Mindset

Upholding the agile mindset is the fifth principle of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance.

The five principles include:

Maintaining Neutrality
Standing in the Storm
Honoring the wisdom of the group
Holding the Group’s Agenda
Upholding the Agile Mindset and Practices

If you are responsible for helping a team become more agile, and are looking for a way to assist a team adopt agility without telling them what to do, this is a good place to start.

It’s the Unique Position You Hold as a Part of the Team!

Agile facilitation is not unique because of the skills of facilitation it requires. What sets you apart as an agile facilitator is the unique position you hold as a part of the team.

As a member of the team, when facilitating, your role is to stand apart from the team.

This ‘dualism’ causes tension for many new facilitators.

Therefore it is important to acknowledge that if you are standing solidly in the other four principles of facilitation, you’ll be just fine – even if you don’t uphold the mindset of agility. You are still facilitating, you just won’t be supporting agility.

The Agile Mind Does Not Equate to Tools and Practices

Facilitating while upholding the agile mindset starts with one simple premise:

“You are the guardian of the values and principles of the agile mindset, not the adjuster of the agile practices.”

Telling people what to do, forcing process, or not listening to what’s happening on the team is not what upholding the agile mindset is about.

Upholding the agile mindset does not look like defending the use of retrospectives as a tried-and-true method of starting conversations.

So, what is and what does upholding an agile mindset look like?

Become the Guardian of the Values and Principles

When a team gets bored, or things aren’t working when leaning on practices in a particular agile framework, it’s time to look beyond what you know.

Lead the team and find inspiration in the practices that others have created, and try them.

You can’t ‘break agile’ when trying something new.

In part, your job as a facilitator is to help teams adapt by inventing their own framework for agility!

In David Kantor’s “Reading the Room” he observes that we all model build.

When we learn a new process, theory or skill set, we imitate first, then we feel constrained, and finally we create something new. We make it our own.

It Starts with Practice

Focusing on upholding the agile mindset means learning how to bridge the divide between principles and practices. It’s what we do in the moment. As facilitator, you’re the one who is able to help a team see where they might be living into the agile values – and where they might not be.

Four ways to practice upholding the Agile Mindset

Develop a deep understanding of the agile practices and mindset
Assess how agile the team is and ask, “Am I the right facilitator?”
Uncover the key for upholding agility with this particular team
Provide process, not solutions

In my book ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’ based on the five principles of the Agile Team Facilitations Stance, I take a deep dive into each of these lessons.

Last Thoughts on Upholding an Agile Mindset

Upholding the agile mindset is not about convincing a team to buy into agile. It’s about helping a team focus on how they work.

It’s about looking for ways to improve how they work so that they can be more effective, empowered, enjoy their work, and experience better outcomes.

Agility in action can look different for different teams. What’s needed is a critical reflection about how well we’re doing at any given moment lives into and upholds the core values and principles.

How and Why Holding the Group’s Agenda is Paramount in Facilitation

As a facilitator, holding the group’s agenda is one of five guiding principles to keep the meeting moving forward.

When a group is resisting the decision they are narrowing in toward or responding with reluctance toward every attempt to move the meeting forward, you are likely encountering the tension between two unspoken but competing agendas in the room.

The principle we are looking at today, ‘holding the group’s agenda, is about continually asking “How can I best serve this group?”. It’s about wondering “ What does this group really need right now?” It’s letting your agenda take the backseat so that you can help a group tackle emergent dynamics. It’s about uncovering what’s really going on in the group so that they can move forward as a team.

The Three Group Agendas To Hold When Facilitating

The first step when it comes to holding the group’s agenda is to understand that there are three different levels of agendas that a group can have:

The Presenting Agenda
The Emergent Agenda
The Developmental Agenda

Let’s look at each of these separately

The Presenting Agenda

This agenda, the presenting agenda encompasses the meeting’s purpose, desired outcomes, and plan. It’s why this group has come together, and it includes the facilitation design anticipated to help the group achieve what it hopes to achieve.

The Emergent Agenda

The emergent agenda is what emergentes live in the room as conversations happen, new perspectives are voiced, and ideas are generated.

New thinking is often behind the emergence of this level of group agenda.

The Developmental Agenda

The developmental agenda is a deeper agenda that focuses on how the group works together. It’s about group behavior and dynamics. Facilitators working with agile teams are not just trying to help a group achieve an outcome for a meeting, they are often helping a team develop.

Hold the Group’s Agenda, Not Your Own!

When you, the group facilitator, work with a group, it’s helpful to know where they want to go. Knowing their presenting agenda enables your to hold their desired outcome – what they hope to achieve from working together – and more fully comprehend what else is happening in the room.

Because along their journey, groups can get in their own way, and it can get especially complicated as a facilitator when what the group thinks they need and what they actually need are two different things.

When you hold the group’s agenda – presenting, emergent, or developmental – you are choosing to be of service to the group over yourself, your position, and your perception of our own worth.

This is about them, not you!

The principle of holding the group’s agenda is about being aware of what the group wants and how they also might be getting in their own way. It’s about being able to really listen to what’s emerging in the team – hearing what the team needs – while remaining aware of what your own agenda might be and not letting it take over.

Go Slow To Go Fast

The slippery slope with agendas is that when your own agenda feels so right to you, you risk missing the group’s agenda. And if you are facilitating a team in which you are a member of the team, discerning your agenda from the team’s agenda becomes even more difficult.

In my book ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’ I go deeper into these agendas and show what holding the group’s agenda looks like in practice!

“You owe it to yourself and the team to challenge the notion of certain agendas”

Holding the Group’s Agenda is Big Work!

The way to change meetings is to help teams and groups move the meeting from a surface-level conversation where they may as well be rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic to a place where it’s okay and even expected to have real conversations.

Most groups need guidance and help getting to this place, and the organization’s culture and team dynamics will have a big impact on how easy the process is.

There is work to do. Without it, you’re wasting time – yours and everyone else’s.

Don’t shy away from emergent and developmental agendas,, even when it’s tough. This work lays the track for agile teams to become agile, and each meeting is a meaningful step toward more systemic change within the team or organizational culture.

The Five Cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance

The cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance include:

Honoring the wisdom of the group
Maintaining Neutrality
Upholding the Agile Mindset and Practices
Standing in the Storm
Holding the Group’s Agenda

Learn more about each stance by clicking the links!

Five Guiding Principles of an Agile Team Facilitation Stance

Collaboration Is a Core Value In Agile

Regardless of the agile framework(s) you use, agile practices require some level of collaboration within teams or between teams, customers and stakeholders.

Collaboration is two or more people coming together to co-create something. When collaboration is effective it can have a euphoric feeling of accomplishment, success, trust, and teamwork. When collaboration is ineffective it can drain a team – that feeling that you get of ‘here we go again…same discussion, same outcome, just a different day’. Effective or ineffective, collaboration is messy – you can’t predict how it will go, things don’t always unfold the way you might think they will, and it’s always emergent.

Facilitation is a core competency for Agile Coaches – teams need facilitators who can foster effective collaboration, support meaningful dialogues and enable team decision-making.

In this introduction to developing guiding principles, we’ll identify and offer guidance regarding four of the most common traits that can subtly surface and begin to erode a team’s efficacy. Implementing core values needs to involve team members and the organization’s values alike.

First, here are some common challenges that can get in the way of effective collaboration in agile teams.

Asking for input when you’ve already made up your mind about what the decision or outcome will be
Using your positional authority of leading a meeting to drive your own agenda and influence a particular outcome
An unclear purpose and/or desired outcome for the collaboration
The team is unclear about how the final decision will be made (i.e. Is the group making a recommendation or a final decision? Will majority rule or will we strive for consensus?)

How We Think Is How We Lead

Learning facilitation tools and techniques are really useful but if what you believe is different from what you’re doing, well, the tools won’t really matter. Collaboration will be frustrating and less impactful than you might desire. In essence, we are searching for the values of a good facilitator.

It Begins With You

Facilitation is like a complex dance of polarities. When teams come together to collaborate, rarely are topics or decisions black and white with a clear ‘right’ answer. At any given time when you are leading a group from a facilitative stance, you’re interweaving different ideas and perspectives together, creating a rich and textured network of ideas that serve to deepen understanding and seek diversity. You’re helping the group define the shades of gray so that they can make more informed decisions.

You Are Managing Yourself

It takes a high degree of self-awareness, self-management and group awareness to navigate the dance. People are putting their trust in you to lead them through a complex process; to be heard, to be respected, to be valued and to contribute to something greater than what they could accomplish on their own.

Facilitators, you’ll prepare for this kind of work by starting with what you believe. In other words, create guiding principles for leading community members and teams.

How We Think Informs How We Act

The Five Guiding Principles

The five guiding principles of The Agile Team Facilitation Stance form the foundation upon what we believe about groups and teams and how those beliefs might show up in the room. Creating guiding principles for your team facilitation work will prepare you as you facilitate!

1) Maintain Neutrality

At the highest level, this principle is about you owning the process, and the team owning the content.
In practice, this looks like bridging competing ideas, sharing what you see in the process with facts, and without judgment.

Review the following tables for each guiding principle and see what each one can look like in action

Internal Assumptions and Beliefs

I am active and engaged (not passive)
I own the process, they own the content
I add value by reflecting back to the group what’s actually happening
I am open minded and see value in all voices
Polarities in opinions offer opportunities to find common ground
I am vested in helping the group achieve their desired outcomes
Critique about the group process is not a critique about who I am

Practices

Say what you see, in a factual, non-judgmental way
Let go of judging right vs wrong
Take a systems perspective
Bridge competing ideas
Listen for the 2% common ground
Offer ideas with no attachment to the outcome
Inquire by asking powerful questions
Seek to understand and deepen the group’s understanding

2) Stand in the Storm

The term “storm” can look, feel and behave differently in each team. This is about seeking out and really listening to differing stances, perspectives, options, solutions, and paths. Without taking sides, a facilitator holds the space for all to speak and be heard during a meeting.

Internal Assumptions and Beliefs

Storms create deeper understanding and context for what’s being discussed
I don’t need to take sides; I need to be able to help the group hear all perspectives
Opposition offers correction
The purpose of conflict is to be helpful to a process
Dysfunctional behavior is a sign of displeasure with something that is happening or something that is wanting to happen, more often than it is about what it looks like in the moment (i.e., interpersonal conflict)
I don’t need to have the answers; I need to help the group find the solution

Practices

Create the container that allows for storms
Sense when there is dissonance – either overt or covert
Have empathy with each member of the group
Inquire about opposition
Be fully present
Be self-aware of your own personal bias
Adjust the process if the conflict calls for it
Activate bystanders – voice what you are seeing or hearing
Turn it back to the group to decide

3) Hold the Group’s Agenda

By continually asking, “How can I best serve this group?” or “What does this group really need right now?” you’ll be operating within this principle. At times, a feeling of resistance, or an instinct to shut down may arise. Perhaps you receive feedback about the process and you feel the beginnings of defensive feelings. The best tool to meet that feeling with is curiosity and a focus on holding the group’s agenda.

Internal Assumptions and Beliefs

This is their Agenda (Big ‘A’ agenda – the underlying need; not little ‘a’ agenda of a meeting)
Resistance is not dysfunctional; it’s trying to be helpful
Inability to converge or decide may mean there is something that needs to be discussed that has not been discussed

Practices

Always be asking ‘How can I best serve this group?’
Treating all actions by the group as data about what they really need
Meeting resistance with curiosity
Aware of the difference between the facilitators desire and what the group needs
Creating a space that allows for opposition to both process and content
Owning the process and being open to feedback about the process

4) Honor the Wisdom of the Group

Related to Stand in the Storm, mentioned earlier, this principle, at its core is about trust. Trusting that the group has it’s own wisdom and developing an environment where each member of the team can grow, stretch and achieve as a respected and valued collaborator. Everyone on the team has both wisdom to learn and wisdom to share.

Internal Assumptions and Beliefs

Trust in the collective intelligence, capacity, and experience of the group
People are more committed to what they have helped to create
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Diversity and difference enhance the outcome
Inclusiveness and engagement of all is needed
An environment of trust will lead to participation by all
The group already has all it needs, my job is to help them access that knowledge

Practices

Create a container that fosters trust, connection, and inclusiveness
Design group processes that engage the whole group
Make it safe for all voices
Ask for the opposing voice
Find the thread that leads to consensus, and help the group pull it through

5) Uphold the Agile Mindset

In practice, this principle can be agility itself: mindset, methods, and actions. There’s a foundational belief that a facilitator can help the team adapt the agile practices in the moment while still upholding the agile values and principles. Best accomplished by modeling agile values and maintaining a servant leadership stance.

Internal Assumptions and Beliefs

I honor the values and principles of the agile mindset, and use it to inform group processes, both planned and in the moment
I hold the agile mindset, lightly, so that the way the group holds the mindset can be prominent
I understand the agile practices well enough to support the team
I can adapt the agile practices in the moment while still upholding the agile values

Practices

Model agile practices
Adapt the practices based on the performance, maturity, and needs of the team
Embrace a lean/agile mindset
Lead with servant leadership

Five Guiding Principles In Action

These are, on the surface, simple principles. You’ve likely noticed in the sections of internal assumptions and practices that it can get complex quickly. Each guiding principle offers its own complex, rich lessons and dynamics. In future posts, we’ll take deeper dives into these complexities with specific examples of each principle in action. We’ll show what they are in action…and what they aren’t too.

For now, which of these principles feels like a mindset that you already hold – it comes naturally for you?

Which principle feels more like a stretch?

What’s one belief you might “try on” in an upcoming meeting?

What actions would you take that might be different from what you have done in the past?

Do you want to learn how to facilitate guiding principles?