You're leading a diverse group facilitation session. How can you ensure all voices are truly heard?
Facilitating a diverse group session requires a thoughtful approach to ensure that everyone feels valued and heard. Diversity in a group can encompass a variety of differences, including cultural backgrounds, professional experiences, age, gender, and more. As a facilitator, your role is to create an environment where all participants can contribute their perspectives equally. This means being aware of and actively managing the dynamics that can lead to some voices being amplified while others are marginalized. By employing specific strategies and techniques, you can encourage full participation and foster an inclusive atmosphere where every member has the opportunity to share their insights.
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Gary Rush IAF Certified Professional Facilitator MasterTransforming your workforce by developing collaborative leadership capabilities that increase performance 'n engagement…1 Reply
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Kirsty LewisFounder of School of Facilitation. Teaching workshop design, fantastic facilitation & training trainers make my 💜…
Establishing the right atmosphere from the outset is crucial for a successful facilitation session. Begin by clearly stating the objectives and the importance of each person’s contribution. Create ground rules together with the group to promote mutual respect and active listening. This collaborative approach helps in building a safe space where participants feel comfortable to express their thoughts without fear of judgment. Encourage participants to be mindful of the time they take to speak and to be considerate of giving others the opportunity to contribute as well.
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Design your activities to ensure all are heard. That's part of your job. To enable consensus, the group must first 'diverge' - which means everyone must speak up. Understand the group dynamics sufficiently so that you design the activities to enable all to speak. That's how you design a workshop process.
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Creating an inclusive and respectful psychological safe space and a positive environment where all the voices are heard start by setting the tone through clarifying the objectives to make participants understand the scope, being sure that all are on the same page, pointing ground rules and guidelines for active listing and communication to encourage participation and foster productive inclusive conversation
Incorporate inclusive practices into your facilitation techniques to ensure equitable participation. Use round-robin or structured go-arounds to give each person the chance to speak. This prevents dominant personalities from overtaking the conversation and helps quieter members feel invited to contribute. Additionally, consider using non-verbal methods such as polling or written feedback, which can be particularly beneficial for those who may not be as comfortable speaking up in a group setting.
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The Thinking Environment (TE) approach is deeply rooted in inclusion, creating environments where every person feels able to think for themselves, as themselves. The TE facilitation approaches include Rounds, which help equalise airtime as well as encouraging equal attention given to each person's contribition, and Thinking Pairs which offer both safety and equality to explore thinking before bringing it back to the wider group. It's essential to use approaches which foster psychological safety as your lovely diverse group of people will only share their ideas, thoughts and concerns if they feel safe enough in each others' company to do so.
Active listening is a key skill for a facilitator. Demonstrate this by giving your full attention to each speaker, acknowledging their points, and refraining from interrupting. Summarize or paraphrase what was said to show understanding and to clarify for the group. This not only validates the speaker but also ensures that their ideas are accurately captured and considered by everyone. Encourage participants to actively listen to one another as well, which fosters a deeper level of engagement and understanding within the group.
Be vigilant about the group dynamics and be prepared to intervene when necessary. If you notice that certain individuals are dominating the conversation, gently guide the discussion to give others a chance to speak. Conversely, if someone is being interrupted or overlooked, interject to invite them back into the dialogue. It's important to be fair and consistent in managing these dynamics to maintain trust and balance within the group.
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Group dynamics have always been a sensitive matter for the facilitator. Rule number 1, 2, 3 and oh well, all of them. NEVER chastise someone who is behaving badly in a group in front of everyone else. Cardinal sin of facilitation. Instead of everyone thanking you for your intervention, you end up in the wrong as group think and learner protectionism kicks in. Instead, call a natural break for drink or comfort and take offensive person to one side out of sight of others, explain what you have observed regarding their behaviour and how it is affecting others and their learning. Give them choice to stay and change or leave.
Embrace and encourage the diversity of ideas and perspectives within the group. Acknowledge different viewpoints and explore them further to enrich the discussion. Highlighting the value of varied experiences and opinions reinforces the message that all contributions are welcome and important. This approach not only leads to more creative and comprehensive outcomes but also strengthens the group's collaborative spirit.
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If the group are not immediately forth coming with differing view points, posing questions such as 'If I was X, how would I experience this?' 'Put yourself on the other side what is your view now?' 'Describe how this would impact you as the customer of this process.' Allowing time for individuals to consider alternatives and space for others to come forward into the discussion.
After the session, take time to reflect on how well you facilitated the inclusion of all voices. Consider asking for feedback from participants on how they felt about their involvement and the inclusivity of the session. Use this information to adapt your approach for future facilitations, continually improving your ability to create an environment where everyone feels heard and respected.
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Reflecting on your facilitation skills is such an important thing to do to enable your own development to improve. When asking for feedback from delegates make it an open narrative question and try not to take what is said personally. Everyone is different and there is no perfection in facilitation.
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