I am currently designing an advanced facilitation workshop. One of the needs is to prepare facilitators to handle groups who are experiencing confusion and frustration. (This is often a stage the groups need to work through in the particular event/methodolgy that they facilitate). I need to come up with a practical activity to prepare facilitators for this. Any ideas or suggestions? Would also appreciate reference to short articles or chapters.
Thanks in advance for any answers
Andy
Andy Jaggard
2 Responses
Transition Curve
Using the transition curve with a group to explain the process they are experienceing can be helpful, as can undertaking a forcefield analyses of the factors that are causing the confusiion, and then attacking the issues on a problem solving basis to find a workable and practical solution to end the confusion (of course it does depend on the reason for the confusion in teh first place, but I have used these methods with redundancy’s and major organisational change workshops with equal sucess. Hope that’s useful ?
Get THEM confused!
Experience is, in my experience, the most effective way of understanding how to deal with confusion (or indeed anything!?). So, how can you get the traineee faclitators confused themselves and then help them reflect on their own experience and map it into helping others?
Give them a difficult group task with indaequate or confusing instructions, change the rules part way through, remove a key player along with the information that they hold relevant tot he task. You might even not give them anything to do – just be absent (either physicaly or mentally) from the room when they come together and then explore how they dealt with not knowing what was going to/happening….
Hope some of this helps.
Regards
Geoff