Invitation Goes Further Than Manipulation. It can be very tempting to use charm and pressure to bend a group to your will. Especially if you tell yourself that your will is just to help them achieve their goals. But if you manipulate them to completion, the results won’t stick, because they didn’t do the work to actually get to the conclusion

As facilitators we step back from the knowing that makes us stand out as individuals, the call to make ourselves distinct from each other and the universe. Facilitation is a commitment to the power of the collective. We hold space for humans to find each other, clearing the debris between them so that they can access the forward motion of life, the

A facilitator’s role is not to make everyone comfortable. Our job is to help people through their discomfort while using all of the knowledge and feelings in the room to make meaning and take actions informed by the learning.

Transform Yourself to Transform the World. This guidance, articulated by Grace Lee Boggs, is facilitation and mediation gold. How you are, how you show up, invite a quality of presence from participants. If you want to change what is possible in the room, change what you believe is possible. Change how present you are, increase your rigor, focus

Ignore the tangents, follow the feelings. Sometimes tangents move on the path of feeling, but not always, not often. Often they are looping around the feeling—spiraling up or down from the feeling. Ask hopeful questions like, “How does that connect to what you need in this moment?” Or suggest that they take a break and ask, “What is the essence of

Consider the top two things people say they are afraid of: 1. Speaking in public 2. Death. Every facilitation experience confronts both. And when people are afraid, they do not breathe. I assert that your primary responsibility as a facilitator is to keep people breathing in the face of their greatest fears—including rejection, not knowing, being

Create a Culture of Celebration—Pivot Towards Pleasure. It seems simple—but people stay more engaged in a space where they are enjoying each other, and feel celebrated and appreciated. Small, personal celebrations help fuel groups through the hard work, reminding them that they are humans together, regardless of the external pressures they face.

How do we practice the art of holding others without losing ourselves?

facilitation is making it as easy as possible for groups of people to do the hard work of dreaming, planning, visioning, and organizing together; and mediation is supporting people when conflicts or misunderstandings arise that make it hard for them to hear and understand each other in direct conversation