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| 9/04/06 | | Silencing the facilitator - looking at facilitator turn taking |
An interesting and thought provoking post by Johnnie Moore on Trust, Control, Power, Silence.
I've been reflecting a lot on the notion of silence in meetings. I've found silences increasingly powerful points in meetings I've been facilitating.
I’ve also been thinking / reflecting on this. You may have seen my last post on building trust in anecdote circles - use silence. To follow this further, I wondered what percentage of “turn-taking” facilitators have for different group processes. A facilitator takes a ‘turn’ whenever they make a spoken utterance in a group. The figure below shows some initial stats I have pulled together based on live transcript data for these facilitated processes.
The initial findings suggest:
- in more traditional group facilitation the facilitator takes a ‘turn’ speaking almost every second go (eg. Facilitator – Participant – Facilitator – Participant …)
- in a small anecdote circle (3–4 people) the facilitator takes a ‘turn’ speaking 3 out of every 10 times
- in a large anecdote circle (8–10 people) the facilitator takes a ‘turn’ speaking approximately 1 in every 10 times
- in open space (averaging it out) the facilitator takes a ‘turn’ approximately 1 in every 25 times
Thinking about empowerment and trust experienced in groups, I wonder whether there might be a trend towards less facilitator turn taking and greater trust and empowerment within groups?
What level of facilitator turn taking do you have?
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Comments
Andrew: Thanks for the links and for the fascinating statistics. My hunch is there is a big link between turn taking and empowerment... I wonder if there would be credible way of measuring that?
Posted by: Johnnie Moore at April 9, 2006 7:49 PM
Great question Johnnie. I wonder....?
Posted by: Andrew Rixon at April 10, 2006 7:29 PM