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| 29/01/07 | | Exploring the language of facilitation |
Last week Johnnie Moore, Tom Guarriello and I connected (3 world times uniting) and had a great conversation exploring language of facilitation. Johnnie summed it up well with:
It's a suitably non-linear conversation touching on lots of themes - the power of metaphor, the role of narrative, and the impact of body language and silence. We talk about how in using language we often miss how it shapes our experience and how easily it can both unite and divide us. Is there something going on in groups of people that is beyond language? How does the institutional language of organisations constrain their behaviour? I also get to sound off about the dangers of premature encapsulation.
Thanks to Johnnie, he has compiled our conversation into a podcast. You can download it from here. Enjoy!
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Comments
Thanks for posting this Andrew, and for prompting me out of lurk space.
The conversation itself provides a useful point for reflecting on facilitative language and in particular the use of a lexicon within a practice community!
Many of the themes that emerged/developed during your conversation with Johnnie and Tom (non-verbal communication, inclusion/exclusion, paradox, social constructivism etc) had me thinking about Ralph Stacey's work on "complex responsive processes of relating". I've found this a useful lense through which to (re)view my work as a facilitator... particularly the notion of themes as attractors and the often paradoxical nature of power relating. It seems to me that the "leadership" a facilitator provides is often in assisting groups to manage the anxiety, at the same time as holding the tension, created as these themes iterate and transform during conversation and group members adjust in relation to them.
Posted by: Andy Bell at January 30, 2007 10:43 AM
Thanks Andy for your post!
I will have to check out Ralph Stacey's "complex responsive processes of relating". Sounds interesting. Any particular book or paper ref for that?
Cheers,
Andrew
Posted by: Andrew Rixon at February 1, 2007 8:20 AM