Complex facilitation

Complex facilitation is a body of methods and principles that have evolved over the years. The original development took place in Denmark so we could facilitate in English but the conversations would be in Danish so the facilitator could not understand the content.

The fundamental principles are enabling constraints in Cynefin terms and as much focused admonitions not to do certain things. They are as follows:

1. The facilitator should not engage with the content in any way, they are there to manage a process not to be an expert or to demonstrate intentionally or otherwise exercise authority or influence over utcome. Approaches such as the using three facilitators also enforces this. To have a light footprint is a minimum, no footprint is the goal
2. You never spell out a lesson, let along tell me in advance what the learning objective is, you enable the group to discover things for themselves and that discovery does not have to be articulated per see. That means you never comment on individual behavior or express any opinion as to what it should be. No examples should ever be given unless they are so different that they can not be copied.
3. The general principle of descriptive self-awareness focuses on changing the context so that people discover things for themselves, but not by manipulation more by contrast. Running the same process in parallel between groups and then using Silent listening to compare and contrast would be one example. Archetype comparison is another.
4. Methods are designed to change interactions, not to change people. They may of course change but that is their affair, not yours!
5. Reporting back biases the group to the first report so we use techniques such as silent listening
6. When we ask a question then it would be a non-hypothesis question which in no way indicates what might be a desirable answer

NOT SURE ABOUT THESE WHICH WERE IN THE COURSE

• breaking patterns of expectation
• themes emerge from the content