You know you're a group facilitator if:

The popularity of my post, "You know you're a storyteller if ..." inspired me to work on this one.

Eighteen ways to know if you're a group facilitation expert:

1. You have three different colored markers and masking tape in your briefcase.
2. You can thoughtfully distinguish between facilitating learning, facilitating group development, and facilitating collaborative problem solving and decision making. Other uses of "facilitating" make you groan.
3. You wonder, when you're invited to a meeting, if their facilitator will be as good as you.
4. You wonder, when you're invited to a meeting, if they really just want you to facilitate.
5. You wonder, when you're invited to a meeting, if they will let you facilitate.
6. When invited to a meeting you ask about its purpose, what's on the agenda, what decisions are to be made, if all the people necessary to make a decision will be present, if sufficient time has been scheduled, and if they're really inviting you so you'll facilitate.
7. Your hands have multi-colored splotches.
8. You can explain the history of the term "brainstorming" and lament how it is misused.
9. People ask how you manage to remember everyone's name.
10. You have a particular technique for ripping off a sheet of flip chart paper so it doesn't leave behind a residual shred of paper at the perforation.
11. You can explain Brainstorming, Nominal Group Technique, Technology of Participation, Future Search, Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space Technology, and World Cafe.
12. Several books on your shelf have "meeting," "group," and/or "facilitation," "facilitator," "facilitating," or "facilitative" in their titles.
13. You believe in the inherent value of the individual and the collective wisdom of the group.
14. You strive to help the group make the best use of the contributions of each of its members.
15. You set aside your personal opinions and support the group's right to make its own choices.
16. You believe that collaborative and cooperative interaction builds consensus and produces meaningful outcomes.
17. No one understands what you do for a living.
18. You are right now thinking of another way "you know you're a group facilitator if ..." What is it?

What we need is ...! What you need is ...!

Felt, observed, and real needs

I think it is useful to understand the distinction between felt needs, observed needs, and real needs (a distinction Ward Goodenough made in his 1963 book, Cooperation in Change) and aspire to find and increase their overlap.

Felt needs are the needs identified by the members of a community (or any collaborative group). Felt needs are identified based on the information available to the members, however incomplete and inaccurate that information might be, and how the members interpret that information in the context of their own experiences and predispositions.

Observed needs are the needs identified by the change agent (outsider, leader, facilitator, donor, etc.). They might be the same as the members’ felt needs – or not. Change agents identify observed needs based on the information available to them, however incomplete and inaccurate that information might be, and how they interpret that information in the context of their own experiences and predispositions.

Real needs are the needs that could be determined by an omniscient being. Real needs would be identified based on perfect information – information that is complete and accurate – interpreted in the context of all reality without bias.

Neither the members’ felt needs nor the change agent’s observed needs should be presumed to be the real needs. Together, members and change agents should aspire to better identify the real needs, but all the while exercising doubt, learning from others and keeping their minds open to new understandings and insights.

---

Goodenough, Ward (1963). Cooperation in change. Chapter 3: Wants and Needs, pp. 49-60. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Words We Use: Groups, Meetings, Facilitation, Collaboration

Wow! I wish the Google Books Ngram Viewer was around when I wrote my essay, Group Facilitation’s “Golden Age”, in which I tracked a few measures of growth and development in the world of group facilitation. Here are a few simple examples of readily available Ngram analyses.

Note: Apparently the Ngram Viewer graphs are not visible in Internet Explorer. Try Firefox or Chrome.

The following graph shows that, in Google's corpus of English books published between 1800 and 2008, the term "group effectiveness" first appeared in 1898; its frequency peaked in 1974. "Meeting management" and "group facilitation" first appeared in 1920 and 1921 respectively and seem to have recently plateaued. "Group facilitator" first appeared in 1947, "workshop facilitator" in 1969, and "meeting facilitator" in 1976, all still increasing in use. "Group process," which first appeared in 1894, is in such greater usage that I decided to show it on a separate graph.

The terms that appear in the title of this blog occur much more frequently. All were already in use in 1800. I find it interesting that use of "communication" dropped between 1860 and 1930 while use of the terms "consensus" and "collaboration" grew. Also interesting is that of the latter two terms, "consensus" was more widely used except between 1914 and 1972, when "collaboration" was more widely used. Most noticeable is the bump in use of "collaboration" from 1938 to 1948 when, I suppose, it was used in the context of "collaboration with the enemy."

For more information about the underlying data and how to perform this analysis visit the Google Books Ngram Viewer. Please let me know if you find some interesting results.

Consensus and Authority in a Hierarchy: A Proposal

How can consensus work in a hierarchical organization? Wouldn't consensus undermine the authority of the superior?

I have encountered this question in organizations with a strong hierarchical structure. The person in the superior position has the formal decision-making authority and is held accountable for the decisions made. And yet, I do not think consensus decision making and hierarchy are incompatible. I have attempted to lay out how consensus can actually work in a hierarchical organization. Although these rules are somewhat tedious, please bear with me and share your thoughts.

1. If the Head is not a member of the group, then the group strives to reach agreement on a recommendation that is presented to the Head. It is useful if the Head has agreed in advance to fully consider the recommendation of the group and understand its reasoning.


2. If the Head is a member of the group, and if the group reaches full agreement, then the Head's decision is the same as everyone else's. The Head's authority is upheld in the consensus. For this to work, the Head must be a full participant in the consensus building process.


3. If consensus is reached, and some of the members are not in full agreement but nonetheless willing to support the decision, then:


1. If the Head is in full agreement with the consensus decision, the Head's authority is upheld in the consensus.


2. If the Head is one of those not in full agreement with the consensus decision, the Head has the discretion to ask the group to reconsider the issues, clearly taking the Head's concerns into account (an option available to any member of a consensus-based decision-making group) or adopt a decision other than the consensus decision.


4. If consensus has not been reached, and there is either agreement by the group that a decision must be made at this time, or there is an external constraint that requires a decision at this time, then the Head has the discretion to make the decision.

So what do you think? Does this sufficiently address both consensus-building and maintain hierarchical authority? Are there any loose ends?

Collective Intelligence, June 10-12, 2014 MIT

Call for Papers:

Collective Intelligence 2014
MIT, Cambridge, MA
June 10-12, 2014
www.collectiveintelligence2014.org

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together researchers from a variety of fields relevant to understanding and designing collective intelligence of many types.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• human computation
• social computing
• crowdsourcing
• wisdom of crowds (e.g., prediction markets)
• group memory and extended cognition
• collective decision making and problem-solving
• participatory and deliberative democracy
• animal collective behavior
• organizational design
• public policy design (e.g., regulatory reform)
• ethics of collective intelligence (e.g., "digital sweatshops")
• computational models of group search and optimization
• emergence and evolution of intelligence
• new technologies for making groups smarter

More …