Working the Group

Something that many people don’t understand is that facilitation is similar to learning the charisma and comedy skill in the game The Sims. You must learn how to work with people, read a room, control your own body language, and discover yourself step-by-step.

When you work in a group, it can often lead to disagreements and misunderstandings. However, when it comes to facilitation, working the room is trying to get everyone to work together and have effective conversations using healthy communication skills.

If you aren’t a natural room worker, then here are a few tips for effectively working a room and at least feeling somewhat natural as you learn.

Engage Individually
At first, you are always going to introduce yourself to the group. It helps everyone get a general idea and makes you seem less intimidating. But after that point, that’s where the finesse of working a group comes into play. It is important to watch your students regularly: learn their habits, how they act and how they are interacting with one another.

A big trick in this one is to try your best to remember a key fact about each of your students. This shows that you are paying attention and that your focus really is on developing each of them in your skill sweet spot. Remembering that our students are individuals from the start will require us to make personalized and lasting connections.

Names are Important and Respect Pronouns
Something that is often forgotten is how important a name can be to someone. In a day where people can have dead names or very specific familial history with their name, we have to remember to be respectful of a person’s name.

Another thing that can be a challenge for some is addressing the proper use of pronouns. One of the ways you can break the pronoun barrier is to include your preferred pronouns whenever possible. This shows your compassion for diversity while being a supportive learning environment for students of all pronoun preferences.

Create Community and Mingle
Another great way to work the group is to openly demonstrate creating community with your students. How do you do this? It’s easier than you’d think. Watch and see what your students are connecting over. Can you incorporate that ‘thing’ into an Icebreaker or a strategy? This really motivates people to create a lot of valuable connections in and out of the classroom.

One perfect way to encourage your students to mingle is to work with a lot of breakout rooms. These rooms let people’s personalities come through which also encourages people get to know one another. One of the best ways to manage breakout rooms is to pop in every now and then to check in if you can. Otherwise, always be prepared to be the one to even up any groups.

Discuss Disagreements Openly
Without conflict or failure, there is no growth. Disagreements will be with you always and conflict is far more common than you thought. Every day we experience internal conflict where we have to make specific decisions. The same is with any group. This is where the mediation of facilitation can really come into play.

Disagreements will happen and as a mediator, it is your job to be the in-between party. When there are disagreements between people, there is a specific stance you have to take: impartial treatment.

This can be very hard because there are always going to be those students that you attach to and that's okay. As a mediator, you have to look at both sides of a disagreement as objectively as possible. This lets you see the issues that can’t be seen when irritations flare high.

Once you spot the core of the issue, point it out and direct the disagreeing parties to come to a compromise when and where possible.

Guide the Conversation
Something that facilitation allows is for you to guide the conversation. Part of this means that you need to be listening to all that is going on around you when in a life group. However, when you are online, it is going to be a completely different story. When students go off-topic it’s going to be important to balance getting to know the people in the class while also getting everyone back on track.

One of the best ways to guide a conversation is to have discussion questions ready. These are going to be one of the best and easiest ways to get people talking about a topic. Plus, if you include different types of critical thinking or active questions, then you are going to have conversations that really dig into the information you’re covering.

Come to a Unified Conclusion
The biggest, most important point about working in a group for a facilitator is the definition of the skill: coming to an agreed-upon solution. When you work in a group, it’s a lot of guiding people to come to agreements over things that at first, they disagreed over. It could also mean synthesizing everyone’s thoughts in a way that others couldn’t see.

When working with a group and trying to facilitate conversations, it is incredibly important to remember that not everyone is going to participate easily or well. Keep up your patience and review these tips before you go into your next class session.