Field Method Toolkit
Tips for facilitators
Facilitating conversations about tenure needs facilitation skill as well as knowledge of some principles. Facilitators will draw on all their earlier general experience of giving clear instructions, working with group dynamics, keeping people focused on the work of the meeting and so on.
- Start by finding out what people know now. Don't assume they know nothing.
- Bring differences into the open and encourage people to discuss them. Explain to people that this is a way of widening everybody's understanding of situations and principles and may help to avoid future conflict. Don't take sides when people disagree.
- Give enough time to reach real consensus where it is essential and don't force consensus where it is unnecessary.
- Keep reading faces to see how much people are engaged and understanding. If you see glassy eyes and there is a lack of interaction with you and with one another, ask questions or explain or describe or give concrete examples to help people to understand. Don't assume that because you are speaking the same language that people understand you. Don't assume that because you have taught people that they have learnt, or that because you have explained to them that they understand.
- Keep checking what people understand - ask them to summarize or tell it back to you, then fill and clarify.
- Restate or summarize as you go along to check your own understanding and assumptions. "Are you saying this....?"
- Probe in a way that challenges people to grow but doesn't intimidate them. What do you mean when you say this...? Why....? What if...? What happens when....?