“Facilitative leadership is an act, not a role.”
A conversation around facilitation and facilitative leadership with Sarah Gregersen.
Hi Sarah! Lovely to see you. Could you tell me a bit about your background?
Great to see you as well. Well, educational wise I’ve gone to Kaospilot and have a master’s in Culture and Creative Leadership. I started my first company in 2006, and have started a couple both with and without partners since then. All of them have been consultancy-based with a focus on culture and development in organizations and CSR. And during this time I’ve been head of Design and Development at Hyper Island.
What’s your feelings on being a consultant?
I feel like that whole industry is a bit broken in that way that if I do my job the client won’t need me anymore and therefore a lot of consultants make sure that they always do something to come back and do more work. I really believe that if a transformation is to take place and be sustainable then skills in facilitation is really important to have in-house for people to be able to do that type of organizational work themselves. If I do my job well, I’m not needed anymore to solve things.
So your latest company is The Other Potential. What is that you do?
We’re doing a lot of facilitated consultancy on the side and then we have our open courses which is a relatively new thing. We have a two day course called A guide to facilitation where we provide the foundations in facilitation for individuals and then we have a one day course coming up on facilitative leadership. We’re based in Copenhagen, Denmark, but we do courses all over the world.
That sounds really interesting, the concept of facilitative leadership. Could you tell me more about what that means?
There’s the transformational leadership which is fundamental to get people in organizations to transform and lead them through motivation instead of beating them with a stick. And within that bucket lies facilitative leadership which requires a lot of understanding of team dynamics and having skills in that area. Those traits and skills are very connected to how you as a leader motivate and role model as well. It’s really important that you role model the values that you also want to see in your team and your employees and what you want to see in the company. It also means that, besides being a role model, you have to be really value-based and transparent with those values and that those also connect to your business and what you do as well. There should be a strong match between the company’s values and your values.
So facilitative, and transformational, leadership is not a role. It’s an act.
And in teal organizations (editor’s note: more info on teal organizations can be found here) and other open-ended organizations that act is distributed but the mandate is also given to the ones to do or acts. Which means it’s not given and then you have it and you can keep it, but rather it’s fluent which is super scary for many people.
There’s a lot of talk about millennials being the majority of the workforce now. How does that type of leadership tie into the change in the workforce?
There is no way that the newer generations that are coming to the job market are going to work with the leadership that is out there right now, the top-down and hierarchical leadership. There’s just no way because that’s so different from their values. So there is a lot of curiosity around this “new” type of leadership, and not only on top level but also on project management level and project and team leadership where some companies are pioneering in changing the project management role into facilitators and coaches.
What other requirements do you think leaders need to have today?
Meaning-making is a big part of being a leader today and you have to deal with and help people to find that meaning as well. There needs to be a match with the purpose that individual workers have and what they do as well. I think if there’s such a match and alignment around your purpose and what you do you can use much more of your skills. So when it comes to getting more out of the people you work with, or maximizing if you want to use those type of words, then you’re going to maximize the worker’s capacity because they’re more motivated since there’s a stronger fit between them and the company which also means that they can be more free and creative.
What do you see as the biggest challenge when it comes to work?
We might be able to use a lot of machines to help us figure out stuff but what we really need is to help people think and work together and that requires a different type of leadership. Because there’s not one leader that can plan how people are going to work together. You have to facilitate your way through that. You can have an idea around how you come to a solution around some of the challenges you’re facing but you need to have a really good process and a really good understanding of how people deal with uncertainty.
What does facilitation mean to you?
In essence facilitation is to really bring out people and bring people together so that kind of third dimension that comes with coming up with ideas together and not as individuals — and could never come up with as individuals — happens. It’s about bringing forward full participation and creativity. No matter what people want to call that, if they want to call it co-creation or whatever, facilitation is going to be needed for all kinds of levels within businesses to make people come together and work together on solving problems.
When does facilitation go bad?
When you misuse people’s time and it turns into more of a manipulation than participation where you use participation to create a mandate where you have a hidden agenda, where you already know what the results should be.
I also say when I do training that if you think you know the answer then you should never ask. Because then it’s not coming from a core belief that “Hey, I think the two of us can come up with a better answer to something that any of us could come up with on our own.”.
If you don’t believe that in your core then there is a danger that you as a facilitator are going to unconsciously manipulate the group and not stick to the potential of the group. And there’s a lot of processes that takes place, both in public and in private, when it comes to that. If you’re manipulating, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, it means you’re not actually listening and you’re just having a kind of “performer” workshop because you’ve already decided that something’s going to be built or decided and it’s going to be a certain way. For me that’s a misuse of people’s time and it’s also misusing the concept of facilitation and what it’s really about because then it’s not about participation since there’s no open mandate for it.
So what can you do to make sure that doesn’t happen?
There’s a lot of pre-work to be done before doing sessions and being a facilitative leader, which is to be clear around the mandate. And that mandate is always up for negotiation and can change but being clear around it so there’s a lot of transparency around what actually is up for negotiation and what’s not. We also have to remember that it’s fair enough that some things aren’t up for the collective to decide, but then let’s talk about what is up for the collective decide.
I haven’t really thought about that before, but there seems to be a lot of power in facilitation.
Yes, there’s lots of power in facilitating people and it has to be dealt with lots of respect since it’s more of a hidden power. That’s why people need to be more educated in this because it looks easy and seems easy but you can do a lot of misses and do a lot of harm, like messing up relationships.
How can you as a facilitator be more aware of that power?
You can be very open with the power you take and how much power you give to the group. There’s a lot of models that says things about how much push and pull is present when you lead in a facilitative way or when you facilitate. I’ll often be quite transparent about that and then it’s about having lots of respect and doing the pre-work, like checking in with your beliefs. Also, don’t go into a room if you don’t like the people there. I don’t believe you can really lead anyone you don’t really like because then there’s going to be a lot of things going on in the back of your mind. There’s a lot of self reflection that is needed, and I would hope that counts for every leader no matter how facilitative they are.
You mentioned before that you can mess up a lot being a facilitator when it comes to relationships. How does that affect having an internal facilitator, a person that’s tied to the company and the people who work there?
Okay. So, can you have an internal facilitator? Yes, you can! But it’s important to understand that to lead a workshop as a facilitators is a certain type of role and the big thing there is that you have the responsibility for the process. You don’t have the responsibility for the result. That’s for the participants to decide and that is black and white. If that starts to get blurry you lose your credibility, but also your mandate as a facilitator. It’s easy for your ego to start to kick in because you want it be a great outcome and then you lose track of the process and where people are.
I do think it’s really important that there’s a lot of internal facilitators around in organizations and that that competence grows everywhere. And I think that, for example UsTwo (editor’s note: more info on UsTwo and coaching here), does a really great job having coaches that do a lot of facilitation and that that’s their job. It’s more difficult, yes, and its’ a bit of a challenge to be an internal facilitators because there’s a lot of power play within organizations that you’re not a part of as an external facilitator.
Could you talk a bit more about that power play?
Sure. I mean to do interventions in a proper way, if you’re internal then you might have more things at stake if you lead your boss or other colleagues in a sessions. And if you do some more bold interventions that the process require then it means you might be a bit more hesitant not to do them and then you’re not serving the process because you have other small agendas that are present as well. Because of those small agendas you have more things at stake which leads to staying less true to the process. On the other hand, as an internal facilitator you have a lot of knowledge around and a stronger vocabulary around the organization and much more understanding around the context you’re facilitating. So there’s pros and cons there.
How can you deal with those inner agendas?
You need the self-awareness and say “No, actually it doesn’t work for me to facilitate in this case.”. You can be a participant but because you’re not neutral in that specific session there’s a likelihood that you do something unconsciously that plays into your favor without having bad wishes to do so. I mean, you’re never neutral as a facilitator but you have to act neutral and act true to the process and not manipulate the result.
So what are people struggling the most with when it comes to facilitation?
It’s about dividing their responsibility. That when you’re facilitating you’re not responsible for the outcome. We’re traditional thinking people and we put pride in creating a great concept and a great idea. We don’t take a lot of pride traditionally in making a great process. So in a traditionally transaction rewarding way it’s less rewarded to do a really good job as a facilitator.
Also, when it comes to leading very executive people in processes there’s a bit of a hesitant mandate from their side. They’re not really aware about what’s going on and that makes people very uncomfortable so there’s a strong need for facilitation to reassure that they’re in control, that the participants are in control of what they’re working on.
What do you do to open people up in those type of situations?
Depending on how much they’re going to work together there’s different trust-building exercises to create more openness. Or if it’s more to create bonding and a social experience there’s exercises for that as well. It depends. But those are crucial elements to get people to — because in order to collaborate in any way there needs to be an openness and trust that this is a safe space to actually work together and contribute. That’s super important. And that can be done by asking people to tell things or to do small exercises that will make them be more in contact with their human side.
What else do you think is important to have in mind when it comes to facilitation?
I think one part that is really important is that we’re all different and we all have different strengths as facilitators just by the way we are and have been brought up. So there’s lots of stuff to build on there. And I think that’s important — that I don’t become that type of facilitator but become the best me as a facilitator.
Thank you Sarah for your insights! Where can people find you if they want to know more about facilitation?
No problem! You can find me on Twitter and find out more about The Other Potential’s courses on our website.
I’m researching culture building in startups for my MA in Digital Media Management at Hyper Island. For more info: http://bit.ly/building-startup-culture
