By Dr. Matthias zur Bonsen | 2004 | All In One Spirit
Note: originally in German, translated into English
MZB: What is Dynamic Facilitation?
JR: Dynamic Facilitation (DF) is a new approach to facilitating a meeting so that a diverse group of people can solve difficult and even impossible issues. Participants don’t need to be trained or agree to abide by certain rules and the process doesn’t go step by step. They are facilitated to determine an issue they care about and start talking about it. The dynamic facilitator structures the environment and asks questions in a way that each comment is valued and breakthroughs are a natural result.
The best way for any group of people to reach a consensus is for them to have a breakthrough, where everyone is excited. Most meetings, especially those facilitated in a traditional way pretty much eliminate this possibility. They aim for logical, orderly progress toward preset goals instead. This orientation to reason means that big, impossible-seeming issues go unaddressed and are avoided until a crisis foists them on people.
Dynamically facilitated groups seek out and work to solve these big issues before they become crises. And since the process is creative and accepting of each person’s unique views, people working together in this way build trust and the spirit of community.
MZB: When did you invent Dynamic Facilitation and how did it happen?
JR: I was working as a consultant within a timber company in the early 1980′s. At the time Japanese Quality Circles, where employees would meet regularly to try to improve product quality, were proving successful in the U.S. I talked our management into allowing me to organize some in the sawmill. But management didn’t buy into the necessary support structure, like training for employees or supervisory involvement. They just wanted the employees to feel better about their jobs so that union difficulties would subside.
I went ahead with the program because I had good skills in the area of Creative Problem Solving. I thought this emphasis on creativity would overcome these disadvantages. But I soon discovered that the usual form of upbeat, brainstorming-type creativity wasn’t appropriate. Deeper more painful issues drove these employees. They oscillated between the pretense of not caring about their work and overbearing frustration with it.
I experimented with different facilitation approaches. I held to the idea that creativity was key, but discovered that a different kind of creativity was most needed. There is both creativity of head and heart. For these people and for this stage of thinking about their issues, I found that changes of heart were more important than changes of mind. What is now called “Dynamic Facilitation” arose from this discovery of the importance of “heart creativity.”
MZB: DF seems to be similar to the Dialogue method as developed originally by the late David Bohm and later by a group at MIT. What are the differences between Dialogue and DF?
JR: There were two key sources of inspiration for me in developing DF. The first was Creative Problem Solving, or head creativity, as I’ve said. The other was a dialogue process used by the Guild for Psychological Studies, which is more heartfelt than the Bohm approach. My wife and I attended a number of Guild seminars where we would sit in a circle and speak from the heart answering questions about psychological and spiritual issues. Bohmian dialogue is more cognitive in its choice of topics and how people converse, for instance, encouraging people to challenge the assumptions of others.
DF elicits a transformational, heartfelt quality of thinking that is similar to the dialogue of the Guild. However, unlike dialogue in general, it is aimed at solving problems and reaching whole-group conclusions. I call this form of dialogue-like talking and thinking, “choice-creating” to distinguish it from group “decision-making.” Unlike decision-making, it is creative instead of deliberative, heartfelt instead of cognitive. When people engage in choice-creating, it’s like responding creatively to a crisis. All feel melded together into a “We,” who share one mission.
MZB: When you started to present DF to fellow facilitators what reactions did you get?
JR: Mostly I was ignored. At the time, I just thought it was a better way of facilitating and didn’t realize how different it was. The goal of DF is to help people address problems creatively, while the goal of most facilitators is to help them stay orderly, logical, and rational. Some worked with creativity, but they focused on “head creativity” instead of “heart creativity.”
Traditional facilitators, however, would attend my seminars and become very excited about DF. But there wasn’t an adequate theory in place to help them retain this new approach when they left.
What has always kept me enthused and pressing forward with this approach is that, bottom line, DF works! With it, people solve really big issues and reach consensus. Other processes can’t reliably do this. The only curious part is that, even though all could see this, it wasn’t being widely adopted. I’ve done lots of thinking about this and lots of looking for what I call “anchors” to help people hang onto DF after they have left the seminar. One anchor has been the change of names… calling it “Dynamic Facilitation” instead of just facilitation. This was a great step forward in helping people acknowledge the differences, but it hurt my business because most paying clients wanted to learn traditional facilitation.
MZB: What reactions are you getting today?
JR: Things are much better today because the theory is so much stronger and more people are using it. In fact, this theory points to a future that is so great it strains credulity. Is it really possible for a new social invention to help any conflicted group of people come together as a “We” in maybe four sessions? Is it really possible for them to discover and solve their most important problem, reach unanimity on what to do about it, and build a spirit of community in the process? For normal people – i.e. not representatives, or observers of the process, or people playing out some role – the answer is, “Yes!” But even after a successful demonstration, a normal response is, “No!” They exclaim, “It’s not always possible to reach consensus!” and to dismiss it.
MZB: Is it easy or difficult to teach/learn DF?
JR: It is both each and difficult. Learning DF requires a paradigm change for most people, away from the normal paradigm imposed by society. It’s not just learning a set of skills. It’s a matter of seeing life in terms of “self-organizing change” more primarily than “manageable change,” and of trusting that dynamic. In the seminar, for instance, I challenge people about how they raise their children or how they think about personal issues. Our culture assumes that change is fundamentally manageable and puts that “Box” around our perceptions. So, we discount creativity and believe there are things we “have to” do or problems that are “impossible” to solve, and we perpetuate those myths in our children.
So, while it’s difficult for many to really take in this new paradigm, it’s also fortunate that other people naturally live it already. The seminar experience provides them with a language to value what they are doing and it builds confidence for them in this approach.
MZB: When teaching DF what is important to you?
JR: In the seminar I want people to experience a breakthrough. I want them to be working with others on a seemingly impossible issue, yet arrive at a collective “thinking space” where those different views become an asset instead of a hindrance… and where it really becomes clear that, with enough time, this small group could solve the problem. This zone of “choice-creating” is scary to many because it means that we can affect much more of our reality than we ever thought. It means we are more responsible for the world we live in than feels comfortable.
My hope is that, once experienced, participants will be able to stand in front of a room full of people who are more experienced on a particular issue than they are and who unanimously “know” this issue is impossible to solve, yet to know that this group can solve it if they can just be facilitated into choice-creating. I also want them to have enough experience with this kind of thinking that they become dissatisfied with ordinary meetings with ordinary thinking.
MZB: What are attributes of a good dynamic facilitator?
JR: DF works well for different kinds of people. Now that my wife works with me in the seminars, participants can see this clearly because she and I are so different in personality, but both successful as dynamic facilitators.
One attribute that helps a person be a better dynamic facilitator is if he or she is on a path of personal growth. With DF people bring important issues out of denial, identify, and overcome them. So, there may be a need to help people overcome the natural resistance to addressing these issues. It helps if the facilitator has personal experience facing his or her own blindness’s and has learned to trust how this type of heroism yields positive results.
MZB: In dynamically facilitated meetings the group seems to stay together all the time. There seem to be no breakout groups. Isn’t this tiring for the group?
JR: Breakout groups are fine and important with DF, especially when the group is large. Key, however, is to assure that the process stays safe for everyone even when there is no dynamic facilitator present.
By its nature, DF, opens people up. They say what is on their minds and each person’s creativity and uniqueness is encouraged to blossom. If, after that, there is a change of venue and someone feels punished or judged in some way, people will become distrustful. The dynamic facilitator can structure the small group work in a way to keep people safe and he or she can watch out for any form of judgment.
MZB: How do you think DF should be used in organizations – only for special occasions (big or conflicted issues) or almost all the time?
JR: This is a tricky question because of the paradigm shift I was talking about earlier. Since most organizations are hierarchical in nature, having dynamically facilitated meetings where people become empowered and democratic, may feel threatening to the organization as a whole. In this case, DF is probably best used occasionally to help with meetings on particularly pressing issues.
Assuming the organizations want empowered members however, DF is essential. I’ve created a term, a “tobe,” which is short for, “Time Out: Be.” This is where, every month or so, each person is part of a regularly scheduled, dynamically facilitated meeting. People gather, determine the biggest issue of the organization, and work creatively together for a limited period of time. Before the end of the meeting, the group decided how to take the issue forward, whether it’s something that involves everyone, or a committee, or management.
This regular tobe process is very important for establishing an overall self-organizing dynamic in the organization, like a bottom-up visioning process. With these meetings in place, over time as people become experienced with this form of meeting, there is a tendency for other meetings to also shift toward choice-creating.
MZB: Is it correct to describe the style of a dynamic facilitator as very much hands-off, laid back, and non-intrusive?
JR: No. Paradoxically, the dynamic facilitator must be forceful to help people get out of their normal patterns of talking and thinking. Sometimes, he or she must push people to the edge of their comfort zone and beyond, helping them to say what they “really” mean rather than just giving pat answers, or helping them to speak from their passion instead of just talking off the top of their heads. One person recently said in a meeting, for instance, that she didn’t like a particular idea because “it might have unforeseen consequences.” The facilitator needs to be alert to this kind of “double talk” and ask, “What particular consequence most concerns you?” That’s when we find out what is really going on. Often it’s when she finds out too because she doesn’t know herself what the real reason is.
MZB: Do you sometimes combine DF and other methods?
JR: Sure. To me it all comes down to which paradigm you are in. For instance, I use logic and reason as much as I can to solve problems but I do so recognizing that reason is only appropriate in a small subset of potential situations. For the most important issues, choice-creating is required.
The other paradigm assumes the opposite situation, that logic and reason are paramount and that creativity is only rarely used. With this perspective, the most important issues go ignored so it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or worse, reason is encouraged from people when non-reasonable feelings and insights are the real focus.
With a DF capability in the organization the context for normal meetings might change. Consider for example what might happen to a simple training meeting, where a computer expert is coming to your operation to help your team get up and running with a new system. The normal way to use the expert is to have her present what she thinks you ought to know, where you then ask follow up questions. This might work. A better way, however, would be for the group to be solving its problems with the expert contributing her knowledge at the right moment.
The dynamic facilitator can shift the context of the meeting to be like this, a creative enterprise instead of just absorbing information. The expert’s talk might end up being exactly the same, but with the change of context people’s ability to learn and use this information is enhanced. The expert is no longer the center of attention, the challenge is. And everyone’s creativity, both participants and expert, is released.
MZB: What are your hopes for the future of DF?
JR: If it’s true that DF can assure diverse people to talk thoughtfully and creatively about really difficult problems, and reach unanimity… this is BIG News. It’s like the cure to war, at least within small groups. Plus it provides the ability for people to solve their most “impossible-to-solve” issues.
Even if people don’t solve the issue they are working on, all kinds of benefits result, like elevating individual capabilities, helping people to break through areas of denial, teaching about systems thinking, and building the spirit of community.
Furthermore, I believe DF can be leveraged to work for large systems like whole corporations, cities, or even nations. The suggested process for doing this is called a “Wisdom Council.” It is still theoretical in the sense that it hasn’t yet been used with all twelve of its principles in play, but tests in cities, corporations, schools, government agencies, etc. indicate that it does work.
Continued experiments with the Wisdom Council generate a rapid awareness of the benefits of DF because they provide a way that everyone in a large system can vicariously experience it working on the kinds of problems we are all most anxious about. Instead of waiting for politicians, here’s a way all of us can start addressing these issues together and generating real results. It is an innovation the world desperately needs.
MZB: If you could create the perfect facilitation assignment for yourself – the one you always wanted to get – what would it be?
JR: I think it’s possible to apply the Wisdom Council and DF to our whole socio-political-economic system and create a We the People of all nations, or of the world. This opens the door, I think, to a new kind of system beyond those options we’ve come to think of as viable. When I wrote my book on this in 2002, Society’s Breakthrough! Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People, I thought a U.S. Constitutional amendment was needed to facilitate this international system transformation. Now, I think it just requires a few of us who “get it,” and the courage to make it happen.
This is my ideal facilitation assignment, to dynamically facilitate a Wisdom Council at the national and global levels.