Dynamic Facilitation
What is Dynamic Facilitation?
Dynamic Facilitation is a way to help people address difficult issues creatively and collaboratively and achieve breakthrough results. It establishes a process of talking and thinking, known as choice-creating, that builds mutual respect, trust and the sense of community. The results are unanimous.
People in the meetings can just be themselves, relying on the dynamic facilitator to assure respectful listening and creative progress. The dynamic facilitator helps people to determine an issue they really care about, whether it seems solvable or not. Then he or she follows group energy more than an agenda, helping people speak authentically, reflecting so that all “co-sense” results together. She uses numbered lists of: Solutions, Challenge-statements, Data, and Concerns on flip charts. A fifth chart of Group Conclusions or Decisions emerges from the conversation.
Dynamic Facilitation fosters shifts of heart and mind by following the natural flow of conversation and supporting group spontaneity. Sometimes these shifts take the form of new ideas; other times they bring a new sense of what the “real problem” is; and other times there is a change of heart.
How is Dynamic Facilitation different?
The best, fastest way for a group of people to solve a tough problem and to reach consensus is for them to have a breakthrough. Then, the results are exceptional and each person feels involved, knows what to do, and is committed to the group results. Also, the process builds individual skills, empowerment, trust and the spirit of community.
Most meeting facilitation processes limit the possibility for breakthroughs. They ask people to work only on issues that are possible to solve or that are in their area of responsibility, to mute their passion in favor of rationality, to break big problems into smaller ones and to proceed step by step down a logical path from problem definition to solution. This type of facilitation uses extrinsic factors like goals, objectives, agendas, and guidelines of behavior to preserve order and assure progress.
Dynamic Facilitation takes people as they are, without pre-meeting training, relationships or agreed-to guidelines. The dynamic facilitator helps each person be themselves, assures that each comment is heard and appreciated, and that the group achieves the optimal zone of talking, choice-creating. Dynamic Facilitation may use an agenda and meeting objectives, but the dynamic facilitator “goes with the flow” rather than managing the group toward that end. The dynamic facilitator is more oriented to supporting the breakthrough potential of people.
When is Dynamic Facilitation most successful or appropriate?
Dynamic Facilitation is especially valuable when people face important, complex, strategic, or seemingly impossible-to-solve issues, when there is conflict, or when people seek to build teamwork or community. It’s a way to spark ongoing dialogue, systems understandings, trust, wisdom, and to generate the spirit of involvement.
Dynamic Facilitation requires that people be authentic. They can’t be playing a role or representing a constituency. It’s for when people are really caring about problems and wanting them solved. Because Dynamic Facilitation is so successful at helping diverse people to successfully address difficult or impossible problems, it opens the door to new forms of systems change. In particular, it makes the “Wisdom Council,” a new large-system transformation strategy, possible.
Background
Dynamic Facilitation was developed by Jim Rough in the early 1980’s, consulting with mill workers in Northern California. The process was developed further in other organizations and through public seminars since 1990. In 1993 he invented the Wisdom Council process as a way to establish democratic governance in large systems. In 2002 Jim, Jean Rough and DeAnna Martin co-founded the Center for Wise Democracy to help communities in the public sphere.
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[...] Dynamic Facilitation (DF) is a way of helping a small group address its most pressing, seemingly impossible issues in the spirit of choice-creating. Rather than relying on agendas, guidelines, step-by-step thinking, or prepared questions, the dynamic facilitator uses four charts: Data, Solutions, Concerns and Problem-Statements. People just talk, but the dynamic facilitator structures the conversation so that all comments have a place and are valuable. No one feels judged and all feel included. He or she helps the group follow their energy in a way that a new, shared perspective emerges. [...]