Tips for Facilitating Groups

• Be sensitive to the potential emotional impact of this material on participants. Strong emotions may surface. Anger and rage may spring from unknown sources and mask pain. Tears and expressions of anger are clues to underlying strong emotions that people may have difficulty acknowledging and articulating. Give yourself and the other person time and room to express emotions. Make a decision about how to act when participants become emotional. Do not confuse support with agreement. You may support a person in her or his grief, fear, or anger, and be critical about what she or he does with it. Strong emotions are energy and as such can be channeled into constructive action. Ask questions, use your intuition, challenge assumptions, and make suggestions.
• Seek a balance in your own participation. Encouraging others’ participation is usually more fruitful than inadvertently being the one everyone turns to as the expert.
• Take your time. Allow participants time to reflect at each session on their thoughts and experiences since the last meeting. Listen to the group and encourage clarification.

Here are a few suggestions to help you facilitate a partnership group partnership process.

• Use the session plans flexibly; they are guides to adapt to the needs and preferences of your group. Encourage group members to suggest different formats or content. Maintain an even balance between activities and instructive content of the book. Invite the group to explore their present knowledge and feelings about an issue or topic before presenting new information.
• Respect each person’s contribution or right to keep silent and remind the group to do likewise. Guarantee the right to pass. It is important for group rapport and trust that members not feel pressured into sharing more than they are ready to reveal. Keep a single individual or small group from dominating the discussion. If this occurs, ask yourself what is happening. Has the topic released an issue of great concern? Are there individuals who feel threatened and are using this as a means to control? Ask the group members to help keep everyone focused on the main discussion. If individuals start to talk about other things, remind them of the subject or task, and make a note of their concern so that it can be addressed later or privately.
• Be sure that group insights and learnings are gathered up and given expression, and that personal sharings are honored in some way. Provide a time in each session when this can be done or use opening and closing ceremonies, where appropriate, to accomplish this purpose.
• Support group trust by ensuring confidentiality. Ask the group to agree to keep confidential anything shared in the group. No one wants her or his story retold elsewhere.