Reflective entry after Coaching session Week 13

Chi Phuong NGUYEN

This week, we met each other in the Terrase Fiesa in the FSA to do the coaching session. We have changed our method of coaching session this week as we decided to work together on the text of “The Personal Disciplines of a Facilitator”. We discussed about the nine disciplines and their meaning according to our understanding. After the discussion, we started to share our experience one after another. Thus, the role of observer was replaced by the coach, and each coachee had two coaches in the same time. I started my story about being a facilitator in one of my projects at school. There was no leader in my team and it came at the moment when we were stuck in the project, not knowing where to begin and how to deal with a huge amount of work. Therefore, I decided to turn my role to be a facilitator. Muriel talked about her worst experience of facilitator in a team project. Without a facilitator, her team had some troubles of paying attention, misdirection, engagement and lack of dynamism. And a lot of meetings consumed the team’s energy, time and efficiency. Noora had another experience of best facilitation in her workshop in the previous job. The consultant who was in charge of the workshop was a true facilitator. He explained clearly, giving instructions, encouraging the members. He was an outsider facilitator.

We provided three approaches to facilitation with our own experience. I and Noora had best experience in facilitation whereas Muriel had the worst one. I had a version of an insider facilitator when Noora had an outsider facilitator. All of us pointed out some of the disciplines of the facilitator such as engagement, detached, caring about the process, objective… And we concluded that an outsider facilitator might have certain advantages more than an insider facilitator. Indeed, the outsider facilitator receives respect from all the members and if he has to be in the role of a bad guy, putting the discipline or giving feedback, he can be in a better position to do that than one of the members of the team. Furthermore, an insider facilitator can move forward the team, lead the team in the same direction but sometimes, objectively in the direction of his approach. Moreover, environment plays an important role to the success of a facilitator too. Relationship among the members and dynamism of the team can contribute to facilitate the work for a facilitator.

Week 13 Reflective Entry

By Noora Haraholma

This week two of us chose to write about the best facilitation experience (me and Phuong) and one about the worst experience (Muriel). Our stories differed quite a lot from each because in Muriel’s story there was no facilitator at all, Phuong told a story about him being an “inside facilitator” and I told them about the “outsider facilitator” that I had. Because of these differences we were able to have rather discussions on what makes facilitation successful.

First of all, having an outsider facilitating the process is really useful because they are not too involved into the process. They are not too deep in the problem so they are able to see the whole process and what is happening. For example in Muriel’s group nobody was able to see the big picture so that would have needed somebody to help them to take a step back. In my case we had an outsider who was able to suggest different approaches when we hit the wall. Muriel also mentioned a good point that a facilitator could have helped her group to concentrate their energy on working towards the goal instead of using it on other things. Secondly, setting the rules and making sure that everybody is following the process is one of the perks of having a facilitator. A facilitator can make sure that the group meets the deadlines and finishes its (sub-) goals in time. In Phuong’s story he was the one taking the lead and dividing tasks which helped the group to move forward. However, I think that usually an outsider facilitator has more credibility and he/she can be stricter. Nobody wants to be the “bad guy” in the group and tell the others what they should do and point out when they do not follow the rules. For an outsider that is easier since it is their job to take care that everything gets done and they do not risk their existing relationships with others by being strict. Thirdly, a good facilitator is able to raise sensitive issues. As discussed in my story, our facilitator asked about our frustrations which helped us to concentrate on the goal instead of wasting our energy by being frustrated. If there is no facilitator or one of the group members is trying to facilitate, it might hard to speak up about the problems that the group is encountering. However, tackling these problems might be vital for achieving the goal and thus, having a good facilitator is necessary. Lastly, a facilitator can help to motivate people in the group. Especially when a group has problems and they are not able to make any progress, a good facilitator can help them to see light at the end of the tunnel and bring hope.

To sum up, the main difference between the best and the worst facilitation experience is that the facilitator is there to supervise. He makes sure that the group is able to move forward and tries to minimize all the distractions that could interfere with the process. A facilitator ensures that the group is able to make most of its resources.

Week 13 Coaching Assignment - Reflective entry: Group and Team Facilitation

by Muriel Guillod 
 

Probably the first difference which struck me in our stories was that they all involved another kind of facilitation. Phuong’s story involved a facilitator (himself) from inside the team, Noora’s story was about an external facilitator, not belonging to the team in itself, and in my story… well there was unfortunately no facilitator at all. Thus, we have covered a very broad range of situations, and seen advantages and disadvantages of various cases, which helped us draw the following conclusions.

First of all, we’ve seen the importance of setting clear rules and have a strict discipline. In Noora’s facilitation experience, the external consultant defined during the very first meeting the rules by which the game was to be played. People were allocated a restricted time to fulfill a task, no phone or external distraction was allowed, and only once the time was over and the task completed were they allowed to take a short break and chat about other topics. In contrast, in my team, no such rules have ever been clearly stated, which resulted in precious loss of time. Comparing Phuong’s and Noora’s stories, we discovered that it is often easier to have an outsider as a facilitator, rather than someone from within the group. Indeed, being a member of the group makes it hard not to be afraid of team members’ judgement, and not to fear to be rejected or hurt the relationships between you and them. On the same line, relationships can hinder the facilitation process. If the group dynamics is all messed up, if people are unable to get along with each other, if they are not ready to make some effort, then even the best and most willing facilitator won’t be able to fix the relationships. As highlighted by Noora, even if her group was a bit reticent to enter the meeting in the first place, they all got along well together and there was a positive group dynamic. By opposition, in my team, there is not a really good group dynamic. Indeed, there is always someone who is not totally present during the meeting, e.g. he is choosing his course for the next semester and bringing his choice to the Direction des Programmes, thinking about his other group project, chatting on Facebook with his friends… What is more, some team members don’t seem to be fully committed to do their best in this project. In fact, it happened more than once that one person came to the meeting and admitted (without any kind of remorse or embarrassment) that he hasn’t completed the task that was assigned to him since our last meeting. Such behaviours eventually impact on the willingness of others to do their best, as they are always the ones to work hard for the ones who don’t. Consequently, this creates some kind of frustration within the group, and no one openly dares to speak out. In this kind of situation, a good facilitator would help to put that frustration on the table, for instance by observing what is happening, by looking at faces, by feelings the atmosphere within the room. He would notice it and say out loud “I feel some kind of frustration here”, without necessary pointing at anyone in particular. However, simply the fact to publicly recognise it would help team members to feel better, and nobody would have to personally take responsibility for it. A further advantage of having an outside facilitator is that he is not personally implicated in the project and thus is better able to take a step back and see the bigger picture. In my group project, this would have benefited us a lot if someone could have helped us find some clarity in all the details into which we got lost, and thus make us re-focus on the main task that we have to complete. Furthermore, he would have been able to make us see and consider all the options out there, whereas with all the time spent on the project so far we have lost our ability to see new options, new directions. It has even become hard to erase the part that we’ve been working on earlier in the semester and which are not relevant anymore, but knowing how much time we’ve spent on them makes it kind of painful to suddenly delete them like that.

All in all, a good facilitator helps to create a good working environment, where everyone is set equal, and where there is no fear to express opinions and feelings freely. This is greatly eased when the facilitator comes from outside the group, as he won’t fear judgment from team members. Finally, the facilitator helps see the bigger picture and fosters creativity by creating workshops aimed at promoting new ways of thinking.

Week 13 Coaching Assignment

By Noora Haraholma

The example for this week’s coaching assignment is from my previous workplace. A couple of employees from each department were assigned to attend a workshop which aimed to generate a vision for our company’s new website.  The workshop was held at the headquarters of another company and one of their consultants was in charge of the workshop. First he made sure that everybody knew the goal of the workshop and explained us what kind of process we were supposed to follow in order to reach our goal. After this he divided us into smaller groups and gave us instructions for our first assignment that was to study so-called megatrends that are going to shape the financial industry and the world in general. We had to pick the most important ones and use them as a base for the next phases. After studying megatrends we had to start thinking about what kind features in our website would respond to these megatrends. The consultant gave us post-its, pens and other material to help us innovate and formulate our ideas better. After coming up with some ideas he told us again to pick the most feasible and important ones and create a presentation of them. Finally all the groups presented their main ideas and the others were able to comment on those. We had really nice discussions and came up with ideas that we probably couldn’t have come up just by ourselves. All the presentations were filmed and later showed to our other colleagues and the management of the company. Everybody seemed really content with our ideas so I think it is safe to say that the workshop was a success.

There were several factors that made the workshop successful in my opinion. First of all, the facilitator was an outside consultant which enabled him to be detached from the content of our workshop. He was totally objective towards our goal and did not try to interfere with our ideas. He did not have any insight in our topic since he was not familiar with our needs and thus, he let us made us our own decisions. The good thing was also that most of us did not know him beforehand so he was able to treat all of us equally. Secondly, I felt that he really cared about the process since facilitating is something that he is used to do for a living. He made sure that every group was able to complete the assignments assigned for them within the schedule. He also documented our whole workshop process and emailed it to us after the workshop to make sure that we were able to follow it till the end. One of the things affecting his engagement could have been the fact that our companies were owned by the same company and thus, he knew that our success might contribute positively to his company too. Most of the time, when the consultant was not giving us instructions, he was observing us. If our groups looked like they hit the wall, he came there and tried to help us find some alternative way to approach the problem. He was not afraid to ask us questions that could help us move forward with our ideation process. I believe that just having an outside consultant made a huge difference because he was able to see things that we could not notice ourselves. He also facilitated an open environment by setting the rules and giving the instructions. Since the same rules and instructions applied to everybody, all the participants were able to speak up and be treated equally regardless of their position in the organization. He was also able to release our frustrations by asking about them. The frustrations were mainly related to IT and all of us shared them. Being able to talk about them openly released tensions and helped us to concentrate on achieving the goal. He also made sure that we had everything that we needed to succeed: office supplies to express our ideas, a room with no additional distractions and enough coffee and food to make it through the workshop.

I think my facilitation experience was really good and I cannot think of anything that I would have improved. The consultant really knew what he was doing and was able to make us to give our best. I was rather skeptical before the workshop because none of us really wanted to go there and I felt that it would really hard for us to come up with anything new and innovative. However, after this experience I believe that sometimes an outsider can work wonders with a group that cannot function by itself. Though I think also the group plays a huge role in whether the facilitation is successful or not. Our workgroup had always been rather close and it probably contributed positively in this case.

Week 13 Coaching Assignment - Group and Team Facilitation

By Muriel Guillod

One of the worst facilitation experience that I ever had actually happened here at the University Laval. Even though I’ve had plenty of group work during my study life (6 years at university) and my work life (5 years within the same organisation), I never experienced so many problems that in my group project for a management class. The final project of this course consists of a case-study analysis, where we have to encompass the theory studied in class during the whole semester. We started to work on the project early, so as not to be in a rush at the end of the semester. Indeed, our first meeting was already before the reading week. I was sure we would do a great job, be able to identify the problems raised in the case-study, talk about the causes and consequences, find solutions and recommendations and eventually split the writing so as to be as efficient as possible. Of course, the first meeting was a bit messy: we needed to brainstorm, try to make sense of the task, and organise our ideas. Therefore, we decided of a strategy to divide the work: everyone should analyse the case at the light of some specific theories. As a result, we came up with a whole bunch of problems, causes, consequences… We’ve been analyzing the problem so deeply, that we got lost into the details, loosing track of the bigger picture. We’ve been meeting every week since the break, usually for at least 3 hours long, and every time I was entering the meeting full of hope that we will get some clearer direction, and every time I went out of the meetings exhausted, and quite disappointed about the progresses made – or should I say the non-progresses made. These meetings have been costing me a lot of energy and time, without being really rewarding, as the grades were not worth the effort put into it.

So why have those meetings always been going so badly – and still are? Well, of course one obvious reason is that we lack a facilitator. First of all, we are lacking a true leader, someone who sets directions and make the group move forward. Above that, no one is neutral and fully detached: every student is involved into the project and wants to reach a certain level of quality in order to get a good grade. On the other hand, even though everyone wants to go into the same direction, is engaged in the sense that he or she cares about the quality of the decision taken, no one is able to formulate clear decisions nor to enact the decisions taken, not even to take responsibility for the group processes. For instance, we have never set any kind of group rules or norms. As a result, it happens that suddenly people start talking about their personal lives, another course or projects that they are currently doing, and any other kind of topics. Even though there is always someone to stop the discussion and re-center it towards our project, we loose precious time and more importantly our focus and the bigger picture of what was being discussed before.

I have the feeling that we would have needed an external person to figure out the dynamics of the group, help us make sense of everything that we have to say and take the best of each of us. By being non-judgemental and detached, an external facilitator would probably have eased our decision-making process. A good facilitator would have been able to bring us to a new level of awareness or courage, thus helping us being way more effective. For instance, we’ve been lacking a way to cope with divergent opinions and opposing ideas. So far, when team members are not able to find a common ground, we feel kind of a bitterness fulfilling the room, but we’re not able to properly solve the problem and agree on one solution. A facilitator would probably have helped us deal with that, by developing our skills in smoothly confronting our colleagues. Due to our numerous meetings, each of them seemingly quite alike as the previous ones, most of us – or at least for sure myself – have lost hope of finding a way to come up with a good structure for our project. A good facilitator would have been able to galvanize hope among the team and convince us that the effort is worth making. Maybe, he would have even been able to read in ourselves and make us discover how to follow our intuitions and inner voices. Most certainly, we would have needed a facilitator able to help us focus our energy at the service of the task, what is called intentionality meaning to take whatever it takes to deal with the situation. Finally, it is very likely that a good facilitator would have helped us take the most of this group experience, even if it has been a very tough job. He would have known how to make us take the best out of it and learn from it, take some lessons out of it. To some extent, he would have brought us some sense of wonder which, at this stage, we are honestly not able to develop by ourselves.

Coaching assignment Week 13: Facilitation

Chi Phuong NGUYEN

The Best Facilitation Experience that I could remember happened when we had a meeting for a team project last semester. The project required us to define the business model through several steps such as manufacturing, packaging, distribution, marketing and analyzing the alternative models. Because there was so much work and we didn’t know where to start from, we spent two hours talking about many things but we got into too much details and the meeting seemed to last forever without reaching any decision or have any result. We didn’t get to anywhere. Thus, I decided to take the role of facilitator and I had an approach of facilitation, Engagement. I drew the whole plan, taking into account all the ideas from other members, building the plan with them, dividing the work that we had to do and set out the deadline for each task. At that moment, I had responsibility for the group process, and set out some rules regarding the deadline and divided tasks to maintain the effectiveness of the group. My decision to take the role of facilitator with Engagement came from my recognition of the dysfunction in the group. I turned the attention of all the group into our main concerns, and used an agenda to help the group to follow, focusing only on our group to help the group overcome the block. An approach of Focus was used here to enable the group to concentrate on finding its effectiveness. I also let members in my group to choose the task that they are comfortable with or are good at that field, allowing each member to contribute more on the work, to share the same vision. Another aspect of facilitation was applied in this situation is Action. I decided to intervene at the moment when the group was stuck, and that dysfunction blocked the motivation and dynamism of the group. I acted with decisiveness and commitment, even though my action could deteriorate the relationship with the members in our group. We didn’t have a real leader in our group as we were afraid to take the role of leader, to hurt the relationship with other members in the group. I was one of the people who really believed in the feasibility of our project and I tried a lot to realize that project, I wrote to eight companies to explain about our ideas and asked for their help or advice. I kept calling to several farms in Orleans island to ask for a visit and have questions on their manufacturing process. I was in contact with the department of Entrepreneurial Laval of the university to explain our ideas and seek for help from them. Therefore, I think that I brought my credibility, care and passion to our project to make others believe in our ideas. An aspect of Presence can be recognized as my presence in the project helped us to believe in the success of our project. Despite the obstacles that we had, I still decided to go ahead and motivated to believe in our common purpose, I stuck with our project, I rode with it through the waves of doubt or criticism. After my action of facilitation in that meeting, we continued to keep that method of working, setting the plan as clear as possible, dividing the tasks and having appropriate deadline. People felt more committed to the project, contributed more actively to the project as they could choose the part that they were good at.