by Center for Conflict Resolution
731 State Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53703
The Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR) is a nonprofit collective in Madison, Wisconsin, which teaches other groups skills in group process, conflict resolution and problem solving. CCR does this by sponsoring workshops, by providing consultation and crisis intervention, and by offering written materials through a resource center. CCR works with diverse groups including food and housing cooperatives, various collectives, the public school system, city government, university groups, and many others. Although many of these organizations do not use consensus decision making, CCR has remained committed to this process as a way of increasing group cohesion, member involvement, and meeting effectiveness.
This manual was written in order to share with others some of the information and skills that we, members of the Center for Conflict Resolution, have been developing over the past seven years. The Center for Conflict Resolution is a non-profit, educational organization. Through workshops, consultation, intervention and a resource center we provide information on conflict, group process and problem solving to other groups. We have also sponsored several conferences on peace-related issues and social concerns and have provided training for nonviolent action. Since our inception in 1970 we have been in a constant state of evolution as we attempt--both as a group and as individuals--to find ways of combining education and action in areas of peace and social justice.
Five and half years ago CCR became a collective, replacing official leaders with facilitators and implementing a consesus decision making process. We began experimenting with this kind of group structure to see how far we could go in sharing the leadership function among all our members and in practicing our values of cooperative and egalitarian group process. Learning to operate as a collective has not always been easy, but it has been rewarding and educational and has vastly improved our ability to help other groups in our function as a skills-sharing center.
Collectives, operating on group concensus, are only one of many possible forms of group structure. We do not feel that every group has to be a collective to use the concepts and skills that we describe in this manual. However, we are convinced that a group is most effective when all its members can participate fully in decision making and group activities. People support what they help to create. Most individuals in leadership roles understand this, but for a variety of reasons, they are often drawn into taking more responsibility than they need to or want to. We have decided to write this manual in order to synthesize all we know about non-directive leadership, which we call facilitation, and to make this information available to others.
This manual is especially addressed to persons who are inexperienced in performing the role of facilitator, but who are called on to act in that capacity. We have particularly focused on a resource person-as-facilitator role--when person is asked to facilitate a group which is interested in some area of expertise that the person has. However, we expect the information in this manual to be useful to people in a wide variety of group situations in addition to the ones we specifically address.
We do not expect this manual to be the only learning resource for people who are acquiring facilitation skills. The most important learning resource one can have is practical experience, particularly the guided experiences of an actual training course. However, we hope this manual will be valuable as an introductory survey, as an accompaniment to other training, or as a refresher to practicing facilitators.
The information we present here comes primarily from our own experience. Although we have drawn on formal education and published research, everything included in this handbook also registers as good sense to us and is confirmed by our experience. We hope to hear from people who read and use this book. Please send us your comments since we see this manual as one step in a long process of the development of a field of information by people practicing these skills.
The five of us who worked together on this manual are--
Brian Auvine: has worked at the Center for Conflict Resolution and as a research scientist for the University of Wisconsin for five years.
Mary Extrom: in her five years' involvement with CCR has trained individuals in nonviolent direct action and in group facilitation. Some projects she has worked on involve support work with Native Americans, a study of racism in education, and counseling women.
Scott Poole: has a Master's degree in Communication Arts. He has worked at CCR for two years and has taught college communications courses for four years. His interests are organizational and group communication and techniques of nonviolent social action.
Michel Shanklin: has been with CCR for a year and a half. She has worked with community groups for four years, including working with a women's center and crisis counseling.
January 31, 1977
The Center for Conflict Resolution
731 State Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53703
We want you to be an active user of this manual, a user who will evaluate the material we provide according to your own viewpoint and experience, who will adapt our information to fit your own situation. For this reason we have left wide margins on the pages for you to write notes in, and have written the manual in outline form so that you can locate specific information at the time you need it.
We hope you will read the entire manual, in the order that it is written. However we have attempted to make each section able to stand alone as much as possible. The Table of Contents includes all of the major outline headings and by glancing at it, you can probably find where the information you are looking for is located.
We have tried to present information in a more or less chronological order. Our chapters follow the sequence of preparation, getting started, group process and evalutation. Unfortunately, however, the subject of facilitation does not easily break up into discrete parts. The material in different sections is strongly interdependent and it is not always possible to put each section next to all the other sections that pertain to it. For this reason, the manual contains both redundancy and gaps. If you are reading it straight through, you may notice some repetition of basic points. We feel that this is necessary in order to treat each section fairly. We also feel that certain values and guidelines bear repeating. Even with this repetition, however, we find that many sections require reference to other sections in the manual. We have tried to place these references at the ends of sections where they are easy to locate and don't interfere with the content of that section. If you are familiar with the Table of Contents, you will be in a better position to follow our organization of material.
We strongly urge that all users read the Introduction before reading other parts of the manual. Words such as "facilitation" and "leadership" have different meanings to different people. This first chapter should give you some perspective on where we are coming from, what our values are, and the basic principles on which the rest of the manual is based.
At the front of the manual is a short glossary that includes words (both common and technical) which we use in a specialized sense. This is to let you know exactly what we mean by a certain word which may have different connotations to different people.
We have also included a short bibliography of books which contain exercises. Throughout this manual we will be speaking of exercises, how and when to use them. But, with a few exceptions, we have not included exercises in the text. This is because there are many other good sources of exercises, we are working with a limited amount of space, and we want our readers to be able to find and use a wide variety of exercises, not become dependent on the few that we might recommend.
Below is a list of words which we feel need to be defined for the readers of this manual. You will probably find that most of those terms are already familiar to you in some context, but because we use them in a special sense, we feel we should clarify them. These are words which are used frequently in the text, but which, for the most part, are not defined in the text. If a word you are looking for does not appear below, skim the Table of Contents, since we have not included words which appear in a major heading in the manual.
AUTHORITY: power to direct or influence a group that is derived either from one's role in the group, or from having information other group members do not have access to.
CLOSURE: a sense of having reached a natural stopping place, a feeling of completion.
CONSENSUS DECISION MAKING (also just CONSENSUS): A decision-making process in which all parties involved explicitly agree to the final decision. Consensus decision making does not mean that all parties are completely satisfied with the final outcome, but that the decision is acceptable to all because no one feels that his or her vital interests or values are violated by it.
CONTENT: The subject of a meeting or discussion, what is being talked about or dealt with.
CUE: an indirect message, often nonverbal, that indicates a certain feeling, desire, or state of mind. Cues are usually unintentional hints, though they may be given on purpose.
EXERCISE: A patterned activity used in a group to promote awareness or learning. Exercises can be used to demonstrate or practice a concept, or to cause the participants to become more aware of themselves or their interactions with others.
EXPECTATIONS: Participants' anticipations about what will happen in a group situation, both what will happen, and the way in which it will happen.
FEEDBACK: A response to a message that tells how the listener perceived the message--how he or she felt about it, interpreted it, or understood it. Also, a similar response to an action.
FREEZE: To limit oneself to a single, narrow mode of behavior or perception, while at the same time failing to see other possible modes.
FOLLOW-UP: To take an action which continues or reinforces some other action or to inquire about the effects of a previous action.
GROUP PROCESS: The means by which group members interact, make decisions, handle problems, and develop roles.
HIDDEN AGENDA: A personal expectation or motivation which can affect how that person behaves in a group or feels about a group, but which is not known to others in the group. A person may have a hidden agenda without being aware of the fact. (For instance, an individual may come to a meeting on "Economic Problems of Cities" because he or she believes energy sources will be discussed. The person may plan to deliberately steer the discussion in that direction, or the person may not even realize that he or she has a private goal not necessarily identical with the group's goal.)
INTERVENE: To take an active role in changing a problem situation, (for example, when a facilitator decides to take an assertive lead in suggesting and implementing solutions in a conflict, as described in "Crisis Intervention.")
NEED: Something which an individual or group feels it must have in order to achieve a sense of well being.
NORM: An accepted and expected model of behavior in a group, or in society.
POWER: The ability to exert influence over a group or over an individual in making decisions, establishing norms, or performing an activity.
PROCESS: See "Group Process"
RESOURCE PERSON: An individual whose role in a group is to provide information on a subject that the group is interested in.
VALUES CLARIFICATION: A process which helps an individual identify his or her basic values. This process often involves using exercises.
**end Preface**