When Facilitation Turns to Grace

How do groups get into flow with trust, openness, compassion and vulnerability and what role does the facilitator play in conjuring up that Magic?

Those of you who are educators or facilitators surely have experienced those remarkable moments when a group gets into complete flow: people are engaged, an atmosphere of trust and openness permeates the room, interesting questions are asked, the conversation goes deep, people are honest and vulnerable, everybody speaks from the heart, everybody is willing to listen, hard things are brought to light and held with candour and compassion, big lightbulb moments emerge. To me, these moments - which sometimes are not just moments, but hours or whole days - feel like pure Grace. They feel like Magic and their energy is palpable - I feel it flowing through my whole being.

In these moments, it feels like all I need to do as a facilitator is hold an invisible container where this energy can do its own kind of work, guided by its own kind of wisdom. It's a wisdom I don't control or direct - it simply emerges from within and between people. All I need to do is trust this wisdom ("trust the process" as you often hear in the industry jargon) and continue to hold that container.

But what is that container and how do you build and hold it?

I have come to believe that it comes down to one big thing. As a facilitator, you need to be willing to do everything you ask your participants to do.

You want them to be honest? You need to be honest first.

You want them to give each other candid feedback? You need to invite and receive candid feedback with gratitude and without defensiveness.

You want them to listen? You need to listen - really listen - not deflect, ignore, move on, or 'park the question'.

You want them to be vulnerable? You need to open up and be real and vulnerable - not in a rehearsed way (sharing a personal story you've shared 100 times before is not real vulnerability), but genuinely, in the moment, responding authentically to what happens in the room, even when what happens is challenging, even when (especially when) what happens might derail your carefully crafted flow.

You want them to stay out of judgment? You need to stay out of judgement. And this doesn't just mean "smile!" or "stay polite!", but it actually means "be love and compassion from the core of your being!". Can you truly hold all your participants in unconditional positive regard, even when they are too loud, too quiet, too chatty, too 'cynical', too 'anything'? Can you truly see them in all their messy humanity and accept them for who they are? Then they'll be way more likely to accept each other.

At the end of the day, it seems to me it's us, the facilitators, who become the containers by emptying ourselves of all our regular junk and making room to receive others in our hearts. I believe we can build (and hold) a safe container for our participants when we truly make it about them (not about us or our egos). And only then we can finally surrender to the wisdom of the process that unfolds. That is Grace.

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