Facilitator Support
Section 12 The Facilitator Protects the Agreed Group Boundaries, Including Time
How facilitators protect time and agreed boundaries so all group members remain equally important.
Source: Nurturing Hope, A Facilitator's Guide, May 22 Final The Understanding Conflict Trust - Nurturing Hope - 2 A Facillitators Guide.pdf, page 16
The Facilitator Protects the Agreed Group Boundaries, Including Time3.
You have the task of protecting the previously agreed time boundaries and only permitting the discussion to continue, if you are sure that all are agreed.
A very practical challenge to this principle is when you, as the facilitator, allow the session time to overrun without checking if all group members permit this! If you do this, you make some people who are interested in continuing important whilst others who, for good reason, may have other matters to attend to and who wish to stop, are made less important.
To break agreements previously made and not unanimously renegotiated is to destroy the group structure for future meetings together.
3 See earlier section 4. The boundaries of the group the facilitator protects are that:
- There is equity-the group members are all free to speak;
- There is diversity-a respect for diverse views and experiences;
- The atmosphere is one of interdependence-where all members value and enjoy being together.