Section 5 The Responsibility of the Facilitator in the Group Discussion

As a facilitator you are asked to not strike positions, pose or act in ways outside your experience where people are manipulated or where facilitators take up positions “just to keep the group going”.

We suggest that you state this clearly to the group members at the beginning.

As the facilitator:

• Do not place your own experience higher than anyone else’s.
• Recognise that the people who take part in the group may also be allowing you, the facilitator, to volunteer your time and experience, or to make a living or develop your career.
• Never argue with member(s) of the group about the validity of their knowledge or life experiences.
• Accept all the members of the group equally, not having any regard, special sympathy or antipathy for any member of the group.

These materials are especially focussed on people learning to be at ease with different others in situations of conflict or with those living in conflict affected societies.

The associated group work seeks to generate a safe space where, outside rivalry and tension, people from different experiences and backgrounds might freely re-affirm the choices they have made in life or make new choices.

The Importance of Silence

Silence when being with different others

To be in the one space with other people from different backgrounds, beliefs, traditions or experiences of life, for many of us, is a very new experience. Such an experience can be very much “out of what we call normal”.

So, for some of us, a very understandable first response is to be silent:

• a silence sometimes generated through being uncertain of how we should respond without offending others;
• a silence generated by feeling uncomfortable;
• a silence of being in awe of others;
• a silence of being lost for words!

Silence and the reduction of fear

Gradually for each one of us to be at ease and silent with different others is a wonderful additional confidence to experience, develop and repeat. In such a space fears and uncertainty do not dominate.

Such experiences of ease and confidence, repeated and sustained, are building blocks to an interdependent future together.

It is important, as a facilitator, that we do not rush to break silences. In fact it is very important that the facilitator legitimises such silences as being essential experiences for us all as we gradually learn to be at ease with one another. To meet and eventually experience silence together is certainly better than to rush away from such experiences and places.

Facilitators value silence together. Respectful silence in a fast moving world is of significance and value, something to welcome and treasure. While initially silence with strangers might be discomforting, once experienced and embraced it can become an additional strength. At such moments the silence can break the rhythm of frantic striving or the need many of us feel to be certain and secure in what we are doing.

Silence can generate a new space to rethink

Silence can become a space to think more widely, more deeply, even to find a space to acknowledge feelings and thoughts we often dismiss or push away.

Some of us do not like silence because insecurities or anxieties in life can crowd in and dominate us. However without silence, without the need to acknowledge pressures, we will never be free. So to hold and nurture moments of silence between different people may be supportive and very important for group members!

In such a silence questions, anxieties, fears and hopes can be acknowledged and expressed. In such a supportive silence earlier “relationship lines” in our lives, histories that have continually frustrated us or tripped us up, can be acknowledged and named and, in that very naming, be allowed to fall away or be set aside.

Additionally in such moments of supported silence, positive relationships and experiences that have added to our development can be honoured and accorded a more central place in our lives.

To conclude

When members of a diverse group experience silence together it is important the facilitator affirms everyone at this moment. Such silences can be challenging yet supportive.

Coming into such a silent space together, it is important to remind the group that they take time to acknowledge and explore some of their reasons for being silent.

For some people such a silent moment allows them time to acknowledge some of the questions and thoughts they are having that are new or that they have previously pushed away in the rush of life.

A supportive silence can, for most of us, be an additional reflective learning space, a space where we let old and new challenges be acknowledged in our lives, not pushed away.

Often such silent spaces are events where:

• people are adjusting to the new experience of being with strangers.
• people have broken dominant daily patterns of living and enter a new space populated by many feelings that need acknowledged, untangled, dissolved or celebrated.

As a facilitator then, affirm silences, do not judge them or try to move people on from them too quickly. Be open to the unexpected voices of some group members that may be expressed.

To be silent for a time in a diverse group, and, eventually, to learn from such moments together, is one essential gift each one of us can give to and receive from others - such gifts of experiences together nurture hope.