experience to illustrate a point. Being private is to surrender yourself in a manner that draws attention to yourself as a person. One guiding principle is that it must make sense for the participants when the facilitator talks about herself, for example, because the contact becomes more engaging or because a personal example makes it easier to explain something difficult. The most important thing is that the facilitator never tries to hog the limelight, but to substantiate a process in which the participants’ various views are brought into play so as to create new common ground among them.
How do you facilitate?
Facilitation is like standing at an observation post, seeing everything from the outside and continuously dialoguing with yourself about what is going on in the room. You need to look out both for how to achieve the goal with the planned activities and for what goes on between the participants. You home in on the process by remaining curious as to what happens in the room. And by questioning your own assumptions and interpretations of what takes place. This is called a meta-position (meta = after, beyond). When you communicate from this position, you metacommunicate, meaning you ‘communicate about communication’. In the professional jargon it is referred to as ‘going meta’. This is an important tool for a facilitator. The facilitator takes up the meta-position by keeping two overall questions at the back of her mind: 1. How do I get through my programme in the best manner possible to reach the goal in terms of participants’ gains? 2. How do I, as a facilitator, optimally underpin what arises between the participants and ensure that the dialogue unfolds? 94