The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "People and Groups".

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
FACILITATION SKILLS
People and Groups

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
Groups and organisations which are led by controlling or
manipulative leaders fail to take advantage of the
opportunities that groupwork offers. In controlling groups,
people are simply puppets in someone else's show. Worse,
in manipulative groups, they are duped into going
somewhere they may not want to go. However, when
groups are led in a facilitative way, people are given the
challenge to involve themselves and grow in ways they
never thought possible.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THE LEARNING REVOLUTION
One of the most important features of facilitation is its role
in the modern revolution in learning. One of the
characteristics of this new approach to learning is that
effective organisations are learning organisations. Since the
modern business organisation is an amalgam of myriad
groups, it is potentially the most effective place for people
to learn.
1. Maximum learning takes place when people are helped
to find their own ways to personal growth, not when
they are talked at, controlled and manipulated.
2. The process of learning is as important as the content of
learning.
3. Learning involves the whole person: emotionally,
intellectually, physically and intuitively.
4. We learn best when the right conditions for learning are
created by those who are our guides.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
PERSONAL GROWTH
We can detect whether a group or an individual is
developing by reference to three scales: the level of anxiety,
the level of intellectual curiosity and the level of emotional
maturity.
When groups first form, or when a group gets stuck in its
development, the signs are:
• high anxiety
• intellectual blockage
• emotional immaturity
When a group is growing, however, the signs are:
• decreasing anxiety
• rising intellectual curiosity
• increasing emotional maturity.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THE THREE BRAINS
The three areas of potential development in people in a
group correspond to three functions of the human brain.
1. The instinctive brain is the seat of our reactions to a
potentially hostile world. When the instinctive brain is
operating on high anxiety levels, it blocks other thinking and
emotional processes.
2. The emotional brain processes our feelings about
ourselves and others. It is rarely static and reacts to events.
3. The intellectual brain deals with the content of
experiences: what the agenda is. In groupwork, agenda is in
the foreground while processes and relationships are in the
background.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THE INSTINCTIVE BRAIN
The instinctive part of the human brain is the oldest part of
our brains. Its basic function is to look after our survival by
scanning our environments for threats.
At some points of groupwork, particularly at the early
stages, there may appear to be many threats. We may have
immediate anxieties about what's going to happen in the
group; anxieties from the past; anxieties about ourselves;
and anxieties about the wider world.
Facilitators need to recognise and use the anxieties people
have since high anxiety will block effective learning. High
anxiety can be seen as high energy and with sensitive
guidance can be transformed into something of value to the
individual and group.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
ANXIETIES FROM THE PAST
Psychologists suggest that mixed in with our other anxieties,
a situation which we perceive as threatening also re-
awakens anxieties from the past. In particular, these are
anxieties from our earliest childhood years when we first
experienced loss of love and first experienced the world as
hostile.
There are three types of repressed anxiety:
1. Repressed grief for losing the love and admiration of
others and for no longer feeling important.
2. Repressed fear that others might, once again, put us on
the spot, embarrass us and cause us pain.
3. Repressed anger over losses: the loss of our freedom,
the loss of the control we once had and the fact that we
have lost out to others.
All these anxieties can be experienced in groupwork.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
ANXIETIES ABOUT ONESELF
Having built masks which protect us from the potentially
dangerous world outside, situations of high anxiety remind
us that these masks might slip and we might be found out.
There are nine masks and each has its own anxieties:
1. Mastery and competence: will I be good enough?
2. Love and care: will anyone like me?
3. Truth and honesty: will I be found out?
4. Identity and purpose: will the real me be seen?
5. Knowledge and ignorance: will I look stupid?
6. Authority and control: will I be safe?
7. Pleasure and pain: will I like it?
8. Conflict and aggression: will I win or lose?
9. Freedom and commitment: will I have to do things I don't
want to do?

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
REACTING TO ANXIETY
The instinctive reaction to threat is the fight-flight-
submission mechanism. In groupwork, these defence
mechanisms may appear in any one of three ways:
1. Fight which includes: complaining and criticising;
seeking scapegoats; blaming the facilitator, boss,
company, other course members, anyone; aggression
2. Flight which includes: turning up late or not at all;
wasting time; trivialising everything; gossiping, joking;
doing the minimum necessary.
3. Submission which includes: doing nothing; doing what
the leader wants; withdrawing into silence.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
HOW TO REDUCE ANXIETY
Dealing with the anxieties of group members is a primary
concern for facilitators, since high levels of anxiety will block
other processes.
1. the facilitator models lack of fear and anxiety in her own
behaviour, for example not minding judgment, criticism
and assessment
2. the facilitator offers a protective environment: no tricks,
no stress, no surprises
3. the facilitator makes self-disclosures as a way of
showing the group that it is a safe environment
4. the facilitator brings the issue of how anxious people
are feeling to the surface, acknowledging that it is
normal and natural
5. the group face up to why threats may exist
6. trust is promoted since trust and anxiety are like a see-
saw: when one is high, the other is low.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
FREE FROM ANXIETY
To be able to understand other people's anxiety and not join
with it or express their own, facilitators need to have
worked through their own personal anxiety issues.
This means:
1. trusting that every occasion of groupwork can be an
anxiety-free experience for them and ourselves
2. coming to terms with personal feelings of grief, fear and
anger from the past
3. recognizing personal masks and a willingness to show
oneself without masks
4. having beliefs about one's role in the world.
"The more you, the facilitator, have done personal
development work - both in healing early childhood
memories and in opening up to transpersonal energies and
domains - the more flexible you'll be in your facilitation
processes." (John Heron)

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
BREAKING DOWN ANXIETY
The group facilitator's role is to create an environment in
which learning and growth can take place. Breaking down
anxiety is a key step in this process.
The facilitator can dissipate anxiety in the following ways:
1. plan the agenda so it is interesting and stimulating
2. allow the group to have control over the process
3. raise the group's awareness of anxiety issues that
originate in the workplace, eg power hierarchies,
gender issues, compulsiveness to work and not
experience
4. create a permissive learning and doing environment.
"Most people's lives are ruled by the fear of losing what
they have now or what they might have in the future. We
need to move from the fear of losing to the joy of doing.
Only then will anxiety be transformed into positive energy."
(Jagdish Parikh)

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
INTELLECTUAL CONTENT
The facilitator's main concern is for the development of
group members at the personal relationship levels and at
the emotional level of group interaction.
But neither of these can take place without engaging their
intellectual brains in some activity. This is likely to be the
foreground agenda - why the group has been set up, what
issues it hopes to cover, what answers it can find. In this
sense, the facilitator's role overlaps with that of the group
chairman, the project leader, the trainer, the team-builder
and the manager.
When the intellectual strands come together in groupwork,
there is "educational confluence". When the group does not
share the learning aims or the subject is too difficult or
undemanding, there is restricted learning and "educational
alienation".

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
CHALLENGING AGENDAS
Many people coming to learning in groupwork do so
reluctantly because of images of dry, sterile and
intellectually oppressive images of the classroom.
Facilitators have a responsibility to find ways to make
learning relevant, stimulating and fun.
They can do this by following these principles:
1. relate learning to problems the group has
2. pitch learning to suit group members' intellectual ability
3. make learning lively, varied and fun.
Additionally, a facilitator can encourage the group to share
in the setting of the agenda by letting them know that it is
their process and their learning, not someone else's.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
RELEVANT AGENDAS
We are far more curious when learning relates to problems
we have, and own, than when we can't see the connection
between what we have to learn and why we need to learn
it.
This means relating the agenda and inputs of a facilitating
session to what we might get out of it. All sessions of
groupwork benefit when they have clearly-set aims and
plans and when review takes place at the end.
Facilitators can stimulate the interest of group members
further by emphasising the importance, relevance, urgency
or benefits of the subject matter; by pitching the intellectual
content to the right level; and by ensuring that the
intellectual content is lively, involving, varied and well
presented.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROUP INTERACTION
The assimilation of learning in a group, be it knowledge or
skills, and the lowering of anxiety levels are secondary to
the most important aspect of groupwork: how people
interact with each other.
Group interaction is the basis for group development. Group
interaction leads to how we feel about being in the group.
Emotions determine how motivated we are to become
involved in the group, with positive feelings motivating us
more than negative ones. The level of motivation will
determine the level of energy in the group which in turn will
create a willingness to grow and develop.
We can chart the natural development of a group in a
similar way to any organic growth such as a person growing
up or the changes in the seasons of the year.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROUP WINTER
In Winter, there is no growth: the ground is frozen, the
climate cold, little seems to be happening.
In groupwork, winter is the normal state of affairs when
groups first meet, particularly if they consist of people who
don't know each other. Winter is a time of high anxiety and
low trust.
In group Winters...
1. people are quiet, reserved and defensive; they look to
the group leader more than to each other
2. people's expressions are frosty
3. there are nervous coughs, shuffling of feet and awkward
fidgeting
4. the group are hesitant about doing anything.

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROUP SPRING
In Spring, the air and ground begin to warm and new life
tentatively breaks through the cold surface. Protection is
needed for new growth.
In groupwork, Spring is the stage when people start to feel
safe about what is going on. They become more
adventurous and involved.
In group Springtime...
1. people talk more and are prepared to share information
2. the direction of conversation is to selected members of
the group as well to the group leader
3. there are more varied expressions in voice, gestures and
looks
4. there is an easing of tense bodies
5. there is more frequent eye contact
6. some people are prepared to try things out.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROUP SUMMER
In Summer, the sun is high and growth can take place
unchecked. Energy levels of groups are high in the Summer
phase; if anything, growth has to be checked, cut back and
guided to go in certain directions, just as plants and trees
need to be pruned and staked in Summer if they are to
produce their fruit.
Summertime is a time of high trust and low anxiety.
In group Summers...
1. people are noisy, active and unreserved; they spend a
lot of time with each other
2. as well as facts, gossip and information, emotional
feelings are shared freely
3. faces, gestures and movements are free and relaxed
4. the individual characteristics of group members are
visible.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
GROUP AUTUMN
Autumn is the time when the fruits of growth are harvested.
For the facilitator who has led a group into the Summer
phase of abundant activity, moving into Autumn signals that
the group is ready to perform and thereby complete its
reason for existing.
In the Autumn phase of groupwork...
1. people can choose their own preferred way of working
2. there is close, even unspoken, contact between group
members
3. all tasks are attempted
4. the group see themselves as a distinct unit with an
identity of their own
5. there is a feeling that the group is unique, special and
has moved into a new realm of existence
6. there is a mix of joy at accomplishment and sadness at
the thought of completion.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THE GROUP DYNAMIC
In his book "The Facilitator's Handbook", John Heron says
that there are positive and negative forms of energy in
groups.
The positive forms occur when the group is:
1. task-oriented, ie working on a set task
2. process-oriented, ie working on how it works
3. expressing itself, eg through work-related activities,
problem-solving, mime, art, music
4. interactive, ie in close contact with one another
5. confronting, ie facing up to difficult issues
6. individual, ie letting individuals be by themselves
7. charismatic, ie in a state of higher group awareness.
Negative forms of group energy include educational
alienation; restrictions carried over from the workplace;
individual defensiveness; and taking the easy way out.

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Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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People and Groups
Facilitation Skills
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn