Facilitating difficult groups: 6 lessons I learned the hard way

From the outside, those positions looked untenable. How could we get people to agree, if it meant losing face on what mattered most to them?

Here’s the secret: alignment isn’t about agreement. It’s about productive disagreement. Real alignment, the stuff that brings diverse groups and communities together, is about productively disagreeing in a way that reaches consensus.

Lesson 2: Anger beats apathy

High-tension groups are great because they care. Anger beats apathy every time. People that bring loud, strong opinions to a room like that (which they did!) are passionate, which means they’re engaged.

While we couldn’t agree on what came first, the economy or the environment, there were some things we could furiously align on. Things like:

A deep respect for and connection to the land

and

A strong desire to preserve it for future generations, whether for farming, recreation, or the survival of native bush.

Working from there, we could focus on what we gained, not lost. We developed a set of shared values and created a shared narrative that looked to the future.

Lesson 5: Plans need principles, not positions

With our values and principles agreed upon and understood, the differences began to dissolve.

With a pathway for making decisions together, we were able to put aside the things that kept us apart and stay focused on what united us, so that we could:

• Ensure everyone could access and enjoy what our natural environment has to offer, now and in the future

• Maintain a strong quality of life in our district, supported by a thriving economy

• Preserve what was special and unique about our place, so we could be proud of it

• Take responsibility for our local area and owning our role in making those things a reality.

With those principles laid out clearly, people could commit to taking action in the unique space that brought them to life, without being asked to lose anything that mattered most to them.

Lesson 6: Facilitators are translators

When I train facilitators, I draw on this story and others and implore them to treat their role as a great privilege and responsibility.

Facilitators act as a bridge between worlds, translating their groups' ideas and identities into a safe, shared space. They hear what isn’t said, extract the commonalities and meaning from often heated statements, and bring those things together to create something new.

This is a special job, and it isn’t for the fainthearted—but once you master those skills, you can take them everywhere—family Christmas, arguments with your spouse and children, political tensions between friends.

With very few exceptions, people aren’t stupid or evil. They aren’t out to get you. The benefits of harnessing diversity in the way we think and the things we care about far outweigh the cons, even when we don’t always understand why others think the way they do—and as a facilitator, you get to experience that every time you walk into a room.

Pretty cool, eh?

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