Abstract: Excerpts from interviews with professional facilitators trained in Jim Rough's Dynamic Facilitation method are used to illustrate this non-linear, non-directive approach for helping work groups arrive at creative breakthroughs to practical challenges.

What might it mean, to listen in such a way that something comes alive? We know that listening deeply and well is crucial to a constructive conversation, and that a substantial part of the work that we do as facilitators and coaches is to listen to others. Yet how can we talk about listening, in a way that does not put us all to sleep? And how might we actually help participants listen better to one another, instead of simply exhorting them to do so? Maybe it is time to apply Deming's key insight that there may be nothing wrong with the people in any given system: it may be, instead, the system itself that needs to be changed…

By "system", I mean here some of the basic assumptions that are currently held about meetings, about the nature of dialogue, and about facilitation. These assumptions structure the "conversational systems" in which we all live, by shaping the particular nature of the ordinary time and space arrangements we construct to organize our interactions. As such, these assumptions might bear some fruitful re-examining, if we wish to obtain different results.

Here are some examples of the kinds of assumptions I will be inviting us to question:

1) "Productive meetings depend on leaving personal emotions 'at the door'."

2) "It's not dialogue if the participants are not talking directly to one another."

3) "The facilitator's role is to manage the process of convergence."

The questioning I want to do here is not merely abstract. In order to demonstrate one possible alternative to our conventional assumptions, I will be highlighting a method of group facilitation that operates from a very different set of assumptions. This method is called Dynamic Facilitation, a way to help groups engage in creative and productive dialogue with regard to practical issues developed by consultant Jim Rough (Atlee, 2003; Rough and Zubizarreta, 2003.).

Detailed descriptions and a "how-to" manual of Dynamic Facilitation are available elsewhere (see above.) Here, I will be exploring a more general inquiry of what it might mean to listen in a different way. To illustrate what an alternative might look like in practice, I am including a variety of quotes from facilitators I have interviewed whose work has been informed by Dynamic Facilitation (Zubizarreta 2002). I hope by this means to offer some "feel" of how this method works in practice, as well as to illustrate some of its underlying principles.

While descriptions of hands-on experience can be useful, we also need mental models to help us understand and organize experience. In the famous words of Kurt Lewin, "there is nothing as practical as a good theory". As a complement to the facilitator narratives, I will also be drawing upon some writings in current dialogue theory.

I will begin with Maureen Richards, a professional facilitator for 20 years and enthusiastic practitioner of the Dynamic Facilitation approach, speaking about what she loves most about her work:

When asked how she sees her purpose as a facilitator, Maureen replies:

In contrast to other methodologies where facilitator concerns tend to center on how to 'manage' excessive participation, practitioners using the Dynamic Facilitation approach work hard to "draw people out." In this approach, "Tell me more…" is not just a sincere statement: it is also a key intervention. This method is based on understanding communication as a relational process, one where a supportive and interested listening context is crucial to helping the speaker 'unfold' and fine-tune their meaning in a process of creative discovery. This way of understanding human communication is also found in the field of experiential psychotherapy (Gendlin, 1996.)

Yet "tell me more" is not something that can work well in isolation. Anyone familiar with conventional facilitation methods can easily think of any number of constraints that could make it difficult for a facilitator to say, "tell me more". For instance, time is often experienced as a constraint. Yet it is far from the only one. If the design of our facilitation process requires us to "complete" one topic before we move on to the next, this may place a systemic constraint on the ability of the facilitator to "really listen" to a remark that is considered "off topic". Similarly, if we believe that good outcomes depend on the facilitator's "orchestrating" the group's movement toward convergence, this may place constraints on how fully we can welcome participant's divergent contributions, at least during the 'convergence' phase of most common facilitation approaches.

So we see that, in order to say "tell me more" and really mean it, we need to be operating within a system that is based upon a different set of assumptions. In order to "really listen", even as facilitators, we need a system that is designed to support the listening process. What might such an approach look like, and how would it work in practice? By the end of this paper, I hope to have offered some responses to these questions.

Ben Woods, another practitioner of Dynamic Facilitation, is part of the U.S. Navy, and works at a naval shipyard in Washington State. His facilitation assignments have included process improvement, change management, and teamwork development. He comments:

In other facilitation approaches, such a participant might be identified as a "difficult person." In contrast, Ben views repetition as a likely indicator that a participant is not feeling heard, and a signal that more work needs to be done on the part of the facilitator.

In some situations, it may be the case that the participant's statement has notbeen reflected back accurately and respectfully. As a result, even though the person has 'spoken', they have no way to know that the message they intended has in fact been received. In such circumstances, it may be a fairly simple matter to help the participant "feel recognized and understood." The participant may simply need to hear his or her perspective reflected back, in an accurate and caring manner, by the facilitator. This kind of "active listening" is familiar to most of us, although it may not always be appropriately understood and valued. In part, this may be because the effectiveness of 'active listening' depends so strongly upon the intention of the user.

There may be other reasons why a participant in a meeting is not feeling heard, and is thus repeating themselves. For instance, it may be the case that there is a 'more' underneath their initial statement, as Maureen Richards pointed to in an earlier quote: "the first statement that they say is usually not what it’s totally about. Often it’s just a knock on the door…" If the facilitator has not received all of the participant's intended meaning, simply "echoing back the words" will not work very well.

This is especially the case if the facilitator has not really understood what the participant intended. In order to help people feel heard, the facilitator needs to assume that there is some way in which the participant's statement makes sense, from their own point of view. The facilitator's task is to discover and understand the context in which the participants' utterance has meaning. As mentioned earlier, this perspective has strong parallels with experiential psychotherapy (Gendlin, 1996). In this kind of situation, "tell me more" is only a starting point designed to enable the facilitator to eventually reach an understanding of what the participant means, from the participant's own perspective. It is only when the facilitator is able to reflect that meaning, that the participant will be able to feel genuinely "recognized and understood."

Ben Woods goes on to describe how approaches to emotions vary among different schools of facilitation:

In addition to welcoming emotions, Ben emphasizes the importance of protecting the initial stirrings of each participant's creative process:

"Where is the gem here?" could be described as the attitude of the facilitator toward something he or she does not understand. The 'gem' can be understood as the meaning that a statement holds for a participant, even if not at first discernible to others.

At the same time, there is also another way to understand this question. We know that every successful creation builds upon a history of earlier experiments, each of which contributes a crucial piece of understanding to the final 'successful outcome'. Regardless of whether an individual's creative contribution ends up being "the answer" or not, there is some way in which each contribution can serve as a step in the larger process of buidling shared understanding.

For example, a participant's contribution may be helping clarify the question by surfacing a misunderstanding. Or, it may be introducing a useful feature that will end up being incorporated into the final design, even if the final design is quite different from the current solution being proposed. These are only two of the many ways in which a participant's contribution may be of value.

Yet to discover the potential gift that each person has to offer, that person must first be "received", given a safe space within which to unfurl the tentative shape and form of their perceptions, concerns, and ideas. While others' concerns are also welcome in the process, it is important to allow enough space for each contribution to be fully heard, rather than allowing other participants to step in too quickly. Protecting the space for each participant to connect with their own unfolding thinking process is a key intervention in this approach.

Actively "protecting" the contribution of each participant is crucial not only for encouraging creativity and supporting the learning process; it also critical when it comes to highly conflictual situations. The following anecdote by Maureen Richards illustrates many of these elements in action, in the context of a challenging public participation process.

Maureen was hired by her local public library system to facilitate public input with regard to the contentious issue of whether to place internet access filters on the library’s computers. Each meeting was held in a different county, with a different set of participants. Maureen described the difficulties she encountered at the first meeting she facilitated:

As a result of her first experience, Maureen decided she needed to modify her technique slightly for the next two events:

As mentioned elsewhere, one of the characteristics of Dynamic Facilitation is the lack of emphasis on "ground rules" (Atlee, 2003; Rough and Zubizarreta, 2003). Instead, Jim Rough, the originator of the method, usually begins a session in a corporate setting by simply asking the group, "What do you all want to talk about?" In this case, Maureen discovered that she needed to modify Jim's original approach somewhat in order to be more effective in a public participation context. Still, her introduction is less a set of "rules" for participants, and more a simple description of her role: to listen well to each person. The only "rule" is a very natural consequence: 'in order to listen well, I can only hear one person at a time, so you will need to somehow take turns'.

Maureen goes on to describe the response to her work by the library staff who had hired her:

Maureen mentioned earlier that the "library staff had never seen people be so calm at the end of a meeting." From Deming's perspective, we might realize that it was not the people themselves who had changed: it was a change in the system -- in this case, the system of communication -- that was evoking a different kind of behavior from the participants.

We have seen in this example how a facilitator does not need to exhort participants to "listen to one another", nor indeed explicitly "teach" them how to do so. Instead, he or she can offer a different system: one where the facilitator acts as a "designated listener," and invites participants to speak directly to her. She then takes the time to draw out each participant, reflecting back their meaning with care and accuracy. This, in turn, provides the rest of the group a high-quality opportunity to "overhear" one another in depth, as a way to catalyze the dialogue. This design, sometimes termed "third-party listening", is a key structural feature of Dynamic Facilitation, and can be especially useful in high-conflict situations.

Once greater understanding has developed among participants, the facilitator can 'fade into the woodwork'. The participants can then speak to one another directly, as is the case in conventional approaches to dialogue. Still, in Dynamic Facilitation, the facilitator would remain alert for situations where conflicting perspectives require her to 'create more space'. As needed, she would step back in to first, listen fully to each of the conflicting perspectives, and then invite the rest of the group to add any additional perspectives. In this way, conflict does not degrade into polarization and emotional wounding. Instead, conflict shifts more easily into what Senge calls "creative tension" (Senge, 1990.)

2. Relationship as the context of dialogue

The kind of listening we have been describing above is not without its costs, as we saw in Maureen Richard's description of the exhausting nature of her work. Other facilitators echoed this experience as well. Paul Fanit, a consultant in Edmonton, Canada, conducts program evaluations, policy reviews, and policy analysis, and has worked widely with non-profits and community development. He comments on the exhausting nature of good facilitation in general:

At the same time, facilitators find that their efforts to 'really listen' bear fruit. Paul comments:

In this quote, Paul points to the importance of genuine listening to build relationship. While he is speaking about his experience with public participation projects involving low-income people, the importance of authentic relationship is applicable in any human context. Within literature on dialogue, this theme is particularly evident in the work of Nicholas Burbules (1993), a critical theorist in education who writes with passion about dialogue. Inspired by Nel Noddings (1984) and Paulo Freire (1970), Burbules views dialogue from a postmodern and feminist perspective, as an embodied relationship between persons. One key aspect of the dialogic relationship is that it needs to be nurtured:

In his work, Burbules explores how the deep structure of dialogue is central to the processes of language, reasoning, morality, and social organization. Yet all of this takes place "within the fundamentally relational quality of dialogue." One of the key ways in which the human relationship that is central to dialogue is established and sustained, is through the intensity of our listening effort:

Practitioners of ANY method of facilitation are likely to appreciate Burbules' description of the work involved in listening. At the same time, a method such as Dynamic Facilitation, in which listening is the principal intervention, may well involve a comparatively greater "listening effort" on the part of the facilitator.

Let us look at this a bit more closely. If a facilitation system is designed to allow and support a single-minded focus on listening, this does not mean that listening is 'effortless'. It does, however, mean that all of the effort that might be expended upon other interventions is now available for a single-minded focus on listening. It also means that the facilitator is not being structurally "pulled away" from listening by feeling the need to "diagnose problem participants", "decide how and when to intervene", "manage convergence", etc. Instead, the facilitator is working just as hard yet in a structure that allows the freedom to direct all of his or her energy to one end and one end only: engaging fully and wholly in the exhausting and productive work of listening.

At the same time, the facilitator's effort as a 'designated listener' creates a conversational system in which participants are able to 'overhear' one another. As a result, participants do not need to be exhorted to "be good listeners" or to "suspend their assumptions". Instead, participants are welcome to "come as they are"; the design itself of the conversational system allows participants to naturally experience for themselves the value of diverse perspectives. After being immersed in this process for several hours, it is quite common for participants themselves to spontaneously inquire, "could you say more about that?" when faced with a divergent perspective from another participant.

As in the practitioner narratives, Burbules emphasizes the need to create safety as a necessary part of 'nurturing the dialogic relationship':

As we have seen, facilitators using Dynamic Facilitation are passionate about encouraging ideas to discover where is the gem here?'". They actively seek to draw out participants, welcoming emotions and diverse perspectives, helping "protect" each participant’s contribution. All of these "interventions" can be understood as elements of "listening to build relationship". It therefore makes sense that Burbules' insights on dialogue as an embodied, relational practice, requiring concentrated listening work, are particularly helpful for understanding and describing the very specific and highly "active" listening role of the facilitator in the Dynamic Facilitation approach.

Most facilitation approaches designed to address practical issues and generate practical outcomes include an initial period of "divergence". Usually this initial phase is followed by a subsequent one where the facilitator's explicit intention is to "lead" the group through a series of steps designed to result in "convergence". In stark contrast, Dynamic Facilitation asks facilitators to intentionally avoid any form of 'managed convergence'. Instead, facilitators are to welcome divergence continually throughout the entire process. Earlier, I have alluded to how this design principle influences our ability as facilitators to "really listen". Now it is time to explore this aspect of Dynamic Facilitation more fully.

In some ways, the stance of Dynamic Facilitation is similar to the basic paradigm of Transformative Mediation (Bush and Folger, 1994), another approach that also refuses on principle to 'manage convergence.' While natural convergences are welcome in Dynamic Facilitation, any apparent convergences that occur spontaneously are verified only after they have already emerged. If it turns out that a natural convergence has indeed occurred, it is usually the case that the group is already working on the next step, and thus exploring the next level of divergence. If instead the convergence was only apparent, the facilitator encourages the group to continue with their creative process. At no point does he or she shift gears and attempt to 'manage agreement' due to the apparent proximity of a point of convergence (Rough and Zubizarreta, 2003.)

Of course, no principled stance is without its attendant risks. In the interviews, facilitators described both the challenges involved in 'refusing to manage convergence', as well as the powerful results that can arise when convergences emerge naturally.

Stephen Nichols is a consultant who practices both Dynamic Facilitation and Transformative Mediation. Earlier, he worked at United Airlines, first as a machinist, then as an internal facilitator. Here he describes some of the challenges that accompany the refusal to 'negotiate agreement':

Stephen then proceeds to recount the outcome of a very successful facilitation experience:

Of course, Stephen was not just "trusting" and "getting out of the way". He was also, at the same time, engaging in the very specific behaviors we have described earlier: "drawing out" participants in a supportive listening context , welcoming diverse perspectives, and "protecting" individual contributions.

This kind of successful facilitation experience was frequent in the facilitation interviews. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of refusing to manage convergence, and instead remaining fully in a "listening stance", is the kind of effectiveness and resulting confidence that can be generated through the willingness to risk failure. Here is Ben Woods again, the Navy facilitator:

Ben's experiences of success have also led him to a more generalized trust of the potential of ordinary people, as shown whenever they are able to participate in a context that encourages their creativity and initiative:

This deep trust in the potential of human beings came up repeatedly in the interviews. Nora Delaney, a manager of organization development and training in Washington State, offered the following response to the question, "What do you enjoy the most about your work as a facilitator?"

However, even when the facilitator holds a deep trust, based on experience, in the effectiveness of a non-directive process, he or she can still encounter major challenges to the work of listening and welcoming divergent perspectives. Nora illustrates this in the following anecdote:

Even when the role of the facilitator has been re-designed into the simple principles of "listening to support relationship", "welcoming and embracing conflicting perspectives" and "refusing to manage convergence", these are by no means "easy" practices. Yet when we apply these principles, we are creating the conditions for the emergence of something that Delaney describes as "metalogue":

This sense of communion leads to some very practical benefits. In response to the question, "Do you find that there is a difference between processes where people are led through a series of formal steps to come to a decision, and a process where the decision emerges on its own?" Ben Woods replies:

In fact, there is a growing understanding in our culture that a self-organizing process of discovery leads to a host of very tangible and practical benefits, including greater creativity, commitment, motivation, and follow-through (Senge, 1990). What is less well-known is a clearly delineated way of supporting and facilitating that process, especially in the context of addressing practical challenges within emotionally-charged situations. It is in this regard that the approach offered by Dynamic Facilitation may have much to contribute.

By refusing to manage convergence, we are empowered to fully embrace difference. Many critics of dialogue and deliberation today have questioned whether true dialogue is even possible given the kinds of social power imbalances that exist between people as a result of institutionalized oppression of various sorts, including racism, classism, sexism, etc. In response, Burbules emphasizes that the facilitation of dialogue includes the responsibility to actively solicit a diversity of perspectives, as well as to remain open to the possibility that consensus may not be achieved in any given instance. He writes:

Burbules recognizes various kinds of dialogue, including ones which seek "convergence" as well as others where no convergence is sought . Yet he makes the significant point that, even if we hold convergence as a valued outcome, we have to be willing to 'fail' at if we are to maintain the integrity of the dialogue process.

As we have already seen, the need to actively welcome the fullness of diverse perspectives, especially in situations of unequal power, was strongly present in the facilitator interviews. Indeed, the importance of welcoming diverse perspectives is nearly universal in facilitation work, and can be found in a wide variety of facilitation approaches.

However, it is also the case that feeling a need to 'manage convergence' and thus 'avoid failure' can deeply constrain our ability to actually listen and to welcome diverse perspectives. An example of this was seen in the situation Nora faced with the emerging conflict between her boss and her boss' boss.

It follows, then, that when a facilitation method prescribes convergence, it can have a dampening effect upon our ability to welcome difference. Conversely, when facilitators are asked to intentionally 'refrain from managing convergence' and to be 'willing to fail', this has specific consequences for the facilitator's ability to really listen and to welcome diverse perspectives.

As we have seen, the method of Dynamic Facilitation is designed to create a particular kind of conversational system, one that fully supports both facilitator and participants in 'welcoming diverse perspectives'. It is a design that allows us all to fully tap into the power and potential of 'really listening'.

It is interesting to note that similar principles to the ones I have been pointing to here, can also be found in other self-organizing processes designed to support emergence at other levels of holarchy. One example of this is Focusing Partnership, a research-based personal growth process, where partners take turns offering a "non-directive listening space" to one another. During that time, the person who is taking the "active" turn is "focusing", or holding a listening space for their own creative process. This lay, peer-based "self-help" model supports healing as well as the unfolding of personal creativity in all areas of one's life.

There are significant parallels between the 'inner listening work' of the person who is Focusing, and the 'outer listening work' of non-directive facilitator who is offering deep listening presence to a group. While he or she Focusing, a person is offering a deep listening presence to their own inner experiencing, welcoming and "drawing out" that experience in a gentle and supportive way. He or she may address inner conflicts by listening to each 'part' in turn, allowing any insights or 'convergences' to emerge naturally. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Focusing practice is that the Focuser refrains from attempting to 'fix' their own inner experiencing, and instead sees himself or herself as learning to support and follow an emergent process (Cornell, 2005.)

The parallels between these two distinct and unrelated processes may point to some larger underlying dynamics. In addition, they point to areas of possible synergy. By learning to listen more deeply to our inner experience, and to trust our own internal emergent process, we might come to know and trust the dynamics of emergence more fully, and thus become open to the possibility of "listening for aliveness" in a group setting.

This feels very hopeful, since as a culture, we are in dire need of practical ways to support co-intelligence, the emergent creative process that is possible in a group context. Our future as a species may well depend on it. The possibility that the 'inner work' that so many individuals have engaged in, could be leveraged to allow for emergence on a group level, is a sign of hope for me.

My aim in this paper has been to explore Dynamic Facilitation as an example of a "conversational system" based on a different set of assumptions than our current 'conventional wisdom' with regard to meetings, to dialogue, and to facilitation. In both my own and others' experience, this alternative set of assumptions can help bring listening to life, whether we are in the role of facilitators or participants in a dialogue.

At the same time, I am not asking the reader to "agree" with any of the alternative assumptions which have been illustrated in the narratives, and which I list again below. I am only inviting the reader to consider how our experience of listening (whether as a facilitator or as a participant) might be affected by being part of a system designed on these assumptions:

1. The"more" of each person we can welcome into the room, the more productive our meetings can be;
2. We can protect emergent creativity and create safety in situations of conflict by asking participants to direct their comments to the facilitator as a 'designated listener', rather than directly to one another.
3. As facilitators, we can allow convergences to emerge naturally, by continually holding a "listening space" and actively supporting a diversity of perspectives.

Many professional facilitators may be familiar with a variety of open-ended approaches to dialogue. Most of these dialogic approaches are consistent with at least the first and third alternative assumptions I have just described. Yet until now, conventional wisdom has seen dialogical processes as being applicable only to situations designed for increase interpersonal understanding, or for more esoteric explorations of the nature of consciousness itself. As a result, many people believe that open-ended dialogic approaches "can't work" when it comes to addressing practical issues. The existence of Dynamic Facilitation shows otherwise.

At the same time, we know that cultural paradigms can be slow to change. My intention here is not to argue with the prevailing belief that we cannot achieve practical outcomes without a linear process, or that convergence has to be managed in order to occur. If our experience has not provided us with sufficient grounds to trust an emergent, self-organizing process in a practical context, it would make sense for us to feel that a linear process of "managing convergence" is the only choice available and the only real alternative to chaos.

Still, I hope to have shown how 'managing convergence' or 'negotiating agreement' places serious restrictions on our ability as a facilitator to remain in a stance of "deep listening". In order to 'manage convergence', we need to shift from 'welcoming divergence' to determining which contributions are likely to lead to the desired outcome, and which are now to be determined "out of bounds". This shift impedes our own ability as facilitators to offer the kind of listening that truly welcomes difference, thus supporting the emergence of a dialogic field.

I also hope to have shown that if instead, we wish to listen in a way that something larger comes alive, we may need to re-examine the basic design of our conversational system, and explore viable alternatives to our current way of "meeting" with one another. Dynamic Facilitation is only one instance that shows that effective alternatives are indeed possible. Dialogue Mapping and Transformative Mediation are two others. Together, they point to the emergence of a new field I am calling "Practical Dialogue". But that is the subject of another paper!

Thank you for reading this, and I look forward to any comments or feedback you might have. You can contact me through my website, at www.diapraxis.com.

References

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Burbules, N. C. (1993). Dialogue in teaching: Theory and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Bush, R.A. B. & Folger, J. P. (1994). The promise of mediation: Responding to conflict through empowerment and recognition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cornell, A. W. (2005). The Radical Acceptance of Everything: Living a focusing life. Berkeley: Calluna Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury.

Gendlin, E. T. (1996). Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experietial Method. New York: The Guilford Press.

Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Senge, P.M. (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday.

Rough, J. (2002). Society’s breakthrough: Releasing essential wisdom and virtue in all the people. 1stBooks Library. http://1stbooks.com

Rough, J. and R. Zubizarreta (2003) Dynamic Facilitation Manual and Reader . Available from Jim Rough and Associates, Inc.

Zubizarreta, R. (2002). Dynamic Facilitation: An exploration of deliberative democracy, organization development, and educational theory as tools for social change. Culminating Paper for M.A. degree in the Organization Development Program, Psychology Department, Sonoma State University.