At a recent workshop on participatory techniques for worker education I had the chance to be a participant, giving me the opportunity to study facilitation from the other side of the equation. While the facilitator was quite good, she made a couple of mistakes that are worth describing so as to watch out for them. (It's so much easier to troubleshoot other's mistakes!)
At the end of the workshop, with about 20 minutes to go, the facilitator suggested the group (20 people) do a quick go around, with each person re-introducing herself and making one comment about the workshop.
(Problem #1 -- don't skimp on evaluation, especially in a workshop that is designed to help people learn participatory techniques by practicing them. I would have given this part more time and more careful design -- small groups, focussed questions, better share mechanism...)
As we went around, the comments were mostly positive and superficial ("I had a great time, thanks.") with a few intriguing leads ("I really want to see how to use these techniques to teach workers rights..."). When it came around to me, I said my name, praised the workshop, and then offered two suggestions for improvement (kaizen). The first was for personal improvement -- due to my poor reading skills in Japanese I couldn't read the many sheets of notes and lists, though other participants did help me when I asked.
(I thought of making the point that it is crucial for facilitators to be aware of, and take into account, the levels of literacy, education background, and language proficiency in a group so as to enable all to participate equally -- but it seemed too whiny and I thought it would be better to make just one suggestion.)
My second comment was on facilitation.
We had done a great sequence of activities:
1) The Labor Problem -- in small groups, brainstorm things related to this term, what does it mean to you, what do you think of. Write up the notes on big paper. Post, share.
2) Perspectives on the Labor Problem, role play -- each small group is given an identity (my group got a "thirty year old temp worker") and asked to look at the Labor Problem brainstorm lists from the previous step from that character's point of view. Which of the problems on the list most affect people with this identity?
Then, we were asked to analyze the main problem our character faces, asking "why is it that I have this problem?" So, in our group, we asked "Why can I be fired so easily?" We discussed several different reasons. and then were instructed to think about "what should be done about the problem?" and "Who can do something about the problem and how?"
The small groups took notes on big paper. Then, we were asked to share them. For most groups this meant holding up the big paper and reading through the notes. But a couple of groups hammed it up and took on the persona of the character they had been assigned.
There were six or seven groups (19 year old "freeter" temp, representative of a community union, representative of a national union federation...), so it took some time.
My kaizen suggestion was that having done the small group analysis of the problems as experienced by our characters, it would have been better to actually role play the interaction of the various characters -- we could have staged a public meeting with each person getting a chance to speak, or have a TV reporter interview them... The group analysis would have given our players good preparation for the role play. As it was, the share part of the activity was a bit slow and too much of the same kind of sharing of lists.
The re-introductions/evaulation go around continued and when we got to the facilitator, she responded to my suggestion saying that a role play would not have worked because Japanese people are shy about participating in role plays.
This brings us to Problem #2: arguing with feedback.
The facilitator should have listened carefully to all the feedback, asked questions where she didn't understand, and left it at that. (Time was up.) When you ask participants for feedback, you are asking them to take a risk of alienating the facilitator. Arguing with their feedback makes people more reluctant to give it and defeats the purpose. At its worst it can create the impression that only positive feedback is welcome. If you want to discuss the feedback -- which is a good idea -- build such a discussion into your agenda and give it time.
(For what it's worth, in my experience, Japanese people have been willing and very creative participants in role plays. :-))