The other day I had a little online exchange with two other experienced facilitators about the term “facilitator”.
Johnnie Moore, author of the book Unhurried at Work and a co-founder of Creative Facilitation, is someone I have to thank for getting me restarted with the #WhatComesNextLive podcast, with his show coming up on March 7th at 5:30pm UK. Kay Scorah, a past guest on the show (here) is, like Johnnie, also a brilliant facilitator.
The dialogue went like this:
Tom: I wrestle with the word “facilitator”. Technically what I do in such spaces is “group coaching” as the process is aimed towards an outcome as opposed to facilitation per se. Johnnie, would love your take on the distinctions and what this can be called to better describe what it is all about
Johnnie: Ah yes, I think the word Facilitator carries a lot of luggage sometimes. I do love me a bit of group coaching and I think the boundaries around each are important. Would be worth a chat and/or me doing a vid about it!
At this point, I invited him to be a podcast guest so we can discuss it and share that conversation with others! The brilliant Kay then jumped in with this superlative comment:
Kay: re-launched myself as a difficilitator….unsurprisingly
Brilliant! People don’t bring me in (nor Kay, nor Johnnie) for the easy facilitation of a group conversation, they bring us in when there are difficult conversations to be had by a team or organisation. They bring us in to move them through that difficult space, to move through that discomfort, that “stretch”, to find for themselves the shift they need to leave that day clear, engaged, aligned and ready to act.
As I wrote a few days ago, when asked what I do by people I meet, I often say “I herd elephants”, as there is always an elephant in the room, a difficult conversation to “difficilitate”.
Kay then completed our little group dialogue by sharing a blog post she wrote a few months ago. The link is here and I’m reposting it in full below, as it is a) brilliant, and b) says better than I could what I also do!
Exciting announcement! (by Kay Scorah)
Yay! I have a new role!!….Well, that’s not quite true. I have the same job, I have simply changed my job title to make it a more accurate description of the “work” that I do.
You see, I’ve been calling myself a “facilitator” for over 40 years. But I’m not a facilitator. I’m a difficilitator. (Merci, langue Français).
To “facilitate” means to make things easier. I don’t do that. I don’t even want to do that.
Looking back over all these years I’ve noticed that I, and those I work with, find breakthroughs and solutions in the difficult, not in the easy.
I’m not afraid to encourage myself and others to step into the difficult, because I believe that we all learn more there. And I know that I’ll have more fun there. Even if that “fun” might not be of the cheesy teambuilding, icebreaker kind. The fun might be uncomfortable. I’m OK with that. I want to work and play with people who want to be in the stretch zone.
Let’s face it, the comfortable isn’t working. We’re not moving on, learning or changing when we’re in the comfort zone.
Which is why I’m not interested in comfort or ease, not interested in “facility”. Not for me, not for others. I’m interested in discomfort (or diffcomfort), in stretching, in finding new ways of moving, thinking, expressing and relating.
I’m done with pretending to make it easy. I believe that we all need to embrace and thrive on difficulty. Because life, the world, other people, our problems are not easy. I’m not going to pretend that they are. Nor, I believe, should you.
That’s it. The end of this short message from your newly appointed CDO (Chief Difficilitation Officer).