The Art of Effective Facilitation: Developing and Sustaining Effective Cofacilitation Across Identities

Chapter 6

Okay, chapter six was pretty interesting. It dealt with how to build the cofacilitation relationship, and how to nurture it. There was a lot of small stuff I didn't know, but there were a few big takeaways too. The first is that this relationship takes a LOT of work to build and nurture. There have to be repeated discussions across multiple identities as you find out which facilitators identify as what, and why. I hope to build and grow my relationship with Ali in the same way the two women who wrote the chapter build theirs.

My second takeaway was that you not only have to accept other people's different opinions, but you have to fully embrace them. You have to try to stand in their shoes and see things from their perspective. It's not enough to listen and understand, you have to try and put yourself in their shoes. This is sometimes hard for me, so it will be a challenge to try and put myself in other peoples' shoes and be there to feel what they feel.

I also took away that this relationship should be a collaboration. We need to work together and hone our facilitator skills together. If one of us needs to work on something, BOTH of us need to work on that something. We can do some little bits and pieces of work separately, but the bulk of it will be done together. It will help us, I think, to be a solid we instead of us being he and I. And we have so much diversity (white, black; woman, man; older, younger).