Dear All,
Thinking about our thread “multiple facilitator roles” I wondered if
there could be a boundary issue here.
No doubt - as Michael’s post makes very clear - the amount of work to
be done has some connection
to the size of the group. In terms of
hours-to-be-worked-on-plannable-things if the group becomes a crowd
rather than a group, it is mosty practical in nature
When opening space I almost never have a co-facilitator - in terms of
one or more persons being involved in opening and closing the space.
When I do, it is typically an OSonOS with collegues, one of us taking
the role for each day.
However I have rarely felt I work alone - and the reason probably is
that cooperation with the sponsor tends to be rather different from
non-open space work.
I thought of the boundary issue when last week I was asked to help
co-facilitate an event with the top 30
managers of a large multinational. Open Space does not feature on the
program, and there will be a
team of five facilitators................... Do these 30 quite
experienced people need so much facilitation ?
No doubt we will work very hard (too hard, as we are likely to do lots
of things the group could well do
without us), and learn a lot from eachother while doing so. Will there
be the learning across the boundary
(client group and facilitator team) which there could be ? And
certainly it is unlikely that some percentage
of them will decide they want to learn facilitation - while some ten
Open Space sponsors I worked with have since taken a training in OST.
In working with Open Space, the client does not need all that much
help. Too much help may damage
the selforganising process. And if I manage not to do all the things I
might do (with the best of intentions)
but are not essential they may actually create the team which invites,
holds the space with me and feels responsaibility
for the follow-up, as Lisa states quite beautifully. To me this also
means not taking any tasks they may do themselves.
So after the first couple of years when I had an assistant along who
really knew how to make sure a copy of the report
would be there for everybody in time, I now almost always brief someone
who works for the client to do this.
I do not bring a talking stick, but ask the sponsor to choose one. And
so on.
So I guess in my practice there is as a rule one facilitator - who
never works alone.
Greetings from Denmark,
Gerard Muller
Open Space Institute Denmark
Phone: (+45) 21269621
Mail: [email protected]
*
*
==========================================================
[email protected]
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of [email protected]:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
