I’ve decided to commit to owning this book (I usually try to resell everything) and have been writing like mad in the margins. One area that I put a lot of !!!!!’s and underlining was from chapter 2, page 18:
“When a facilitator promotes a group’s trust, it is not to help everyone trust every other individual member as an individual, but rather to help each trust the situation that has been collectively created. The purpose is not trust in general, but trust sufficient to do the work at hand. Nor is the goal to make everyone feel comfortable.”
I wondered: why isn’t this a more transparent and expected understanding to group situations? It seems I am often in groups where either: a) no trust is built at all and we are all supposed to just jump in and expose our ideas to a group of strangers or, b) so much emphasis is put on everyone being comfortable and happy and right that nothing gets deeply discussed or ultimately decided.
These few sentences gave me permission, as a facilitator and member of a group, to narrow the focus of trust-building so that it is purposeful, transparent, and not scorned as “touchy-feely.”
“When a facilitator promotes a group’s trust, it is not to help everyone trust every other individual member as an individual, but rather to help each trust the situation that has been collectively created. The purpose is not trust in general, but trust sufficient to do the work at hand. Nor is the goal to make everyone feel comfortable.”
I wondered: why isn’t this a more transparent and expected understanding to group situations? It seems I am often in groups where either: a) no trust is built at all and we are all supposed to just jump in and expose our ideas to a group of strangers or, b) so much emphasis is put on everyone being comfortable and happy and right that nothing gets deeply discussed or ultimately decided.
These few sentences gave me permission, as a facilitator and member of a group, to narrow the focus of trust-building so that it is purposeful, transparent, and not scorned as “touchy-feely.”
RSS Feed