Well, well, well, there they are again. Those fluffy creatures of my authors that did make it to the dedication of the book…
But let’s be honest, they have mastered the judging part. What humans have as an advantage over cats, is that they are capable of objectively observing behavior. And that’s exactly what you need as a facilitator. If you want to address the shadows, you have to start with observing behavior objectively while not letting your interpretations or judgements get in the way of doing that.
Everything that lives in the shadows of people – emotions, insecurities, bias, polarities, conflict, resistance, and so on – can trigger behavior. For example – the presence of certain people might trigger others to be more quiet or conform to their opinions. If someone feels they haven’t been heard or seen in this group for a long time and is mad about that, it might trigger them to be very vocal during a session, or to disagree with everything, or to interrupt others, or to not get involved in conversations at all.
What I’m trying to say, you never know what’s behind someone’s behavior – or what shadows trigger that behavior. You only know that people are showing certain behavior because there’s a positive consequence in it for them. Whatever you might think of someone’s disagreeing modus operandi, that person might finally feel heard by doing this. Your judgement is irrelevant here. You can only observe behavioral patterns objectively (constant disagreement and counter arguments for example) and address this pattern. Either during a session via a weather report (when it’s a group pattern), or individually.
Find out why people are showing behavior. What’s in it for them? Is the same sarcastic joke going around all the time? That might be a signal there is some sort of resistance in the group. Share your objective observations with the group (I’ve heard the same jokes and comments on topic X quite a few times now) – not your judgements (It’s very annoying that you constantly are bashing topic X) – and then let the group respond.
It might surprise you how much you can accomplish with this approach. Way more than those judging cats, I can tell you that.
XoXo CoMo
