On intercultural competency

Dear Polly

You recently wrote to me about the shame and frustration you felt at witnessing your organisation convene a global group of experts and changemakers, and then allowing a group of white British “facilitators” to lecture them for most of the day about their own opinions. Unfortunately, there are still many ego-driven facilitators who end up controlling the conversation or centring their own experiences. This, I believe, is the first barrier to actually producing the kind of solidarity and collaboration you felt could have been possible in that space.

But even when facilitators enter a space with the intention of centering participants and easing collaboration between people, they can still lack awareness of how participants’ different contexts and cultures might influence group dynamics. And a lack of awareness around what a facilitator can and should be doing to integrate these people’s differences in an equitable and inclusive way. 

While there are proactive things we can do to develop what I’ll refer to as “intercultural competence”, and frameworks/ structures that are helpful for when you don’t possess all of the knowledge you need about participants’ cultures and contexts, I do think that some people are more naturally attuned to holding plurality and attending to power dynamics than others.

Growing up in a multicultural community (and household with regards to some of my foster siblings) made me used to challenging my own assumptions when navigating different cultural norms. However, I actually believe it is my autism that has enabled me most in deepening and developing my intercultural competence. As someone who has struggled to comprehend many of the norms within my own culture, I’m naturally inclined to constantly and consciously question and redefine the rules of group environments.

That said I am also a white British person that has lived in the UK my entire life - and even though I am engaged in continuous education around decolonisation, I can’t escape the fact that I have been conditioned under white supremacy. This therefore requires me to maintain a persistent level of self and other awareness in order to ensure I’m addressing power dynamics and making space for plurality. If a facilitator cannot talk about how their own culture, upbringing and lived experience affects the way they show up in a space, they are simply not ready to hold intercultural groups. 

And when I think about this point it makes me realise this is true even when thinking about queer culture and straight culture, autistic culture and allistic culture, working class and middle class culture. Sadly, it’s rare to find people in the latter groupings (straight, allistic, middle class) that think as deeply as the former groupings (queer, autistic, working class) about how they show up in spaces.  Those who experience marginalisation are far more likely to attune to the dynamics playing out and their role within that because of the historic challenges, barriers and discrimination or trauma they have had to contend with. 

But of course people don’t need to have lived experience of marginalisation in order to be able to hold intercultural groups well. In fact, more recently I’ve felt a pressing need for more people within dominant groups to hold space well so that marginalised people can be given the space they need (and deserve) to lead, collaborate, heal, and create a better future. 

So how could your white British facilitators have done things differently? How could they invite in different voices and different ways of being? What things could they have done to stop unhealthy or harmful dynamics from playing out? How could they have made space for a global group to learn from, connect to and build solidarity with each other? 

Before they even entered the room a conversation with a variety of participants would’ve been sensible. I imagine they were asked to deliver something specific by your organisation, who are also predominantly white British, and that there was no-one in that whole briefing for the day who had the humility and awareness to design the day in a way that respected and included everyone. When a client is asking me to deliver a process with a wide range of participants I always want to find a way to spend time with, or more deeply understand,  the individuals from the group and their needs and expectations - rather than just accepting the narrative the client is giving me. It also makes my job as a facilitator easier when those participating have been involved in contributing to the aims and exercises I am thinking about for the day.  

If there isn’t the time and capacity to prepare collectively in this way, something like a shared container exercise at the start of the day is a helpful alternative. This can be as simple as agreeing some things that the collective are mindful of or would value in the space. A shared container is an opportunity for people to name behaviours that they would like to invite from one another, acknowledge differences between us and build shared awareness of the external factors that might affect how we show up with each other.

During an exercise like this I’d also encourage facilitators to really dig into what people mean when they share generic values or expectations - even if they assume the group have similar cultural norms. For instance, in the restorative justice training I’ve been undertaking, one of the participants requested ‘respectful language’. When the trainer asked what they meant by it turned out they meant ‘no swearing’. For me, growing up in a working class family swear words were often used as punctuation and emphasis rather than (or sometimes in addition to) aggression or disrespect. Therefore I don’t instantly find swearing disrespectful so I might've used it in the space without realising others had different opinions. In return, the conversation gave me a chance to highlight that I might find things like acronyms disrespectful because it excludes people from the conversation. 

When I create a shared container, it’s not about having a simple set of rules that everyone whole-heartedly accepts. In an intercultural context that’s not necessarily going to be possible, nor is it going to be a healthy environment for people who need very different things to one another in order to feel confident and safe. Instead it is about increasing everyone’s awareness (including the facilitator’s awareness) about what is important for individuals and therefore everyone can make informed choices about how they engage with each other.

Beyond a shared container, facilitators also need to constantly make space to learn new information about what participants need, and pay close attention to when power dynamics reveal themselves. This is one the hardest and most rewarding aspects of facilitation - to learn how to be fully present and responsive to a group, while still maintaining structure and not having knee-jerk reactions that might derail a process in a detrimental way. It is impossible for me to consider and plan for everyone’s needs every time I run a session, but it is possible for me to know how I’ll respond with care when I realise a space isn’t as inclusive and equitable as it could be. 

One way you learn the needs you hadn’t catered for is by encouraging agency and choice. At the start of all my workshops I invite people to self-manage, and reassure them that if they need to duck out for any reason outside of scheduled breaks I will catch them up. In a recent session I ran, I hadn't considered prayer times in advance when structuring the day. There was a muslim person in the group who asked to leave the room for a while to pray and check in when they came back. On realising that I hadn’t considered this need in advance I was able to adapt the rest of my session plans to accommodate it - but I only got reminded of this need because I had made it possible for that person to make their own choices and they felt comfortable informing me about it. 

What’s more is that a facilitator’s responsiveness and openness to unexpected feedback is important. If your facilitators had made invitations for people to interrupt them if it wasn’t making sense perhaps people would’ve been more likely to speak up that the approach wasn’t working for them. And if a facilitator received that feedback with grace, and responded by asking the group how they want to adapt the plan, then people would instantly feel more engaged and able to bring more of themselves to the space because they know their voice is taken seriously. Whereas if a facilitator responds dismissively or defensively to people’s needs it’s going to shut down other types of conversation too. Sometimes facilitators also need to proactively model how participants can challenge and question them and each other. For instance, when I’m in a group where English is not everyone’s first language, or where people come from different class backgrounds, I will often be the first person to ask someone to explain what they mean by a particular word. This demonstrates to others that it’s safe to say when you haven’t fully understood - and the more this happens the more likely everyone in the group will become more conscious of using accessible language. 

In an intercultural space not only are you paying attention to and holding all of the standard nuances that facilitators have to hold, but you are also likely acting as a translator of some kind. And if you are committed to doing both of those jobs well it’d be impossible to take up so much space with your own views and opinions!

To be honest, now that I've written this, my main advice would be to find different facilitators - or create opportunities and structure for the group to be able to facilitate themselves -  because it sounds like they would’ve made more space for each other without the external influence. 

Ray

This letter is part of the holding space together series. A collection of letters to and from people who are part of the Holding Space community - if you want to be part of this space you can join an upcoming cohort

On co-facilitation

This letter is from Emily Barrett, a freelance facilitator and consultant, to the people she has co-facilitated with over the last few years.

Dear Co-facilitators, 

Co-facilitating with you has been a joy! Over the past five years or so, I’ve been fortunate enough to co-facilitate on different projects with a number of other professionals, across the UK, and even, from across the pond. To begin with, I was new to the world of facilitation, and you offered me support, feedback, and, most importantly, trust. Trust to work alongside you as an equal, and trust that together we would do a good job.

In my first co-facilitation experience, Roger, you shared the load and handed over the mic. I still remember the buzz afterwards. Hearing you say, “She’s an up-and-coming facilitator!” - that feedback and encouragement carried me forward.

Since then, I’ve worked with friends, peers, and colleagues across contexts and sectors, and almost all of these experiences have been deeply positive.

But what makes them good? What makes co-facilitation work?

These experiences have come in all shapes and sizes. In some cases it’s meant sharing the mic and stage throughout, taking turns to lead different parts of the session. In others, one person has played the supportive critical friend - listening, keeping time, offering interventions where needed - while the other leads the group.

Across all of these (good) experiences, there have been some common threads. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, a shared sense of responsibility and respect. Showing up as equals, with clear roles and mutual accountability. Secondly, being present for each other and for the group, whether that meant being ‘backup’ in a tight spot, or intuitively reading each other’s rhythm and energy in the room. Our skills and styles were complementary, enriching the work instead of clashing, and there was an openness and generosity in how we worked together. A willingness to step in or step back as needed, without ego, always in service of the group.

At its best, co-facilitation feels like a dance. You know the moves your partner will make. It’s smooth, creative, and joyful to watch unfold. And for me it’s been one of the greatest gifts of working as a facilitator. Working with others, supporting, caring and celebrating each other. are some of the reasons we are facilitators in the first place. 

Jess, you once said to me, “Co-facilitation is a tricky thing to get right, and it felt easy with Emily,” and I felt exactly the same about working with you. It felt natural. The activities and processes were smooth, and importantly, it was a good experience for everyone — us and the group.

I’ve been lucky - almost all of my co-facilitation experiences have felt supportive, equitable, respectful and caring. There has only been one, early in my freelance journey, that didn’t work out the way I hoped.

On paper it seemed ideal: we shared values, skills and experiences that were complementary, and we agreed on everything clearly — rates, deadlines, agenda, division of planning and activities. We co-authored the proposal. We talked through intentions, risks, and how we would support each other in the moment, during the session.

But on the day, the preparation wasn’t there. The shared responsibility had vanished into thin air. And it all seemed to land on my shoulders. With no warning, and seemingly little care. And without that care, without working together equally in partnership, co-facilitation doesn’t work. 

It was really hard, and I went over and over what I could have done differently.

With more experience now, I see clearly that good co-facilitation isn’t just about liking someone or sharing a vision. It’s about turning up for each other, before, during, and after, with the same level of care we offer the group.

From that experience, as well as from all the brilliant ones, a few key things have stayed with me. 

Firstly, testing the water matters, and wherever possible it helps to work alongside someone first, even informally, before committing to co-facilitation. The majority of wonderful co-facilitators I;ve worked with since have been existing friends and peers, and facilitators I’ve worked with before (perhaps in another context). Working together was easy, and co-facilitating together felt natural and right - we knew it would work. 

I’ve also learnt to pay attention to how someone prepares and shows up: whether they follow through, communicate clearly, and hold their part of the work with care. I always see the best in people, as we so often do, and so perhaps I was a bit naive at the start about this, and missed ‘red flags’ that indicated that person wasn’t fully ‘in it together’. I gave too much of myself to a process that should have been mutual. Open conversations and sharing expectations about roles and working together, and importantly being open when expectations aren’t met or things aren’t working, are just as important as shared values, creating clarity and accountability on both sides. 

Perhaps most importantly, co-facilitation should be a true collaboration, rather than simply ‘shared delivery’ as I may have seen it when starting out. It’s about how you work together with each other and with the group. Great co-facilitation isn’t just about sharing the stage; it’s about shared purpose, synergy, and flow. It should be fun and joyful! Facilitating can be exhausting and a massive juggling act of emotions, group dynamics, politics, and aims and objectives. Co-facilitating is a relay race, a shared effort to get to the finish line. When two facilitators align in intention and approach, with care for each other and their practice, the learning experience becomes richer and more enjoyable for everyone involved. 

Overall, my experience of co-facilitation has been overwhelmingly positive. It has inspired me, deepened my practice, broadened my perspectives, and reminded me again and again that facilitation is best held in partnership, with others and the groups we serve.

If my co-facilitators are reading this - thank you. Thank you for the trust, the feedback, the laughter, the shared energy, and the problem solving. Thank you for caring. I look forward to what we do together next. When will that be by the way?

If you’re curious about co-facilitation but haven’t yet tried it, maybe this is your invitation to find someone - the right someone - and give it a go.

Warmly,
Emily

Emily is a freelance facilitator and co-facilitator with a background in higher education, specialising in bringing together academia, industry, and communities to exchange ideas in creative and impactful ways. Her facilitation practice began through organising and delivering hackathon weekends and now spans a wide range of workshops and events across sectors, with a strong focus on collaboration and turning ideas into action.

This letter is part of the holding space together series. A collection of letters to and from people who are part of the Holding Space community - if you want to be part of this space you can join an upcoming cohort

On holding space for neurodivergent minds

Dear Micha,

Wow, I’ve had coaching and therapy from a lot of different (and brilliant) people over the years but our first coaching session completely blew my mind. Being held explicitly as an autistic person within this society is a very unique experience, something I don’t think I’ve fully accessed other than with my other autistic friends. 

From start to finish it was so clear how your lived experience and knowledge of neuodivergence had shaped every layer of our session together. Starting with who I am on a good day and a bad day not only gave you unique insight into the way my brain works, but it helped me to notice where I was on that spectrum today, it gave me a whole load of language I can use to express myself and it gave me immediate useful solutions for any time in the near future where I might be heading into an anxiety spiral. I feel like every coach, regardless of someone’s neurotype, should do this up front. One of my reticences around receiving coaching is that I can often end up going too deep and unpacking things that make it difficult for me to function - but knowing that we’d already laid out the warning signs of this together, along with some easy ways to respond to that, made me feel so reassured that this process will be held with care.

What’s more is that I could share so much more freely about what a bad day looks like for me knowing that you likely had shared lived experience. Telling someone that I have disordered eating or suicidal thought patterns is often unhelpfully met with shock or concern so I tend to play down those aspects of my brain. In reality those things are just me struggling with the executive functioning required for daily life, and you acknowledging that without trying to delve deeper meant we actually arrived at much simpler solutions to these things than I might’ve previously. 

In addition, within dialogue, I can often find it hard to structure my thoughts. With standard coaching, where it's often a continuous flow of open questions, I can find I frequently get lost down a rabbit hole simply because my brain is whirring through a whole range of things to say, or my coach will push me down a rabbit hole (often with a neurotypical lens on the issue) even though it’s probably not that big a deal to me. The fact you invited me to first brain dump everything that’s drawing my energy and focus at the moment onto a visual Miro board before choosing any coaching topics was huge. Getting to see everything that matters to me and then make a conscious choice about what to bring into our coaching arrangement means I can feel much more confident that we are going to have valuable conversations together. 

Lastly, the structure you offered, both in terms of how the session ran and how we then populated content for our next coaching sessions, was so soothing for my brain. I ended the session energised and I’m already excited about our next conversation because I know what we are going to be focussing on together, and what’s most important/relevant about that problem for me. 

It’s really sad that most spaces are not held in a way that makes neurodivergent people feel this way. It’s so easy to see how so many of us retreat from socialising, retreat from speaking, and retreat from getting the help we need because even just being understood is hard work and we are often left depleted from the kinds of interactions that other people find energising. So thank you for making me feel really seen and understood, reigniting my energy for the work I do and making sure I’m looking after my needs in the process. 

Ray

Micha runs Thought Patten Studio, supporting neurodivergent people through coaching and providing teams with training and facilitation to help them work better together.

This letter is part of the holding space together series. A collection of letters to and from people who are part of the Holding Space community - if you want to be part of this space you can join an upcoming cohort

On embodying change and abolition

Dear OUT team

Thank you for the incredible privilege to facilitate you all in reflecting on what makes your work possible. It is the first time I can honestly say that I’ve worked with a group who truly makes space for everyone to show up authentically. So often in spaces where there are people with lived experience, activists and academics there are inherent power dynamics in the way everyone engages with and understands each other, and it’s really hard work as a facilitator to keep levelling the playing field. But my work with you was easy. Because you have already done so much of that work.

And you’ve managed to create this equitable group dynamic while maintaining a vibrancy that so many other groups lose when they sanitise themselves in the name of belonging - because so many teams fail to understand that belonging can never truly occur if people can’t show up with their whole being. When looking through the notes from the session someone had written  “When do you feel our group is most alive?”, and for me I feel like I witnessed an aliveness in you each as individuals and in the shared energy between you all throughout the whole day.

To have held onto that aliveness after 4 years of working together on a topic like Prison Abolition is pretty huge. As someone in the group articulated in their drawing, you are battling against a huge tidal wave. You are slowly attempting to unpick a system and society that has harm and inequity threaded deep within it’s DNA - there is no denying that this is an uphill battle. The lightness and joy you manage to bring to that work is what will sustain you in this battle, and I think there are a few things you do that enable that to be true.

The first and most important thing you do is how you embody the change you seek. There is a deep acknowledgement within the group that this work isn’t just about Prisons, it’s about the entire system and culture we live in. Because of that you are all aware that every moment is an opportunity to embody a different way of being together. And while the time you invest in building trust and relationships might feel like it’s not ‘active’ or ‘campaigny’ enough, it is actually more than that. It is you demonstrating and bringing to fruition the foundations of an alternative future where punitive systems are not required. It is you going beyond just saying what needs to change, and showing everyone (yourselves included) what is possible when you centre different values and beliefs and deeply embed that in how you show up with each other. 

I knew I could experiment with how I facilitated you all because you know the power of doing things differently, and of just allowing yourself to experience what is possible when we try out different ways of relating and communicating together. Alongside this there is also a deep groundness among you all, and it feels like you have a real understanding of how to be strategic about the change you are trying to create in the word.

When you are dismantling a monolith, just randomly throwing stones at it won’t disturb the core - and yet so many of us within oppressed communities and within activism know that it’s easy to fall into doing precisely that because we are desperate. In contrast, you have demonstrated a long term commitment to each other and to this work, and it’s clear that over the years you have continued to hone your capacity to think strategically about what you are trying to do and how you are doing it rather than just having kneejerk reactions and burning yourselves out. 

I think one of the things that has made it possible for you to remain grounded and strategic in your fight for change is the rituals you implement. While you all joke about the yellow soup you enjoy each meeting together I do think there is power in that consistency. Each time you meet you can be confident that you will be nourished, and be reassured by the familiarity of it all. You also have this with your meeting structures - you know there will be space and time for you to speak to particular feelings or thoughts, you don’t have to panic about whether or not you will get a chance to be heard.  And that consistency also makes space for you to be responsive. So that when there are moments when you have to react more swiftly, you can galvanise together because you have the scaffolding you need to work from. 

Alongside being ambitious dreamers, you are also realists. As much as you welcome diverse lived experiences into your spaces, and have a million ideas for how to create change, it’s also clear that you are as individuals and a collective quite measured about what you are capable of. You can navigate this because you have a good self-awareness around the value and time you each have capacity to bring. And when someone has a passion for responding to an opportunity or challenge through a particular medium or lens - such as Sam’s map making or Ella’s flag making idea - you bring energy and encouragement and enthusiasm to that person to boost their intrinsic motivation to make something happen. 

We all need this type of capacity, awareness and encouragement when working in this sort of space - to deeply understand and utilise the value we can bring. I think you’ve fostered a real honesty among yourselves and that makes it possible for everyone to really see what they can bring to the space and the roles they can play. 

There’s so much more that I could say about the thoughtfulness and consideration you put into each other and this work, and I hope I get to learn more alongside you in the future, but to have even witnessed you for a few days has been truly uplifting for me in my work. 

Ray

This letter is part of the holding space together series. A collection of letters to and from people who are part of the Holding Space community - if you want to be part of this space you can join an upcoming cohort.

On mutuality, collective care & creative practice

Dear SJ & the Queer Musical Storytelling facilitators/researchers,

When I first started working alongside community researchers a few years ago it came from a deep motivation to challenge the often extractive and harmful nature of more traditional research. Mutuality is a practice and belief that has been core to my work for as long as I can remember - from running youth programmes that were as much about established businesses learning as it was about young people learning, to facilitating organisational change processes that are collectivised and fluid and meet people where they are at, to setting up easy ways to compensate contributors to research and co-design processes, to supporting other facilitators to enter into spaces with a humbleness that centres the needs and flow of the group. But your Queer musical story-telling workshop was my first real experience as a participant and contributor where someone else facilitated such mutuality and it was deeply profound for me both on a personal and professional level. 

From the very start it was clear that we weren’t there to just divulge our complex lived experience for you to analyse and collate. You supported us through a process where we could learn skills and exercises that would help us to process our own experiences, for ourselves, for many years to come. Getting to experience the process of songwriting, and being held through that by such a range of talented people, has given me the confidence and knowledge to repeat this for myself whenever I feel called to. And in terms of what I actually ended up writing about during the weekend you helped me to transform a decade worth of confusion and spirals into something beautiful and succinct. I’ve been through many years of therapy, but it doesn’t compare to the relief I felt at finally being able to articulate both my struggles and my joys into a simple 3 minute song. 

Not only did every single one of the facilitators demonstrate that this was an experience premised on mutuality, they also demonstrated what collective care and valuing the richness of our diversity as human beings really looks like too. Every time someone had a dietary need the organisers would silently go and see to it - Seni asked if there was decaf coffee and Surabhi returned 5 minutes later with a fresh coffee from the cafe next door, Stella was struggling with eating spicy food and SJ raced down the road to get something different. It seems small but as someone that has experienced or witnessed dietary requirements being belittled and ignored I know just how transformative this type of consideration can be. Even though SJ was a central figure in the day, it was also clear the rest of the team was supporting them and providing the scaffolding for SJ to facilitate freely. And each facilitator repeatedly invited us as participants to lean in as far as we could, but not in a way that would harm us mentally or physically. There was a constant reiteration of people’s own boundaries - and as an autistic person that often gets overwhelmed and forgets my own needs it was so helpful to be reminded to just take a minute to regulate. But there was also a constant reiteration of people’s power and capacity too - and the group gently pushed me beyond my own limitations. 

When it comes to how this experience will shape me professionally it is a reminder of all the small things we can do as a facilitator to challenge the status quo and to provide people with healing experiences. It has continued to build my confidence in the power and legitimacy of creative practices even when, or especially when, exploring expansive and complex topics. And it is also a reminder of why facilitators need to seek out opportunities to be facilitated, and why researchers need to seek out opportunities to be participants/contributors. Being a participant rather than a facilitator gives me an opportunity to connect with the art of facilitation more viscerally, to experience the power of good facilitation, and understand more deeply the responsibility of the role we are playing for others when someone plays that role for us. When I experience myself as a participant, I am reminded of all the messy nuance people bring to the space and what it feels like to have to bring that with vulnerability and uncertainty around how the day will unfold.

Lastly, aside from the way you facilitated and held space, I am also just deeply grateful that you are creating spaces where these conversations can be had and that queer experiences and stories can influence and shape systems and legislation. The weekend produced so many layers of value and I hope that this letter goes a small way to letting you know what powerful and important work you are all doing. 

Ray

You can keep in the loop about the Queer love, life and the law project here.

This is part of a series of letters in response to questions, prompts or conversations with the Holding Space community. If you want to take part in the Holding Space programme you can sign up here.