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