A conversation with Sandra Molinari. Workplace Violence Prevention Specialist @ Control Risks
“We live in such a polarized world right now, at least in the US, and I’m not going to get into that, but I think it is important that we be able to hear each other, really hear each other. Not necessarily agree, but how do we start to move a little bit closer to each other? And probably that’s going to have to be through complicated, messy conversations and real listening.”
In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, Douglas welcomes Sandra Molinari, a workplace violence prevention specialist, to discuss her journey in facilitation and the importance of creating inclusive and safe spaces. Sandra shares her experiences working with diverse groups and the need to be mindful of cultural blind spots. They also discuss the significance of understanding participants’ emotional states and the planning phase in shaping effective facilitation. Sandra emphasizes the importance of involving participants in the design process and the challenge of balancing structure and responsiveness. They conclude by highlighting the importance of listening, healthy disagreement, and the value of facilitation skills in creating effective and inclusive spaces.
Show Highlights
[00:01:18] Sandra Molinari’s start in the work
[00:05:47] Cultural differences in teaching and facilitating
[00:10:16] The importance of facilitation in team cohesion
[00:20:29] The benefits of facilitation
[00:22:23] Including the group in the design of training programs
[00:40:52] The importance of healthy disagreements
[00:43:13] The power of facilitation in fostering understanding
Links | Resources
Sandra on Linkedin
About the Guest
A native of San Francisco, Sandra Molinari has called Austin, TX home since 1998. Following an extended and rich tenure with the SAFE Alliance heading domestic and sexual violence education and prevention programs, Sandra has recently made a transition to the tech sector. She currently leans on her facilitation skills to lead collaborative workplace violence prevention efforts for Control Risks, embedded at Meta. Sandra is bi-cultural (French/American), trilingual, and has lived in Latin America and Europe. When she’s not working, she loves to gather with friends to enjoy great food and laughter, take dance classes and plan her next trip abroad.
About Voltage Control
Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.
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Full Transcript
Douglas:
Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of facilitation and transformative leadership. Some leaders exert tight control and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly transformative experience. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us live for a session sometime, you can join our facilitation lab. It’s a free event to meet facilitators and explore new techniques so you can apply the things you learn in the podcast in real time with other facilitators. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. You can also learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program at voltagecontrol.com. Today I’m with Sandra Molinari at Control Risks, where she is a workplace violence prevention specialist, having recently transitioned from the SAFE Alliance after 20 years. Welcome to the show, Sandra.
Sandra Molinari:
Great To be here. Douglas, I’m so excited to have this conversation with you today.
Douglas:
Me as well. So, per usual, I’d love to hear about how you got your start in this work.
Sandra Molinari:
That’s a great question. It’s interesting to try to trace it back. I think I would say I got it through teaching slash educating in nonprofits. Many moons ago I was a parent educator for a wonderful organization called AVANCE, which works with families and does lots of different classes to support parents. And I was doing a parenting class and that was the first time I was leading groups, which was really fun and interesting considering I was not a parent and it was in Spanish, but we had wonderful conversations and that led me into wanting to do more of this kind of teaching, training, skill building type of efforts.
And then I moved into SAFE Alliance at the time was called SafePlace, and I began as a life skills trainer. So, at that point I was a trainer slash group facilitator because really what we were doing was helping people who’ve experienced domestic violence to build life skills, if you will, to become a little bit more independent and empowered and confident in their lives so they could move forward, ideally a little bit independently so they wouldn’t have to depend on a partner and perhaps fall into another unhealthy relationship.
So, I did that for several years and that really taught me a lot, because it taught me a lot culturally about how different people navigate the world in different cultures. I was doing a group in English, a group in Spanish, so just lots of different cultures and life experiences were coming through that. And so I had to fine tune how I was doing that in order to be responsive to the groups. That led to training, actual training providers in the community who were providing services for people who might also be experiencing violence and abuse.
It led to community education efforts and then ultimately to working with workplaces and training groups in workplaces, training and facilitating conversations, I would say around how do we create safe, respectful workplaces that are less likely to foster sexual harassment, or how do we also help identify sexual harassment or the spectrum of sexual harassment and address it before it harms more people. So, within that tenure that our paths crossed through the SAFE Alliance, and then I started the certification program and learned some new things there. It’s really been a journey. It’s been very interesting and insightful.
Douglas:
It always is a journey and there’s so much there I want to come back to, and maybe we’ll just go all the way back to the beginning and start there. You mentioned being a parent educator in this role and working with, it sounded like educating parents, and I was curious, was this your first role in education working with adult learning?
Sandra Molinari:
It absolutely was. It absolutely was. This was after graduate school, which had nothing to do with education. I was studying international relations, and after having lived in Central America for a few years where I did teach English, I mean we could count that obviously as education. I was teaching English to Spanish speakers in El Salvador, and that’s where I had the Spanish skills to work with parents in Spanish here and doing parent education. But that was pretty much the start, and I got a lot of training in early child development, but very little training around how to facilitate or how to teach adult learners. I think I picked that up along the way because I was curious and I was thinking, what’s going to be effective?
Douglas:
Yeah, that’s interesting. What was one of your first aha moments when you were shifting from working with kids, teaching them English and then shifting into this adult learning space and helping them navigate the world of parentry?
Sandra Molinari:
Well, actually I was teaching adults English. When I was in El Salvador I was teaching adults English.
Douglas:
Oh, you were teaching them English and the parent?
Sandra Molinari:
Yes.
Douglas:
Oh, gotcha.
Sandra Molinari:
And when I was in Austin is when I was teaching parents around parenting skills, supporting them around parenting skills. But no, it was adults and El Salvador, professionals mostly.
Douglas:
So, yeah. What were some of the differences then between working with adults around language and then moving into parenting skills? And also I would imagine there’s some differences between working in the commercial sector where these are business related students versus now you’re working with parents. There’s probably quite a bit of differences. What were some of the things you were noticing as you were making that shift?
Sandra Molinari:
There are absolutely differences between the groups. The English teaching I was doing in Central America was based on a very sort of strict curriculum that was effective at teaching people phrases and grammar in a very short span of time. And so we were following curriculum that were drills that would be repeated. So, there was little room to be flexible and move outside of those boundaries. So, that was one thing. And the adults reacted fairly well to that. Again, these were professionals that were mostly in corporate sectors in El Salvador, so they were used to having a certain way of doing things.
And then when I shifted to the parent education, of course then it’s not so black and white. It’s not a grammar question or a spelling question. It’s not a right and a wrong way to do things exactly. And especially culturally, because I was seeing lots of differences between the English-speaking group I was working with in the Spanish-speaking group around notions of what is appropriate in parenting, which is very, very different because for the Spanish-speaking folks who are mostly from Mexico and Central America, they were having to navigate a system that has very different cultural norms around what’s appropriate with children.
And it took me a while to realize that and think, hold off, wait a minute. We do have to help them navigate the system here and know what’s allowed and what child protective services would consider neglect or abuse, but we also need to honor how they are parenting, so how do you strike that balance? And so that allowed for a lot more conversation, a lot more flexibility. And it wasn’t so much teaching as navigating facilitating conversations, which conversations with, of course, some skill building in the background. I mean we were talking about very clear child development guidelines of course. So, it was really different.
Douglas:
Yeah, that’s really fascinating. And this multicultural notion of supporting and being with groups and noticing came up also when you were talking about navigating the world, even with these folks that came to you at SAFE helping them build life skills and build with confidence, and they would have these needs that were cultural needs and how to think about approaching the world. And it’s not all that different from people that come into the workplace understanding how folks are showing up and how do we best support them. I’m curious if you’ve noticed this in your work now with Control Risks. How is this ability to notice these cultural differences? They may not be as extreme as some of the examples that you had with the parenting, but how is it showing up now in the workspace for you?
Sandra Molinari:
Those cultural differences are still showing up because the workplace that I’m in is a very culturally diverse workplace. I work at a downtown office, but we have dispersed teams all over the world. So, I do have colleagues that are on four continents, but even my team, which is mostly in the US, within the team of about 12 people is extremely, extremely diverse culturally by age, gender, et cetera. And so I’m realizing that as I’m going into help support, for example, team building activities, which we’ve wanted to do quite a bit of this year because it’s been a challenging time in the workplace, there have been layoffs and restructures and all sorts of things. We’ve been trying to really have some cohesion on the team. And so I offered to bring in some facilitation in order to do exercises, skill building, things like that. I have other colleagues who have joined me in doing that because they have some of that background.
My colleague and I who are leading the facilitation have really rich conversations around what kinds of questions do we ask if we’re doing icebreakers or how do we approach the facilitation, what do we want to take into account considering how diverse our group is, what are our blind spots? He and I demographically are not so different. And so what are our blind spots? Who else can we bring into this facilitation team or the prep team to consider how we frame some of the questions where we go with the exercises? And that’s interesting because that’s something that I learned very early on at SAFE. Things that were such blind spots for me at the time, I was not as culturally aware as I thought I was at the time. I remember doing financial literacy with the women in my life skills group at SAFE and just bringing up examples that were showing my class privilege and examples that would not have resonated with them at all.
And so I bring that up because these are things that now I think of, and I probably still have a lot of blind spots, but now I think of when I’m approaching whatever group, who’s the group, what are the assumptions I’m making, which could also be wrong, but I need to start with some assumptions based on what I know about the group and then how do I work, ideally not alone, but with somebody else or somebody’s else, several of us, to create a space that is as inclusive as possible where everybody does feel like they have a voice. And that can get down to simple little things like if you’re doing an icebreaker, what are you watching these days on TV? Is it, what are you reading? Are you assuming that everybody reads? Just all of these things. And so I feel like I’m rambling. All of this to say that all of those experiences over the years have led me to really approach groups differently and to realize that I may be missing things and lean on others to have collaborative efforts that might be more effective.
Douglas:
It’s very important. And digging a little deeper there into your example around what are you reading or what TV shows are you watching? Not only is it about knowing what are the behaviors and norms or how people conduct themselves when they’re not in this meeting together and being informed about that so that we can better align with them and not make them feel outcast just because they don’t fit into the box of the question that we asked or the framing. There’s also how are they emotionally or mentally walking into the space, because they might read, but what if they’re going through something super traumatic right now that doesn’t allow them to read? That’s going to be triggering, right?
I don’t have time to read. Are you kidding me? This is going on. That might be a trite example, but being mindful of the trauma people might have in the moment and being aware and acknowledge it. We might not have to bring it up, but just holding that and understanding that and being attuned to it when we’re thinking about these things. I assume you have countless experience with that, so I’d be curious if you have any experiences you can share any thoughts around how are you shaping these invitations or these icebreakers in ways that can be acknowledged, the emotions, not only the cultural background, but the emotion people might be bringing in the space?
Sandra Molinari:
That’s a great question. I think it starts with the planning phase. So, if we’re going to do something as simple as an opener or an icebreaker, this is something that I’ve struggled with and talked with my co-facilitator and my manager about. So, ideally we want to have everybody participate in something light like an icebreaker. Again, we’re already assuming that an icebreaker is light depending on the question that we ask. And then if the goal is to get to know each other a little bit better because our team has evolved over the last year, how do you balance wanting people to participate in something that you hope is light and not too emotionally challenging so that they don’t have to expose too much of themselves if they are going through a hard time? How do you balance that with knowing that some people are choosing, for example, seem to be sitting back?
Some people may not be on camera. Some people you barely hear their voice and so I always struggle with is that simply a person who’s shy? Is that part of their personality? Is this asking a lot of them, which it could be to even step forward and say something in a group where they don’t really know everybody or is that person currently dealing with something? And then is it fair to ask everybody to come to the table for this kind of group building activity? So, some of the things that we’ve done is we’ve tried to make an open invitation that still is optional. So, we’re proposing this activity. We have some ideas. Would anybody like to join us in the planning? If you have any ideas, we’ve already extended an invitation. Do you want to join in and propose some questions? That usually will get one or two people interested.
Then in the invitation that goes out, we’re proposing an activity on Mural, for example. You can be anonymous, it’s really easy to use. We’re going to do a soft start in case you haven’t used Mural before, and this is optional, this is invitational. Here are the benefits of doing this activity as we get to know each other, but it’s low pressure, but join as you would like. That seems to have worked. Generally if we’re doing something like on Mural, then it seems that people can really sit back, not be on camera if they don’t want to be, have an anonymous contribution, and it still gives us that beautiful Mural board. We did that with silly things like movies, are you a Game of Thrones fan or Star Wars? And then that generates some conversation. So, it’s really trying to always balance all of these things.
But my nature, having facilitated trainings in groups for so many years, I want to see people, and I have been a little bit frustrated since the beginning of COVID that we’re on camera, which is frustrating. Excuse me, we’re on Zoom or virtual platforms, which is frustrating to begin with. But then when we’re trying to lead a facilitation and people are sometimes not on camera and sometimes not even chiming in the chat, then that makes it really difficult. But again, I have learned in large part through my colleagues at SAFE who were very trauma-informed that sometimes you just can’t ask people to do that. That’s just too much to ask of them. And so now I understand that. Still leaves me a little frustrated.
Douglas:
Yeah, there’s lots of layers there that I’m hearing. It reminds me of a story of a facilitator told me once about one of their participants was just their head down. Just seemed totally disengaged. And so had a discussion with them afterwards and it’s like, “Oh, I had a migraine.” And it’s like, wow, they cared so deeply about, I mean, talk about the level of engagement that you have to have to stay in the session with a migraine. So, they were engaging as much as they could, but as a facilitator you’re probably thinking it’s easy to jump into this like, oh, they just don’t want to be here. I heard some advice once, always assume positive intent.
Sandra Molinari:
Absolutely. I love that and I’ve learned that over the years also, always assume positive intent. Again, is that as easy to do as it’s to say? Not always, but you’re absolutely right. And that’s a wonderful example, and I’ve seen numerous examples on Zoom calls trainings that we were doing where three quarters of the group is off camera, but the chat is going is really, really well, and people who are off camera actually on chat. And so there is a lot of chatter going on. And so I had to realize, no, there are different ways to engage even in video calls, there are many different ways to engage and again, assume good intent, you never know.
Douglas:
The other thing that jumped out to me was this, you were talking about sharing the benefits of doing this activity or even doing the work. And I think that’s so key, and as much as we can do that in the invitation upfront and the scene setter when people arrive, just reminding people why we’re even asking them to show up in this strange way, because oftentimes we’re asking people to step into a new way of being like, come into this imaginary world with me and behave in a brand new way. And if people don’t understand why, if they don’t understand the benefits, that can often create some distrust to begin with. And if they’re already feeling a bit weary or a bit untrustworthy, then it’s really difficult to pull them in. So, I love that you mentioned sharing the benefits.
Sandra Molinari:
Yes, because sometimes those benefits seem obvious to us as facilitators and maybe some of the people in the group are able to see those benefits immediately, but others are just seeing, I’m being asked to do this other thing, like you said, this new thing, and why do I keep being asked to do these things? Zoom fatigue is a real thing. I don’t want to share with these people. I don’t know these people. So, as much as we can show why this is going to be helpful to the team and to our work and ultimately to that person. The person might say, “Well, I’m tired and I’m having a hard time and I don’t really care about the team right now.” They might not say it, but they might think it. So, how could this potentially be beneficial to them? And then people will do what they want with that information. But you’re right, we can’t just offer something up without explaining the why of the gathering.
Douglas:
I also really am a big fan of bringing people into the design process early, and that was something you mentioned. How do we broaden the group of somebodies that you’re bringing in? And because you talked about blind spots, and so of course the more folks that are involved, the more that the blind spots are diminished. And then also we’re including those people in the why. They’re starting to understand the benefits because they’re in some of the dialogue. And so yeah, this upfront clarity that we can get to when we bring more folks into the design process, really, really cool. Any other examples of how that’s shown up in your work where you’re doing … because you mentioned some community facilitated work, just curious if you’re doing much in the way of group design or bringing folks in early before the actual sessions where do they convene?
Sandra Molinari:
I’m not doing as much of that now. So, I think the clearest example of that was the sexual harassment prevention training slash groups that I was doing at SAFE where it took us some time, lots of iterations of building this training to realize we really could bring the client, if you will, the employer representatives into some of this design process. In other words, not only having a customization call, which we were starting out by having customization calls explaining the program, yes, this is what you’re interested in. Great, let’s have a customization call. Tell us about your needs. Well, why are you bringing us in, et cetera. But we realized over time that that was helpful, but we were still not always addressing the needs in the room because the people having the customization calls were leadership and they were not necessarily always in conversation with the people most impacted on the ground by sexual harassment or inappropriate behaviors in the workplace, et cetera, et cetera.
So, because a lot of employers, they just didn’t have the ability to give us time with employees in advance, we said, okay, we understand that, we would have an agenda going in after doing the customization calls and all, but we would lay out this is a tentative agenda. We would lay that out for the group and ask them which of these areas are most important? Is there something else that you would like to discuss today? Give them some time to think about it and then offer them an opportunity to give feedback. They could always give us feedback or input directly, but we used anonymous tools so they could give us that input in real time around what was important to them. And we realized that that was even more effective at really, really honing into what the group felt they needed so that they felt like they owned the training.
This is going to be meaningful to us as opposed to why are we coming into a two-hour sexual harassment training? What’s going on? It’s not the most fun thing to do for most people. By the time they left after a couple hours, most of the groups said, “Wow, that was so interesting. I never thought of things that way.” And so I think that the fact once we pivoted a little bit that way to really include the group in some of the design, that was even more effective and helpful. And that was a challenge for me because as somebody who really likes structure and likes a certain agenda and I like to know where I’m going with things, I’ve always felt like I was responsive to the group, but I still had an agenda. So, it was balancing those two elements and I’ve learned over time through lots of discomfort also that it isn’t more important, I think, to be responsive to the group, still keep your agenda in mind, but if the group is going right, you can’t keep going left.
You have to spend time with that group where they are. There are ways of bringing them a little bit back to what you had planned if you feel that’s necessary, but sometimes that’s not necessary. Ultimately, it’s what the group is identifying that is important, especially for, I’m talking here about trainings that are a little bit more gray in the sense that it’s not a right or wrong. These were conversations around building safe, respectful workplaces.
And so there’s a lot of messiness in those conversations. There’s not a very specific skill we needed people to walk away with. There were certain sets of guidelines they needed to walk away with, so we made sure that we hit those points towards the end of the training or whenever we could, but everything else needed to be people sharing, people feeling safe enough to share, which is we can only create so much safety. People will decide if they feel it’s safe, but building a little bit of trust with the group so that they can share, open up, and then we can be there. And we were approaching it from a very trauma-informed lens as well so that we can really, really ensure that the group walks away as much as possible with what they needed to hear and say in some cases.
Douglas:
Yeah, it’s interesting you mentioned a couple of times this idea of that when you’re in a space where there is no right or wrong answer in the material you’re covering and the content in the direction, and I think that’s the case for so much of life, but our education system is kind of built around standardized tests and the curriculum that has to be taught to you. And I think the more and more that things are automated, the better AI gets. We’re going to move further and further away from the right or wrong answer, because these mechanistic elements in society and in life we won’t really have to mess with. We will be engaging more critical thinking and more exploratory pursuits together. And I think that this element you’re talking about will become more prominent. We’ll have to have more of these amorphous conversations.
Sandra Molinari:
Yes, we’ll have to have more of these amorphous conversations, and that’s going to be myself included, absolutely are going to have to start to lean into that discomfort of being in the messiness because life is messy. People are messy. We live in such a polarized world right now, at least in the US and I am not going to get into that, but I think it is important that we be able to hear each other, really hear each other, not necessarily agree, but how do we start to move a little bit closer to each other? And probably that’s going to have to be through complicated, messy conversations and real listening. And part of that, something else that I’ve learned through doing community organizing work around social justice is that we need to be able to not only listen, but to feel, to be in our bodies. When things are coming at us verbally, emotionally, that are uncomfortable or seem hurtful we need to be in our bodies and be able to feel in order to not react or overreact. And that takes a lot of practice.
And if we really want to hear each other, there’s no other way of doing it, in my opinion, than really taking things in, taking a breath. You and I were talking before the show, about taking a pause, taking a pause before we react. So, I might be going off slightly in a different direction, but I think that’s really important to us as facilitators as well. We talk about the pause. I’ve learned to be very comfortable with silence, and I’ll tell my groups when I pose a question and there’s a huge silence, “I have to tell you, I’m going to be really comfortable with the silence.”
So, it could be a few seconds and people are looking around and then I break it and people will take a deep gasp, but that pause is important because otherwise we talk over each other. Some of us who are internal processors don’t have time to think before we can really process something and then be able to express ourselves. And so yes, so I think there’s going to be a lot more, we are going to need that skill also in the future, not just facilitators, but I think as a society we’re going to have to be able to be less reactive. I don’t know how hopeful I am about that.
Douglas:
I’ll offer a little bit of advice, because this is, I also like structure and form, and this is something I learned fairly early on because as a musician I got into improvisational music and the thing I’ve found about improvisational music is that it was helpful to find some kind of scaffold, some sort of concept or some sort of notion or idea to hang the amorphousness onto. And so we talked a little bit about purpose and benefit earlier. I said when we go into that messiness, our bravery comes from our knowledge of what we’re attempting to do together and the scaffolding, the shape of what we want to navigate through, but how we move through that jungle gym together can take to any shape we want, but it’s all there to help us from falling. And I think that’s a helpful frame. It’s nice to have a full agenda and everything’s all buttoned up and just go through it, but it’s rarely the case that we can do that.
Sandra Molinari:
The scaffolding is the key, the scaffolding and the purpose. So, the scaffolding is built with the purpose in mind, so being really clear on what is the purpose. Is it skill building? Is it generating rich conversations around a certain theme and being able to hold space with one another? Those are two very different things. We might still be able to hold space with each other and do skill building, but there are very different types. Is this a training? Is this process facilitation? What is it? So, having a scaffolding and being very clear from the beginning on what the purpose is. And as you and I have been saying, make sure that the group or audience or group participants are clear on what the purpose is as well, whether or not they have the luxury of informing that purpose, but being really clear what this is, what the purpose for today or the general purpose for today, and this is what we would like to get to in our time here together.
Douglas:
The other thing too, I mean it’s important to acknowledge the fact that if we get clear on that, we know it’s more easy to identify what we’re not going to do, and so we start veering into that territory. It’s much easier as a facilitator to move us back onto the path. And because we’ve created an agreement upfront, hey, we’re here for skill building, and so if we want to acknowledge that need, then we need to shift this conversation back on the skill building. And I think that so often teams, when they’re gathering just in typical normal gatherings, it’s easy for people to get different notions in their head or like, oh, this is why we’re here for this meeting, or this is what we’re trying to do today. And when folks aren’t aligned, that creates so much tension because everyone’s pushing on different vectors, if you will, and we’re not trying to get into this unified path.
Even if we recognize that, just stopping and asking ourselves, hey, let’s get clear on why we’re here. Let’s get clear on, hey, why are we pushing in different directions? It’s okay. It’s not anyone’s fault that we’re all pushing, but what’s important right here in this moment as a group? And that leads to another thing that I noticed you were talking about, which is just making sure that everyone’s comfortable with the cross-cultural elements and whatnot. So, bringing people in beforehand is good, but also having discussions after hand is good too. Because if we don’t debrief or if we don’t get feedback or reflect on what happened, we can’t improve, we can’t get better, and we can debrief in the moment, just like I was sharing in that example, if we’re noticing things are getting off track, we can actually say, okay, what I’m noticing is, and then just invite some discussion with folks to say, hey, this is happening.
So, I don’t know, maybe even with the icebreaker example, if we have a feeling that it’s causing some tension, actually hitting the pause button and saying, “Hey, I’m noticing this might not have landed with everyone, let’s just talk about that,” and actually stepping into that. I think that creates more trust and more safety because I’m willing to admit a fault as a facilitator. So, I’m just curious to hear some of your thoughts around debrief and even live debrief in the moment if we hadn’t planned it.
Sandra Molinari:
I have learned to do that, again, more in recent years doing the live debrief in the moment, checking in. Again, that was difficult for me to pivot to as somebody who struggles with perfectionism and having everything done in the box for so many years and on time. But I have again seen the benefit and I absolutely a hundred percent agree with you that admitting our imperfections as facilitators is extremely important, because showing that we are vulnerable invites people to be more open. It does help build trust, and part of that is some insight into what we’re doing. It’s what you were saying. So, I’m noticing that, whatever it is, that this icebreaker, this was the intention and I’m noticing that we’re going in this direction, or I’m noticing that there is some tension here. I’m wondering, and maybe pose a question there, or if it seems like it’s God forbid, harmful, that people are really not reacting well, then maybe it’s a time to offer something and even possibly apologize.
I’m sorry, I hadn’t considered that this could go in this direction. I hope no harm has been caused, and I think we would now pivot to a different direction. May I offer this up? Then see if the group agrees with something else. Something that we were brought to do very often in our work at SAFE, whether it was a sexual harassment prevention workshop or other, it was sometimes have to check in with somebody afterwards, which I know happens in lots of other types of groups also, but if it seems like somebody is not doing well or I feel like I may have caused harm or I may have inadvertently done that, I will check in with the person afterwards.
We have to be very mindful of not putting somebody on the spot. We have to be mindful of their confidentiality and privacy, but I think that’s important too, because sometimes in the work that I did for so many years, it opened up a whole other can of worms also, and sometimes that person needed to talk, which was fine by me, and we would offer that up also. That’s not always the case for all facilitators. If somebody is not equipped or comfortable having deep conversations about somebody bringing up some kind of trauma that’s a little bit more complex, and then it’s helpful for the facilitator to be able to refer that person to someone they can’t talk to if it’s a little complex.
Douglas:
All really great points. I think it’s an important nuance for folks to keep in mind is if we are inviting the group into on the spot reflection, debrief, ideally it’s not about calling out a single individual, it’s more the energy in the room and how the whole room is feeling about it, and certainly if it is one individual, one thing I’ve found sometimes that can be helpful is even just calling a break, but not making a big scene about it. Just saying, “Hey, I think it might be a good time for us to take a break and the spirit of the whole group benefiting from having a break.” And then that might be a moment to even have a sidebar with someone if they’re needing some special attention. That way it’s not called out and you can check in with them, really understand where they’re at and if it even makes sense to continue.
Sandra Molinari:
Absolutely. Again, it comes back to that flexibility, and I think it’s very easy to call a break without drawing too much attention. We’ve been covering all of these things. I’m sensing the energy in the room, people probably getting antsy or whatever, however you want to frame it. Everybody okay with a break, who’s not okay with the break? I agree. I agree. That’s good to pause. It’s kind of that timeout, right? You maybe not call it that, but it is a timeout for the group to [inaudible].
Douglas:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s been fantastic chatting with you about all of this work and spend a lot of time talking about cultural considerations as we think about groups that are coming together maybe for the first time or that aren’t used to working with these cross-cultural groups and the norms aren’t super established, or they’re folks that we have our blind spots, whether they’re blind spots amongst the groups or blind spots from the facilitator to the group, and also even trauma-informed facilitation, just understanding how we’re being mindful of what’s emerging for the groups and being considerate of that stuff. If you were to think about a future where there was more of this inconsideration, you briefly touched on this when you mentioned how polarized things have gotten in recent years and how good it would be if we all could come together more and understand and listen to each other. So, imagine that there’s more of that. Where does this take us into the future? What does it make possible?
Sandra Molinari:
Oh, wow. If we could actually listen to each other without reacting and calling each other names or just walking out of the room, I think it makes everything possible. I think, I mean, it makes human relationships so much richer. It allows families to talk to each other again. So many families have been broken up over lots of things over a number of years now. It allows people in leadership, people in government, our democracy to move forward in a healthier way if we can listen and talk to each other and disagree in healthy ways, because nobody’s ever going to agree completely. It allows us to be able to really work together and move forward with whatever it is that we want to move forward with. It involves some compromise, and I feel like we’ve just, that might be a bad word in government, but again, without just sticking to government, I’m thinking it’s an overall thing.
I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve had the extreme privilege to travel a lot around the world to many, many different countries and different regions, and something that dawned on me one day when I was walking around in the Sa Pa region of northern Vietnam and chatting with our tour guide, who is an indigenous woman there who learned several languages, western languages in order to be able to give tour guides. This woman couldn’t read or write. She learned that.
And so she would tell us stories about the groups there, and I realized I’m waiting in the middle of nowhere. It’s so remote, and what she’s telling me sounds exactly like, what the families want for their children, what people want in life, sounds exactly like what we want in life. Take away a few material things that are different, and the same thing that people were telling me they wanted in Guatemala or El Salvador or Cuba. We’re all actually not that different. Yes, there are huge cultural differences, but ultimately we want to be loved. We want our families to be healthy. We want to see our children grow and be healthy. Obviously, we want the basic needs, and I don’t know how we move forward and solve so many of our problems globally if we can’t actually listen and talk to each other. Obviously, I’m very passionate about this.
This is the type of thing that keeps me up at night because I feel like this is what’s going to prevent us from doing so much that we need to do for future generations if we can’t even agree on anything or any facts. And so as facilitators, I think we have a golden opportunity in a very small space to add our little drop to the bucket, to add our piece in helping people start to listen to each other and see that it’s okay. It’s actually all right. The sky is not going to fall, and we can hold that space for people, and if they see that, they might want to try it elsewhere. That’s the way I look at it.
Douglas:
That’s lovely, and it reminds me of how Maslow’s hierarchy is such a great model for thinking about leadership and if we really just get back to the basics of what we all want and need in order to thrive and flourish. So, that brings us to the end today. I want to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.
Sandra Molinari:
Yes, my final thought, let’s see. I would say facilitation is a wonderful, wonderful set of tools, and whether you’re new to facilitation or if you’ve been doing this for a number of years, just know that the world of facilitation is so, so rich, and there’s always something to learn. There are always new insights. Doing the facilitation certification program was wonderful because I got to meet so many people in different industries using facilitation skills in completely, completely different settings that I had never even considered. And so it just opens up a range of possibilities that we can apply that to, and it is sorely, sorely needed. I see that in the workplaces that I’ve been in where meetings are still awful. Oftentimes, trainings can sometimes be awful because there’s just not the skills. It’s not for lack of good intention. It’s just people don’t necessarily have those skills, and so these gatherings aren’t as effective, and we can’t do that piece without meeting each other and listening to each other and moving things in the direction that we want to move them in while keeping everybody feeling safe and heard, listened to.
Douglas:
Awesome. Sandra, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you today and I look forward to seeing you again sometime soon.
Sandra Molinari:
Thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed the conversation, Douglas, really appreciate you having me on.
Douglas:
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Facilitation Lab. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration. Voltagecontrol.com.
