Chapter Twelve
Diagnosing and Intervening on Emotions—The Group's and Yours
In this chapter, I explain how to deal with emotions arising in groups, mostly difficult emotions. I begin by describing how people generate emotions and how they express them. Next, we consider how emotional discussion in groups can trigger your emotions and affect your ability to facilitate, as well as how you can intervene to help people express their emotions effectively. The chapter ends with a description of how you can respond when group members get angry at you and how you can use this as an opportunity for learning—for the group and you.
The Challenge
Part of serving in your facilitative role includes helping the group address difficult, conflict-ridden problems. In working on these problems, group members may experience a variety of emotions, including anger, fear, surprise, and sadness. Emotion refers to a feeling and the distinctive thoughts associated with it, along with the psychological and biological states that, all together, predispose a person to act.1 Your challenge is to help group members identify their emotions and the source, and express them in a way that contributes to—rather than detracts from—group effectiveness.
This is difficult. Like the groups you're trying to help, many of the facilitators and consultants I teach or coach find it hard to deal with an emotional situation. This makes sense if you consider that most people employ a unilateral control mindset when they feel psychological threat or embarrassment. Faced with a group that's becoming emotional, you may have a similar reaction. You may fear that if the group gets out of control, you won't know how to help it. You may be overwhelmed by your own feelings and not able to think clearly. Part of the challenge of dealing with group members' emotions is dealing with your own. I address this challenge later in the chapter.
The ability to deal with emotions is what Daniel Goleman calls emotional intelligence.2 Drawing on the research of Peter Salovey and John Mayer, who coined the term emotional intelligence, Goleman describes emotional intelligence as the ability to be aware of and manage your emotions, to use your emotions in motivating yourself to achieve goals, to have empathy for others, and to effectively deal with emotions in your relationships with others.3
Fortunately, people are increasingly coming to value emotional intelligence in the workplace. Organizational leaders are realizing that if a group doesn't deal with emotion productively, it negatively affects the group's performance, the ability to work together in the future, and individuals' professional and personal development. You can help group members shift from being afraid of dealing with their emotions to helping them use emotions to improve the quality of their work and their relationships.
Before you consider how people generate emotions and how to intervene, it's worth repeating an earlier point: Group facilitation is not therapy. The purpose of dealing with emotions that arise in facilitation, consulting, coaching, or training is to help the group become more effective at its work, not to change people's personalities or to focus on emotions for their own sake. To be appropriate, your interventions on members' emotional behavior must relate to some element of team effectiveness.
How People Generate Emotions
Understanding how you and group members generate and deal with emotions can help you work effectively. Here I present a very simplified version, drawing on recent research.
Converting Sight and Sound into Feeling and Thinking
How our brain converts what we see and hear into what we feel, think, and decide to do is an unsettled area of research. Researchers used to posit a dichotomous model in which different parts of the brain were responsible for emotion and cognition—feeling and thinking. In this model, the parts of the brain responsible for emotion reacted quickly and without precision, while the parts of the brain responsible for thinking reacted more slowly and with more nuance. For the emotion of fear, the amygdala, two almond-shaped parts of the subcortical brain, played the central role in the initial response; the prefrontal cortex, responsible for higher-order thinking, played a central role in the later response. Drawing on this research, Daniel Goleman introduced the term amygdala highjack, in which the initial amygdala response to perceived threat leads all of us at times to be less emotionally intelligent than we could be.4
Recent research calls into question this simple dichotomy between emotion and cognition being processed in different and discrete parts of the brain. It suggests that no brain region is dedicated to any single emotion; many different brain areas can produce the same emotional result; and emotions like fear and anger are constructed by multipurpose brain networks that work together. Regions like the amygdala are important to emotion but are neither necessary nor sufficient for it.5 Although how we generate emotion is still being explored, there's no question that we often manage our emotions poorly. So, we are still faced with the same challenge: integrating our thoughts and feelings to increase our effectiveness with others.
Factors That Contribute to Generating Emotion
There are a variety of factors that can, in a group meeting, lead you or a group member to become emotional and respond in a unilaterally controlling way. Knowing what factors contribute to emotion helps you respond appropriately and, when possible, prepare yourself internally.
The Content of the Subject Being Discussed
Certain subjects are likely to be emotionally hot topics because they often evoke feelings of fear, anger, shame, or guilt; consider a performance appraisal, an organizational restructuring or layoff, a merger, violence, or sexual harassment in the workplace.
The Nature of Your Relationship with the Group
Even if you've clarified what the group can reasonably expect from you, it may still have unrealistic expectations of how you can help the group. Combine this with the fact that you aren't solving the problems for the group or giving it expert technical advice on how to do so, and this can cause group members to feel ambivalent about you. On one hand, they may very much want and need your help; on the other, they may feel disappointed that you don't solve the problems they need solved.
The Depth of Your Intervention
Deep interventions, such as mindset interventions, ask people to reveal information about themselves—their assumptions, values, opinions, and feelings—that is quite private. By revealing the information, they risk making themselves vulnerable. A member may share the fact that his ineffective behavior with a boss is based on his belief that the boss can't be trusted. Or, he may reveal that his ineffective behavior results from believing that another member isn't competent to do the job. Depending on what the member reveals, he or she may fear loss of support from peers, retaliation by a more powerful member, or loss of face. Consequently, the person can feel threatened by and react emotionally to interventions that ask for such information to be revealed.
Experiences That Trigger Past Emotional Responses
An individual's past experience triggers current emotional response. If people perceive the current situation as similar to a past situation in which their emotions were triggered, their emotions can be triggered again.
Cultural Diversity
People of different cultures, races, or genders can make divergent meaning out of the same event and have a range of emotional responses. For example, some Asian cultures place a high priority on “saving face.” In a conversation in which group members are not saving face, an Asian member may respond more emotionally than a member from the United States, if each responds in a way stereotypical of his or her culture.
Our Story about Ourselves
All of us have constructed a story about who we are and are supposed to be. When we are too attached to our story and don't live up to it, it can lead us to feel anxious, angry, or sad. When I started consulting, I believed that I should be as competent as a seasoned consultant. I was anxious anticipating that I wouldn't intervene effectively with my clients. When I made a mistake with a client, I would dwell on it, which distracted me and made me less effective.
How Groups Express Emotions
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined the challenge of dealing with emotions this way: “Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—this is not easy.” Your challenge is to help group members identify, express, and discuss their emotions to increase rather than decrease the group's effectiveness.
People express their emotions in two ways: directly or indirectly. In the former case, they describe what they are feeling: “I am really angry at you,” or “I fear that someone will get back at me if I'm honest.”
People express their emotions indirectly in two ways: verbally or nonverbally. Indirect verbal expression can take many forms, including raising or lowering the voice, immediately changing an opinion when pressured, and verbally attacking someone or denying that person's actions. Nonverbal examples include glaring at or looking away from other group members, slouching in or perching on a chair, folding or waving the arms, tightening facial muscles, and sighing.
In both indirect methods, you and other members can't identify the emotion without asking or making an inference, even if it's only a low-level inference. People express the same emotion in different ways, and even the same person can express the same emotion differently at different times. You may express anger by becoming hostile, while I may express anger by withdrawing from the conversation. Further, a given behavior can express different emotions. One person's outburst may reflect anger, while another's is from anxiety. Consequently, you can't reliably infer a person's emotions from his or her behavior.
Acting defensively—part of the unilateral control mindset—is a common way for group members to indirectly express emotion. Defensive behavior is a way of trying to reduce anxiety or stress that involves denying or distorting reality.6 Examples are denial, blaming others, withholding relevant information, and suppressing emotions.
People express their emotions effectively when they express them directly and in a manner consistent with the mutual learning mindset and behaviors. Whether a person acts effectively doesn't depend on how frequently or strongly he or she expresses emotions.
Just as cultural differences affect how members of a group generate emotions, they also affect how members express them. Some organizations believe that discussing emotions is “touchy-feely” and don't see the relationship between productive discussion of emotion and the group's effectiveness. Consequently, people in such an organization feel pressure to avoid emotional discussion. In contrast, other organizations believe—and the research suggests—that unresolved issues of negative emotion, especially those that create defensive behavior, reduce the group's ability to maintain its working relationship and consequently the ability to perform tasks.7 People in this sort of organization feel less pressure to avoid emotional discussion.
The group's culture within the organization also influences whether and how members express emotion. Even if the larger organization culture believes that expressions of emotion are inappropriate, a group within the organization may believe including emotions in the discussion is healthy.
The cultural makeup of group members also has an impact on how they express emotion. Although it's dangerous to assume that a person from a particular culture expresses his or her own emotions in a way that is stereotypical of the culture, nevertheless some cultures express their emotions more directly and emphatically, while others express their emotions more subtly. The same holds true for people with different levels of education, socioeconomic class, and hierarchy within the organization.
Managing Your Own Emotions
You're working with a group discussing roles and responsibilities, when Michelle starts to accuse Joe of slacking off. Immediately, Joe angrily tells Michelle that if she were competent, the group wouldn't be having problems. Walt jumps in admonishingly, saying that Joe is in no position to complain. With each comment, the group members get angrier.
Many of the facilitators and consultants that I teach or coach have a difficult time in a situation like this one, where group members get very emotional. It's hard to help the members manage their emotions effectively if your own emotions are getting in your way. If you start to get overwhelmed emotionally, you can do several things to manage your emotions and regain your effectiveness.
Slow Down
First, slow down. You don't need to immediately jump in when you see the group getting emotional. Intervening quickly out of anxiety or anger can be worse than making no intervention at all. By slowing yourself down, you have the chance to use your emotions to inform your thinking rather than to override it. The traditional advice of taking a deep breath and counting to 10 is useful. It gives you a chance to interrupt your purely emotional response and integrate your thinking with your emotions.
Treat Yourself with Compassion
Remember that the core value of compassion includes treating yourself compassionately. For most people, dealing with an emotional situation is challenging. Compassion for yourself means recognizing that you're also a learner in this process, that there will be times when you feel anxious, overwhelmed, afraid, stuck, and so forth, and that is part of what it means to grow and develop. As a “recovering perfectionist,” I can tell you that when things are not working out as you would like, you don't earn extra points for getting down on yourself. Pay attention to your inner critic, such as telling yourself that you must make the situation better. Your own self-talk can be a sign that your self-compassion is slipping.
Notice, Experience, and Name Your Emotions
Notice your emotions. Because emotions involve a physical response, your body is often your first clue that you're feeling some distress. The more that you learn how you manifest feelings—for example, sweaty palms, racing pulse, clenched jaw, tight stomach—the more quickly you'll be able to use this early warning system to help you evaluate what's happening.
Name your emotions. Is it anger, fear, shame, surprise, disgust, sadness, joy, or some other emotion—or a combination of emotions? These are some basic emotions, but there are scores of them, including blends of emotion. Anger includes frustration, resentment, and annoyance; fear encompasses anxiety, nervousness, and wariness, to name a few. Increasing your emotional vocabulary makes it easier to clearly name your emotions, which makes it easier to work with them.
To name your emotions, allow yourself to experience them without judging. It's natural to have a range of emotions when facilitating, consulting, or coaching; don't berate yourself for having them. If you think to yourself, I'm feeling anxious and that's bad, you add another layer of emotion, which makes it more difficult to identify your initial emotion and creates distraction. Instead, try reframing your thinking so that you're curious and compassionate with yourself: Hmmm, this is interesting; what am I feeling here?
Identify the Source
Identify the source of your emotion. By continuing to remain curious and compassionate, you can reflect, I wonder where my reaction is coming from? Ask yourself what specifically people have said or done that generated the emotion. Is it something that has happened in the present conversation? Is it something from a previous conversation with group members? Is it something from a relationship with other people that you're carrying over to this group?
Ask yourself if something is happening that's triggering your own issues. Knowing what your own issues are helps you identify this quickly. For example, if you generally set unrealistically high standards for yourself and keep on raising the bar, you may react emotionally if a group member begins to discuss this topic emotionally. Ask yourself: Is the level of my emotion in proportion to the situation, or not? Getting annoyed with group members is different from being outraged at them. Here, too, remaining curious and compassionate with yourself helps you identify the source of your emotion.
Use the answers to your questions to help diagnose the situation. Consider that your own emotions may be mirroring what one or more group members are feeling.8 For example, if you're annoyed at a team member's comment and think that it has something to do with an interaction between group members, consider the possibility that other group members are also annoyed; look for observable data that confirm or disconfirm this idea. If you conclude that your emotions are unrelated to what's happening in the group, then it helps to reflect on your reaction. (This is why working with a partner is important; it enables that person to take the lead for a while.) If you are working alone, recognize that you've become part of the problem. If you've already reacted, let the group know that. Owning your mistakes and publicly apologizing can also be a vital learning experience for the group.
Remind Yourself of Your Skills
One reason my facilitation and consulting students feel anxious is that they don't know what to say or do when group members get emotional. The mutual learning approach gives you a way of helping members deal with emotions. By using the mutual learning cycle and the eight behaviors, you can test your inferences about whether people are feeling a certain emotion and ask what has happened that led them to feel that way. Knowing that there are some standard interventions you can make when a group member expresses emotion can help a lot.
Deciding How to Intervene
There are a number of things to consider when you are deciding how to intervene.
Look for Gifts
A number of years ago, I took some courses in improvisational theater. In improv, you work with others to create a scene or play or song on the spot: None of the improv players knows what anyone will say or do before it happens. The conversation develops spontaneously, each improv player building on the other's comments to create a scene that is meaningful—and maybe even funny.
What I learned from my improv instructor Greg Hohn is that for improv to work, you need to accept the gift that you're given. The lines that your improv partners give you are the only lines you get to work with and respond to. You can build on them and play with them, but you have to work with the lines they give you. If you don't, the improv ends. By framing the lines that others give you as a gift, you can look for ways to accept and build on them.
The same is true in your facilitative role. The lines that group members say are the lines you have to work with. You can comment on them and ask the members about them, but you need to accept them as the basis for your interventions if your interventions are to be related to their conversation.
With the mutual learning approach, by listening carefully and curiously to what group members say, you receive the material for your next lines. If Lola says in a raised voice, “Tony, it's always like this. You're always putting yourself before the team!,” you might respond, “Lola, you sound angry, yes?” If she agrees, you can continue: “Can you explain to Tony what he's done or not done that's leading you to be angry?”
Unfortunately, if you grow fearful, angry, or embarrassed and focus exclusively and extensively on your emotions, you stop attending to the group. Then you miss what people are saying and the gifts they are continuing to give you for intervention. A colleague and I were working with a group when she made what I thought was an inadvertent pejorative comment about a particular race, members of whom were in the group. I got embarrassed and put my head down, thereby missing the group members' reactions (which I could have used as information to intervene). A few minutes later, when I recovered from my embarrassment, I did intervene. I said to the group that when she made the remark, I felt embarrassed and as a result missed the members' reactions. I then asked them how they felt about the remark. The group, my colleague, and I discussed it; some group members said they had stopped paying attention after she made the comment, because it bothered them. After talking about it, the group, my colleague, and I were ready to return to the group's task.
Part of the difficulty is that when group members become emotional, the diagnostic and intervention gifts they give you are not nicely wrapped. They may come in loud, angry, or sullen packaging. But if you accept the gift, you may help the group unwrap some important issues that are hindering its effectiveness.
Move toward the Conflict
As conflict arises in a group and people get emotional, you may want to avoid it. You can try to switch the subject, squelch it, or defuse the situation, perhaps by calling a break. But moving away from conflict means you miss an opportunity to help the group.
I learned this lesson by facilitating for a nonprofit volunteer service organization. The organization was in trouble because the leadership was burned out. They had been providing almost all the services because they couldn't recruit other volunteer members to help. As a result, the leaders were planning to resign their positions en masse but couldn't find anyone to replace them. They believed that if they stepped down, the organization would die. They called a membership meeting to deal with this issue.
Unfortunately, my concern about the members' emotions and my inability to handle them led me to intervene in a way that steered the group away from the conflict rather than into it. The group didn't get to discuss the essence of the issue; the meeting ended without any agreement.
A principle of the mutual learning approach is to move toward conflict and differences. By publicly identifying the conflict in the group and engaging people in a conversation about it, you can help the group explore how people contribute to the conflict, how they are feeling about it, and how to manage it. The sooner you move toward the conflict, the more time the group has to discuss and resolve it.
Follow Through on Interventions
Interventions are not magic. Even if you move toward conflict and intervene, your initial intervention may not have the impact you intend. It's natural to have to make a series of interventions to help the group explore a particular issue.
Sometimes you may discontinue an intervention because you become frustrated as the group members remain silent or respond only indirectly to your questions. Sometimes you may drop an intervention because a group member responds angrily or tearfully.
Reframe Your Intervention
When I ask facilitators and consultants what leads them to not follow through on an emotionally difficult intervention, they usually explain that they inferred the member or entire group would be embarrassed and couldn't handle it. They also say they are uncomfortable when pursuing such an intervention. They recognize that by dropping the intervention, they are unilaterally protecting their clients and themselves.
Reframing how you think about intervening in conflict can make it easier for you to intervene. I often tell myself that the group is paying me to facilitate because they aren't able to pursue these difficult issues themselves. If I back off when my initial intervention isn't working, I may reinforce their belief that these issues are too difficult to handle. I may also lead them to infer that the mutual learning mindset and behaviors—on which my interventions are based—aren't effective in difficult situations. By pursuing interventions in a way that also maintains the group members' free and informed choice, I model what is possible and also give them optimism that they can address their difficult issues.
Make Meta-Interventions
If clients don't respond directly to your initial intervention or respond defensively, rather than repeating the same intervention, you can follow up with a meta-intervention. A meta-intervention is an intervention about a previous intervention. Meta-interventions enable the group and you to talk about interventions so you and the group can get to a root cause of a problem. In a meta-intervention, you explore with the group how it responded to your initial intervention and what led it to respond that way.
Consider, for example, a member who remains silent when you intervene to ask the member to identify her interests. You may respond with the general meta-intervention, “Jill, when I asked you what your interests were, you remained silent, yes? [If yes] Can you say what led you to be silent?”
Of course, making a meta-intervention can surface undiscussable issues that require deeper intervention. A meta-intervention may prompt members to discuss how they disagree with the goals of a program or how they question other members' performance. I don't become concerned if the group abandons my initial intervention to pursue the issue uncovered by the meta-intervention. In fact, I consider this a success. Meta-intervention issues often help the group move beyond discussing symptoms, to explore underlying problems and causes.
Intervening on Emotions
To repeat an earlier point, the facilitator's role is to help the group identify, express, and discuss emotions in a way that increases group effectiveness. To do this, you can intervene in two ways: by helping members express their emotions effectively and by helping members learn to think differently—to change their mindset—so they can manage their emotions effectively themselves. The first approach is appropriate for both basic and developmental facilitation; the second is typically reserved for developmental facilitation.
Helping People Express Emotions Effectively
You help group members express their emotions effectively by having them use the mutual learning behaviors. In basic facilitation, you accomplish this by encouraging them to name their emotions, identifying comments that may upset other members, and rephrasing for members how they have expressed their emotions. The example in Exhibit 12.1 shows a basic facilitator intervention with a group of leaders who are discussing potential budget cuts. The conversation appears in the right column, and my analysis appears in the left column.
Exhibit 12.1 Intervening on Emotion: Using Basic Facilitation
| Analysis of the Conversation | The Conversation |
| DAN: I don't think Paco needs all his people because he's increased efficiencies significantly. I think we can cut some people in his area, meet the budget, and not reduce our productivity. | |
| Facilitator observes Paco speaking in a loud voice, pointing to Dan with his finger, and the phrase, “I'm sick and tired” and infers emotion. Facilitator decides to intervene on the larger issues of Paco's emotions rather than the unexplained phrase, “you're like a little kid,” which seems part of the larger issue. | PACO: (to Dan in a loud voice) I'm sick and tired of hearing this line from you. You talk as if every other department has to justify its existence except yours. Well, we've got real good reasons for our staffing numbers. (waving his finger at Dan) You know that, but you're more concerned about your own little kingdom instead of the bigger picture. You're like a little kid. |
| Facilitator describes the observable behavior, checks for agreement, and skips testing the observation because Paco just finished saying it. Facilitator shares his inference about what Paco is feeling and then tests it. | FACILITATOR: Paco, you raised your voice, waved your finger at Dan, and said you were “sick and tired of hearing this line.” You sound really frustrated; what are you feeling? |
| Facilitator notes that Paco describes a type of anger: being ticked off. Paco has also identified this issue as a pattern, which he attributes to “Dan looking out for Dan.” | PACO: I'll tell you what I'm feeling: ticked off. It's like this all the time. Dan is looking out for Dan. |
| Facilitator asks Paco to describe the thoughts that led him to be ticked off. | FACILITATOR: Okay. What I don't understand exactly is what Dan said that ticked you off. What were you thinking before you told Dan you were “sick and tired”? Can you say specifically? |
| Facilitator notes that Paco is attributing to Dan that Dan knows that what he is saying is not true and is just trying to protect people. | PACO: Dan knows the whole point of increasing efficiency wasn't to cut people in the department. It was to deploy people on more profitable services. There was never any intention of cutting people once we achieved the efficiencies. He's just trying to protect his own people—it's typical Dan. |
| Facilitator clarifies the source of Paco's anger and checks for agreement about the attribution. | FACILITATOR: So are you angry because you think Dan knows this but is trying to use that reason to cut your number of people? PACO: That's exactly what I'm saying. |
| Facilitator asks Paco whether he tested this inference and attribution about Dan. | FACILITATOR: Okay. Can you say what leads you to believe that Dan knows this? I'm asking because I'm wondering: Are you inferring it, or has Dan said this explicitly to you? PACO: I'm inferring it from a number of comments he made. |
| Facilitator asks Paco to test his inference with Dan. | FACILITATOR: Are you willing to share with Dan what data you used to make your inference and see if he sees it differently? PACO: Okay. |
In developmental facilitation, you help members learn how to express their emotions consistently with the core values and behaviors, rather than relying on the facilitator to do it for them, as in basic facilitation. The intervention in Exhibit 12.2 continues essentially from where the earlier conversation ends, illustrating how you can move from a basic intervention to a developmental intervention.
Exhibit 12.2 Intervening on Emotion: Using Developmental Facilitation
| Analysis of the Conversation | The Conversation |
| Facilitator clarifies the source of Paco's anger and checks for agreement about the attribution. | FACILITATOR: So are you angry because you think Dan knows this but is trying to use that reason to cut your number of people? PACO: That's exactly what I'm saying. |
| Facilitator describes the two issues, one content-related and the other emotion-related, and separates the two initially. | FACILITATOR: I think it can be useful to be angry in certain cases and then appropriately express your anger. I see two related issues here. One is whether Dan does know about the purpose of increasing efficiency and whether he was trying to protect his own people. The other issue is how you responded to Dan, given your thinking about the first issue. I'd like first to focus on how you responded because I think your reaction created some unintended consequences. Then I'd like to come back to the first issue. Any concerns about doing that? PACO: No, that's okay. |
| Facilitator identifies Paco's intent, to see if it will match the consequences he got. | FACILITATOR: When you got angry with Dan, what was your intent when you yelled that he was only concerned about his own little kingdom instead of the bigger picture and that he was acting like a little kid? PACO: I was so ticked off that I wanted to get his attention. |
| FACILITATOR: I think you definitely got Dan's attention. I think you may have also gotten some other consequences that you hadn't intended. Would you be willing to find out from Dan how he reacted to your comments? PACO: Okay, Dan, how did you react? | |
| Facilitator chooses not to intervene on Dan's reaction, which includes an untested inference that Paco didn't want to hear what Dan had to say. | DAN: I got angry with you because you unfairly accused me, and I didn't think you wanted to hear what I had to say. At that point, I just shut down. I wasn't willing to hear what you had to say. |
| FACILITATOR: Paco, can you let Dan know what you heard him say so that he's sure you got it as he meant it? What did you hear Dan say? | |
| PACO: Dan, what you're saying is that you got annoyed at me because you think I was accusing you unfairly and that I wasn't going to listen to your view of the situation. You basically turned me off at that point. Yes? DAN: You got it. | |
| Facilitator states his willingness to share his thoughts and explains why he wants Paco to go first. | FACILITATOR: Paco, earlier I said that I thought you not only got Dan's attention but also got some other consequences you didn't intend. I'm willing to share my thoughts about what the consequences are, but I'm interested in seeing if you can identify any. What do you think? PACO: Well, I guess that in trying to get Dan's attention, I got it initially but then lost him completely because I ticked him off. |
| Facilitator agrees with Paco and then asks Paco to redesign his comment. | FACILITATOR: I agree with you completely. You got the opposite of the very thing you intended. Can you think what you could have said to Dan that would have let him know how you were feeling without contributing to his shutting you off? PACO: I'd say something like, “Dan, I'm angry with you. You said that my department could be cut without any loss of productivity. But when we talked about increasing efficiency, you agreed that my department would use the increased efficiency to redeploy people to higher-margin services. Now you're saying something different than what you said before. Do you agree, Dan?” If Dan agreed, I'd say, “Well, that's what makes me angry.” |
| Facilitator confirms Paco's statement and checks with the group for problems facilitator may not have seen. | FACILITATOR: I think that's consistent with mutual learning. Anyone see any problems with Paco's redesign? |
Helping People Reduce Defensive Thinking
The basic and developmental interventions in the following examples above help members express their emotions but don't help them change their underlying defensive behavior, because neither intervention addresses the root cause—their mindset. Instead, the facilitator helps members bypass the defensive behavior rather than “helping the group learn to [discuss these defensive behaviors] in order to get rid of them.”9
By helping members identify and change their mindset, over time they think differently so that they perceive less of a threat and therefore don't experience the emotion so overwhelmingly or as a trigger to their defensive behavior. This kind of developmental intervention requires a skilled facilitator. Again, the conversation in Exhibit 12.3 begins by returning to an earlier part of the last example.
Exhibit 12.3 Using Developmental Facilitation to Identify Defensive Thinking
| Analysis of the Conversation | The Conversation |
| Facilitator confirms Paco's statement and checks with the group for problems facilitator may not have seen. | FACILITATOR: I think that's consistent with the mutual learning approach. Anyone see any problems with Paco's redesign? (members shake heads, say no) |
| Facilitator returns to the first issue he identified. | FACILITATOR: Paco, I'd like to go back to the issue of whether Dan knows about the purpose of increasing efficiency and whether he was trying to protect his own people. Can we return to that? PACO: Okay. |
| Facilitator begins to determine whether Paco contributed to his emotional reaction by making untested inferences about what Dan knew. | FACILITATOR: I'm wondering whether you are inferring that Dan knows his two statements are different. Assuming you're correct that Dan knows this, I can understand how you would feel angry. How do you know that Dan knows the purpose of creating efficiencies wasn't to cut the number of people? Have you checked this out with Dan, or are you making an inference? PACO: Everybody knew it. We talked about it in a lot of meetings. |
| Facilitator clarifies Paco's response in terms of the facilitator's question. | FACILITATOR: Are you saying that you checked out your inference directly with Dan, or are you saying something else? PACO: No, I didn't check it out. I just think you would have had to be totally out of the loop not to know it. |
| Facilitator shares observations and inferences and tests them with Paco. | FACILITATOR: Let me identify a pattern that I think led to your angry response and get your reaction. Dan suggests that with the new efficiencies, people in your department can be cut. You infer that Dan knows this wasn't the purpose of increasing efficiency, and you respond by getting angry with him. You attribute his actions to protecting his turf and then suggest that this is Dan's typical behavior. But you don't test your inference with Dan. Instead, you assume your inference is true and use your untested inference as the justification for your anger toward Dan. Have I accurately described what happened? PACO: Yeah, that pretty much captures it. |
| Facilitator identifies a pattern of behavior common to several group members. The facilitator then suggests the value of changing the dysfunctional pattern and asks the group to make a choice. | FACILITATOR: One thing we can spend some time on is talking about how you can reduce this kind of thinking. I raise this because you've had several occasions in which different members—Dan, Amy, and Paco—have experienced similar negative consequences from their thinking. Am I off? [If members agree, then continue] I think this would help your ability to deal with some of the difficult issues you still want to deal with, such as equitable workloads and coordination between departments. But the choice is yours. What are your thoughts about what I'm suggesting? |
Dealing with Hot Buttons
A hot button is a characteristic or situation that has a particularly strong meaning for you and that leads you to respond defensively. For some people, a hot button might be perceiving they are not afforded the respect, deference, or attention they believe they deserve. Other people have a hot button pushed when they believe someone is questioning their ability, commitment, intelligence, or integrity. For still others, it's being manipulated or otherwise controlled. Because your own hot buttons lead you to misperceive others' remarks and actions, you often respond ineffectively even if others have acted effectively. We develop our hot buttons based on our experiences and our story about ourselves.
As a developmental facilitator, you can help group participants respond effectively by reducing the defensive thinking associated with their hot buttons. This involves first working with them to identify the trigger and then helping them reframe their thinking. Some people I have facilitated for find it difficult to respond effectively when a person—especially someone with less power or authority—raises his or her voice at them in anger. Granted, raising your voice or yelling is not a particularly skillful way of communicating, and those who do so are still accountable for their behavior, but people whose hot buttons are triggered by this behavior believe that a person yelling at them is showing disrespect for their official position or their personal dignity. They also believe that allowing a person to raise his voice gives him too much control.
In developmental facilitation, I help them respond effectively through reframing how they think about the person raising his voice. First, I ask them to reframe how they think about the other person's interests—perhaps to think of him not as being disrespectful but as having limited skills; the person yelling is not trying to make someone's life miserable but is trying to solve a problem without the ability to do so. In other words, the person is not interested in raising his voice for its own sake.
Next, I ask the participants to consider reframing how they think about their own role. Because they seek to manage conflict effectively, I ask them to think of themselves as being in the position of helping people who are less skilled at managing conflict.
Helping the Group Express Positive Emotions
Although many groups struggle with addressing such emotions as fear, anger, regret, and embarrassment, some groups also have difficulty handling positive emotions—happiness, joy, pride, satisfaction, and kindness. Emotions are neither positive nor negative in the sense of being good or bad; I use the term positive emotion to refer to those we typically associate with a positive experience. Helping group members learn to express their positive emotions is also important. In your facilitative role, you can help group members accomplish this in several ways.
Help the Group Celebrate Progress
One way to help people in a group express positive emotions is to help them to recognize and celebrate their achievements.10 A group working through a difficult issue using new facilitative skills is in itself cause for recognizing its accomplishment. This includes members using their mutual learning mindset and skill set to deal with a challenging situation. This doesn't necessarily require a party to celebrate, but asking members to express their feelings about the achievement creates a group memory about their ability to work together effectively. Marking the accomplishment builds momentum that helps the group to move on to the next steps.
Find the Humor in Being Human
Serving in facilitative role doesn't mean being stoic or humorless. When group members say and do things that are genuinely funny, I laugh accordingly. I don't join in a group's humor if it's at the expense of a member or seems to be a defensive reaction to a genuine issue in the group, but I do bring my sense of humor to my work.
To me, part of being human is laughing at my own ineffectiveness. Yes, helping groups is serious business, but not so serious that I think we should lose sight of the comic absurdity of our ineffective behavior. Laughing with a group about how it creates the very unintended consequences it tries to avoid doesn't make the issue less serious; it just gives people more perspective. When we laugh at ourselves, we treat ourselves with compassion. Humor can be a powerful way to help people learn. The key mutual learning principle is to laugh with others, not at others.
Look for Missing Positive Emotions
Some groups have a group or organizational culture that doesn't value or believe in expressing positive emotions. A number of years ago, as a member of such a group, I heard the leader announce that one member had just received a prestigious award; the members agreed it was deserved and were delighted he had received it. Yet, when the leader made the announcement, no one applauded or cheered. In fact, no one said anything. My untested inference was that members felt awkward in openly expressing their positive feelings about another member.
If you observe that group members are not expressing positive emotions, you can share your observation and infer what meaning people make of this. Your intervention may lead to an important conversation about group values and norms.
When People Get Angry with You
Sometimes you're the subject of the group's emotions: They get angry with you. They may think you've acted ineffectively, or they may be redirecting their emotions toward you. As soon as you infer that a group member is feeling negatively toward you, it's critical to test your inference. If the inference is correct, then you're in what I call facilitator check. In the game of chess, if the other player has put your king in check, you can't make any other moves until you get your king out of check. In your facilitative role, you won't be able to work effectively until you resolve this issue with the group.
You might say, “From your frown and head shaking I'm thinking that you're frustrated with me; am I correct?” If the member agrees, you can start to identify the cause of the frustration: “I don't mean to do anything that will frustrate you, but I might be doing something I'm not aware of. Can you tell me what I said or did that led you to get frustrated with me?” After the group member describes your behavior, the members and you can jointly decide whether you have in fact behaved as the member described; if so, decide whether your behavior was inconsistent with the core values and ground rules.
If you've acted effectively, then you can help the group member explore what leads to his emotional reaction, as I described earlier in this chapter. If you've acted ineffectively, then you contributed to generating the member's emotional reaction. Acknowledge this, and commit to change your behavior in the future. In basic facilitation or consulting, you can simply identify what you will do differently in the future.
In the developmental form after you apologize, you can also ask the group member what led him not to say anything after seeing the group repeatedly go off task. By pursuing this, it's important to explain that you aren't trying to reduce your own accountability. Rather, you're helping the group become more independent by exploring why members don't intervene with the group when they believe it is necessary (“Sheryl, if you noticed that several times the group was off task and I didn't intervene, and you thought it would be helpful to intervene, I'm curious what led you not to intervene.”).
Learning from Your Experiences
We aren't omniscient. If you haven't yet started in a facilitative role, expect at times to be stumped. If you're already working, you surely know the feeling. There are times when your intuition tells you that something is wrong, but you can't identify any group behavior to make a diagnosis. Or, having identified the problem, you may be uncertain about how to intervene. When this happens, consider asking the group for help: “I'm stumped. I think the group is having a problem, but I can't figure out what it is, and I also can't point to any behavior that leads me to conclude this. Does anyone else see something?” Although it's not helpful to the group if you intervene like this frequently, using it occasionally can use the group's skills to allow you to see things you are missing.
Even when you act ineffectively, you can create a learning opportunity for the group and yourself. By publicly acknowledging how you have acted ineffectively, you model accountability without defensiveness. I try to not act ineffectively, of course, but I have been surprised to find that some group members' most memorable learning has come from my publicly reflecting with the group on my ineffective behavior.
Through our work we come to know ourselves by reflecting on how we react to certain situations, understanding the source of our emotions, and learning how to work productively with our feelings. In doing so, we not only help ourselves but also increase our ability to help the groups we work with.
Summary
In this chapter, I have explored how to deal with emotions that arise in our facilitative roles—for the group members and for you. Dealing productively with emotion is difficult because there are physiological reasons for emotion overriding rational thinking. Helping a group deal with emotion means showing group members how to use their emotions and thinking to inform each other, rather than avoid emotions or allow them to control the conversation; it also means helping group members express their emotions productively. Because you are susceptible to the same emotional reactions as the group members, you can do a number of things to manage your own emotions during your work.
When you intervene on group members' emotions, you can help them both express their emotions effectively and learn to reduce the defensive thinking that leads to ineffective emotional response. You can also help the group learn to express “positive” emotions as well. Finally, managing your own emotions includes responding effectively if a group member gets angry at you and being able to frame the situation as an opportunity for learning—for you and the group. Clearly, it's important to have an explicit agreement with the group about what kind of intervention you will make regarding emotion. In the next chapter, I will describe how to develop an explicit agreement with the group about how you will work together.