Reflections on Facilitator Presence

The unedited version of an article published in the April 2004 edition of the Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal, published by BACP.

John Gloster-Smith, a group facilitator, uses a not un-common event in the life of a group, when someone unexpectedly decides to leave, to explore the qualities of awareness and presence that a Transpersonal facilitator may bring to selecting an appropriate intervention.

I am facilitating a pre-lunch session of an all-day workshop, and we are reviewing some theoretical aspects of the work. The group is becoming more relaxed and the discussion is flowing. People are interacting with each other with some ease now. We start to look at the issue of completion and I am sharing my perspective on how people may be uncomfortable with endings. A group member suddenly speaks and says that he will shortly be leaving the group for an immediate personal reason relating to a call he’d received in the last break. He speaks abruptly, he looks tentatively round the room and his voice sounds nervous. On hearing this, I too look around the room and am struck by the expressions on the faces of the others. They look tense and seem to be holding back and wondering. I am also aware of tension in my own body and that the atmosphere in the room has hardened, to a certain stickiness.

I pause for a moment before responding to the man’s announcement and make a quick decision about a response. I then ask him if he’d be OK to hear what others in the group might like to say about his imminent departure. He agrees and then others start to share how they feel. For example one says how sorry he is that the man is leaving as he’d just been getting to know him and had liked meeting him. There are other sharings, several being deeper, some relating not just to the leaver but to their own feelings. I ask the “leaver” how he is doing. In his response he says that he used to be a bereavement counsellor and that he has difficulty with endings, has left before the end before and on occasions left without telling people in the group. In my own mind, I am reminded of when this too has figured for me. The group is now more relaxed again but this time different. Feelings have been released and, to me, people seem closer. Also the man is more able to leave with a sense of completion both for himself and the others. Afterwards, we attend to our awareness of the person having just left, the empty chair, the space now left open, how we feel and what as a group we need. Only after that can I get on with considering theory again!

Afterwards, I am reminded of how in other environments I’ve seen people just leave, without any working through. I am reminded of how a lot of my work too has been connected in some way with change and with loss and grieving and I can also own to having had similar reactions and behaviours to the man who had left this workshop early, to having left a group prematurely and having had my own pain about this.

An event like this is a common one in working with groups. What is of interest to me in this article is to explore how I as the facilitator work with the immediacy of the event and in particular how, as evidenced in my pausing and checking the group, concepts like awareness and presence can be of use in the quality of the intervention.

Reflecting on the intervention now, as the facilitator, what was crucial to me was an awareness of group process, of what was happening in the group, what Yalom calls “the interpersonal relationship of the participants.” From a humanistic/transpersonal perspective, I was able to use my experience and my theoretical understanding, of the data present, in the “here and now.” Also I am mindful of Yalom’s reminder, that “physical survival of the group must take precedence over other tasks.” I paused and checked my awareness. This was a key action for me. What is happening right now in the group? What, in this instant, is going on with individual people as I can observe it? How do I feel, in my bodily sensation? How does the group “seem to feel?” So I attend to sensation and awareness, at a multiple of levels, my own, other individuals, the group, relationships in the group and so on. My experience and my knowledge of theory tells me that, if a pressing figure of interest, a Gestalt, is not attended to, it will in some way impair the functioning of the group. One way this can show up is that the tension in the room, and with individuals, remains. Individuals are less likely to share, people feel less safe and particularly the emotional climate is damaged. We all know that something just did not get dealt with. The Gestalt needs to be worked through, in this case with reference among others to retroflection of feeling within the group, deflection of feeling within the man leaving and perhaps ownership of his confluence/isolation issues. Emotion is relevant not just for individuals but for whole groups.

I am also reminded of the importance of facilitator presence. To me this is the fundamental aspect to my facilitation. This is in part about awareness, about being as fully aware as I can be and about attending to the present moment, the “here and now”, rather than, say, talking “about something”. To me, the present contains all the gems of life, which we usually miss by living mostly in the past or the future. The present connects us with our deepest selves. Also presence is about being connected to myself, being present to my own sensations and feelings, to my own core of being and beingness. Here, from a humanistic/transpersonal perspective, I connect with my centre of being which I have come to know is my anchor and support and source of calmness in my work. My own journeying has brought me to know that place more and more. As Hycner says, “Being fully present is already a hallowing. It underlines our connectedness with Being” (Hycner’s italics). What I am meaning here is the quality of beingness, of being “right there” for another, fully “with” their experiencing, fully “in the moment”. In the case described above, it was a matter of being right there and fully attentive to the moment and to the energy of the group.

Presence is a plugging in to consciousness, and this can be at several levels. Partly this may refer to the atmosphere in the room. It is as though the group has a collective “energy”, something that at a sensing level has a feel to it. This energy can fluctuate and shift, from a warm glow to a tense, icy condition, back to being relaxed and calm, to vibrant, and so on. What I noticed with the event described above is that the atmosphere of the group was changed by the experience and was in some way closer. I am, as a member of the group, both involved as a human being in the process myself moment by moment and I am also periodically pausing and checking, attending to my own process but also that of the multiplicity of agendas around me and to their needs. Sometimes, it seems like I am in the midst of some wonderful flow of human expression: warm, loving, alive, embracing, cherishing. At others, it may be awkward, tense, anxious, angry, resentful, apologetic, embarrassed, repressed or denying. I am both part of this gorgeous wave of humanity and I am also holding the space, providing the steer, being an anchor, a point of reference. What is key though, is that I am a witness to what occurs. I am both a witness to my own experience and I am a witness to what goes on in the group. And the space that I hold is a centred one, as much as I can be there. I am not attached to my experiencing, just the witness of that experiencing. In transpersonal language, this is often referred to as being “un-egoic.” The quality of experience of the witness is often seen as very calm, contented, peaceful and accepting and this has obvious benefits for facilitating all sorts of things that can occur.

A group can have a collective “life” and many would see this as one of groupwork’s most precious features. However, group leaders can fear this life, which is why they may collude with some serious areas of disfunctionality within the group. Working with fear is key, both in himself and within the group. The traditional image of the group leader has been one where the leader is the expert, who manages and controls what occurs. This sometimes leads to potentially authoritarian behaviours, which immediately put participants in touch with their inner child! When emotions are heightened, the impulse is to exert control, to “do” something. I have very frequently observed facilitators do just that, for example “take control” and consciously exert a controlling influence on the process of the group. This behaviour, when done out of awareness, interrupts the flow of the group process and is obviously coming out of the leader’s agenda. Alternatively, the leader will do what the group wants, and thus collude, a common example being overly concerned that the group is getting what it needs. This can be powerfully destructive when working in organisations, where the organisation has an expectation for the outcome of the event. The real issue that is bugging the group does not get dealt with. We can be so eager to please, to “perform”, to “get a result”, that in trying to meet the group’s perceived need we fail to offer an intervention that addresses the disfunctionality. The group may take part in “group flight”, for example when it avoids what is uncomfortable or has an exaggerated response to an issue and strongly shuts off from possible exploration. A typical example may be deflection, when the group may persist in talking about something that is tangential to the actual and painful experience that is in front of them. Recently I led a group, which, despite several comments from me, insisted emphatically in discussing organisational issues rather than focusing on the painful reality that change was threatening their very livelihoods. The conversation had an artificial air to it and as the witness I was aware that I was feeling baffled as to where they were going. Of course, that was just it! They were too! In the end I very firmly stopped them, shared my own experience and described what I had observed the group doing, so that they were able to become aware of their process and own the pain they were feeling.

In being present, the facilitator needs a strong sense of self, to be able in the middle of whatever is happening to pause, check himself out and notice how he is feeling and what is present for him. He also needs to check the group at its multitude of levels and again his own centredness and also his awareness of what the group needs right now. From his space of centredness he can choose his intervention. He therefore needs to know his own inner space of calm and recognise what can get in the way for him, noticing too that the group will mirror his own process. He will not be deflected by fear of other emotions like anger or upset, or fear itself. I remember facilitating a group of people who were so angry that they raged, with full verbal violence, for two hours about what they saw as injustice and bad treatment. There was no other intervention available to me than to sit with them, be present and genuinely empathise. It occurred to me that I could simply reflect back to them what they were saying. After a while they started to see what they were experiencing and what had happened to them, almost from another viewpoint. It was almost as if they were able to join me in being the witness of the event. At the end several came up and shook my hand: “thanks, that was just what we needed”.

In intervening when the leaver said he was going to leave the group prematurely, I accessed my presence and worked from that space to help the group deal with the change. In doing this I believe I model for groups another way in which they can manage their own process, and in doing this I believe the facilitator can offer what is one of the most powerful offerings a group facilitator has in their toolbags. Working with presence is not about doing things; it is about a way of being, knowing your space of being and staying right there with whatever happens. As such it serves as an invitation to others to literally BE themselves.

John Gloster-Smith, MAHPP.

Bibliography

Yalom : "The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy". (Basic Books)
Heron : “The Complete Facilitator’s Handbook” (Kogan Page)