In this episode, Beth Cougler Blom talks with Khari McClelland about his path to becoming a facilitator and what defines great facilitation. Khari reflects on a transformative camp experience that sparked his passion for this work and shares his thoughts on the power of presence, curiosity, and navigating discomfort. He emphasizes the role of facilitators in setting the tone and creating spaces that honour participants’ experiences.
Beth and Khari also discuss:
- the importance of flexibility and adapting to the group’s needs
- how facilitation is like music, with rhythm, pacing, and composition
- facilitating across cultures with humility and curiosity
- the impact of making participants feel heard, seen, and valued
Engage with Khari McClelland
- Website: kwmfacilitation.com
- X: @igobykhari
Other Links from the Episode
- Rupinder Sidhu
- Sara Kendall
- Peggy Taylor
- Nadia Chaney
- Hollyhock Retreat Centre [search this site for Khari’s upcoming Gathering when advertised]
Connect with the Facilitating on Purpose Podcast
- Follow Facilitating on Purpose on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube
- facilitatingonpurpose.com
Connect with Beth Cougler Blom
- Give feedback or suggest upcoming show topics or guests at hello@bcblearning.com
- Visit bcblearning.com to explore Beth’s company’s services in facilitation and learning design
- Purchase a copy of Beth’s book, Design to Engage
- Follow Beth on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn
Podcast production services by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions
Show Transcript
[Upbeat music playing]
[Show intro]
Beth
Welcome to Facilitating on Purpose, where we explore ideas together about designing and facilitating learning. Join me to get inspired on your journey to becoming and being a great facilitator wherever you work. I’m your host Beth Cougler Blom.
[Episode intro]
Beth
Hello. Thank you for joining me for this episode. I am so pleased to share with you this conversation that I had with guest Khari Wendell McClelland. Khari is not only an award winning musician, he’s a creative facilitator who uses the arts and experiential activities for transformational learning. When I met with Khari to discuss what we might talk about in the episode, we came up with the topic of what great facilitation feels like. And I love this episode because Khari shares so much of who he is as a person, who he is as a facilitator, and the deep, deep approaches that he brings to his work in facilitation. Khari is contemplative, he’s conscientious, and he’s creative. I can’t wait to share this episode with you. Enjoy the show.
Beth
Khari, thanks for being here. It’s so wonderful to have you in conversation with me today and I’m looking forward to it.
Khari
Thanks, Beth. It’s an honour and I’m excited to be with you today as well.
Beth
I thought we could maybe start with just asking you how you got into facilitation, because I know that you’re an accomplished musician and a songwriter. You’ve had a big ongoing music career, and at some point you got interested in facilitation and do that alongside your work as a musician. Can you tell us a short story of how that happened and what was it about facilitation that appealed to you?
Khari
Absolutely. Maybe 18 years ago, 17 years ago, I was living with a facilitator by the name of Rupinder Sidhu, a .k .a. Ruby Sing, depending on what day you catch him. We had a lot of facilitators coming through our shared house in East Van off Commercial Drive, and one of them, Sara Kendall, asked if I would be willing to come to a youth camp that she was facilitating.
I went and I was transformed by the experience of being, I think it was Powell River, for a week with a bunch of youth and a bunch of adult mentors. I felt like this is something that really resonated with me, and I immediately just started to do it a whole bunch afterwards. I was like, what? I’m going to do more of this. Then trainings and experiential learning followed, but that was the beginning. I had a transformative experience through being with a group of adults and young adults and never turned back.
Beth
I love that. And maybe that’s how many of us get started. I don’t know, it’d be interesting to ask that question of everybody, you know, what was that initial spark? But as we think about our topic today, about what great facilitation feels like, can you think back?Was there something about being at that camp that felt different to you?
Khari
Yes, everybody was being real. [Laughs] Everybody was being really authentic and real in front of one another. And I hadn’t quite experienced something that had that depth of witness and engagement. It felt incredibly powerful, both through…there was this way of moving in the direction of what wasn’t easy and comfortable, and the way that the community rose to those moments was deeply inspiring. And, you know, I hope that in some way I have been the kind of person who can create spaces that have the same kind of depth and presence and willingness to move in the direction of what’s challenging, but in the service of, you know, the larger community and those individuals that are present.
Beth
That’s so interesting because it makes me think that you might have gotten what you thought was a good experience and it would have been all positive things that happened at that time, but it sounds like, no, there were challenging things too. And you also thought that was great. And it sounds like it shaped what you did from that point forward. Have you found you’ve never shied away from learning how to facilitate and facilitating those challenging moments as well as the wonderful ones?
Khari
Yeah, I mean, it’s more representative of the human experience and definitely mine. I grew up in an environment that had a lot of violence in the larger community and there’s something that was consistent about the fact that like, life was very real. And there were moments that were going to be very challenging. And that, you know, not in the absence of joy either, but that the fullness of a human life includes something that is reflective of loss and of grief, of meeting fear, of learning what courage means, of listening deeply, but also seeking truth. And so, yeah, that experience really reflected to me something that felt really real and authentic about life. And that was very relatable. I wanted to be in a space that could hold that much realness, that much honesty.
And the fact that that was also in a multi-generational space was also deeply profound for me. Something healing in the journey for me personally, but I felt for many people inside the community, the adults, the mentors, but also the youth, there was a sense of deep reciprocity. And that was deeply moving.
Beth
As you then went ahead to grow your own facilitation skills, did you find that you were a quote natural at it? Did it come to you really easily or did you really stretch yourself as you went along and learned how to be a facilitator yourself?
Khari
I want to say all the above. I think there are aspects of my personality that lend themselves well to the role of a facilitator. I don’t think you can do it for very long and not find yourself deeply challenged and needing to grow yourself, especially I think that I’m constantly evolving. And the way that I might meet different moments has really changed over years. And so things still remain to be deeply challenging. But I have a sense of confidence in terms of walking in the direction of what isn’t comfortable or what might be challenging.
So that if there was a core skill that maybe I’ve developed, it’s like a willingness to move in the direction of what is challenging, what isn’t comfortable, what isn’t easy, and that that allows for all the other kind of skills and capacities to present themselves, but at the very least be practiced. So I started off with being pretty good with my own voice. And I was always very curious about people and what they were interested in. It also was easy for me to see people’s beauty and strengths and capacities. So all of that I think was going for me, but I think the core capacity that I needed to really develop was a willingness to not feel like I needed to know it all and to be uncomfortable and to be connected with people even through uncertainty.
Beth
Yeah, and you called it a practice and definitely it’s ongoing, isn’t it? For all of us as we learn how to do this work. [Khari: Mmm mm.] Have you had people that you’ve grown with, learned from, you know, had as mentors along the way? And what did it feel like to be with them in their spaces as a participant?
Khari
Peggy Taylor, Charlie Murphy, Nadia Chaney, and a whole bunch of other folks. Sara Kendall, to name a few. Yeah, it was inspiring. I felt like I found my people in a way. I felt like there was a sense of resonance. I felt a renewed sense of possibility around what can happen between people and what can happen in our relationships, the smaller-sized relationships that might be two or three people inside of an organization or a larger community. I felt a greater sense of hope and possibility through witnessing their facilitation. But also, I really believe it’s actually witnessing the interplay between the facilitator and the community, whoever those participants are.
We don’t actually give enough credit to the group, the participants, as being at least 50% of what’s happening in a space at any time. I think those people that I mentioned as mentors, they had a way of allowing the participants or community to live into their own capacities for witnessing, for speaking truth, for organizing, for holding one another, for exhibiting leadership, for having brilliant questions and insight. So yeah, I’ve learned as much from the participants in some ways in terms of my own facilitation as I have the key figures who are facilitators, quote unquote.
Beth
Yeah, it sounds like you’re in a room. I can just imagine that you’re very tuned in to what’s going on with everyone around you. I know you probably do it as a facilitator, but as you were a participant in other people’s rooms, I can see you’re looking at things on this other level or this other plane of what’s going on. Do you think that? You’ve kind of got this other level of what you’re seeing happen in a room?
Khari
I wonder if you could say more about that. I’m not sure if I fully grasped the question.
Beth
I guess it’s that…it’s almost a joke sometimes, we facilitators, right? When we go and we’re a participant in somebody else’s session and we can’t turn off that extra level of awareness about not just being said but how it’s being said or facial expressions or you know all sorts of things. Like you’re watching and noticing things that other people might not notice because of who you are and you know maybe your past musician training or whatever it is. Certainly as you grew in your facilitation skills. Do you think you see more things at play than some other folks would?
Khari
I actually think most people feel these things. They may not have language for them or the tools to use them in a group space. But I actually really deeply trust the internal kind of barometer as a metaphor or analogy that people can feel when the pressure in the room shifts. And you can see it on a group of people. It’s not just me who’s reading the room, but part of like how I’m able to read the room is because everybody is actually in the same group field and they’re also reacting. Like part of how I know that something has shifted is I actually see it on the participants. And so there is this way that maybe I have the responsibility for seeing the whole group in a way that maybe an individual participant is not. And simultaneously, I think that the participants also have this deep capacity for witnessing and that we’re made this way. We’re deeply social beings and that we have a real capacity for feeling the vibes in a space or like feeling when something doesn’t feel right. That we have this innate capacity for like being like, something just doesn’t feel like it’s the way that it could or should be. Or I just feel uncomfortable in my body right now. I’m not sure why exactly or…people are noticing things all the time. And so, yeah, I would put myself inside the group of people who are noticing and ??? to notice maybe at a deeper level than it is for the average participant. But I actually feel like part of what I’m actually noticing is the capacity of all the participants to actually be in their bodies, to be in their minds, to be in their emotional bodies and for them to be actually reflecting and giving me data or information throughout that helps me to understand where they’re at and what they need. Some of it very explicit, but also some of it very subtle.
Beth
I love that you’re saying it that way that everyone has the capacity to feel this, whatever’s going on in their body, in their minds. But then it makes me think, okay, you as a facilitator, you know what to do with that. You’re feeling it too. And these other folks that you mentioned that you’ve learned from as well, it sounds like they had whatever that unseen thing is too, to be able to recognize what’s happening in the group.
And other facilitators, and maybe I wouldn’t even use that word necessarily for other folks, but other people might not… they might not see that or feel that, or if they do feel it, if they feel the group shift and there’s a problem happening or there’s something hard, other people, even though they feel it they might not know what to do about that. [Khari: Hmm mm.] Do you think that’s the case, that over time we learn how to do something about that or how to work with that?
Khari
Because of all of our different experiences, individually and sometimes collectively, we may have developed coping mechanisms that lead us in particular directions. So like the same stimuli in one person might actually invoke in them this desire to become deeply curious and they may lean in. When something happens in the same set of stimuli, could I create in another person distancing behaviours? And so all of those reactions are totally great and they just will look different on different people. I think for me, you know, what I’m attempting to do is to just notice when I see these kinds of things on people’s bodies and faces and in the quality of their voice or where their curiosity leads like thematically. That all of those kinds of indicators are helping me to understand how to navigate a particular moment with the group.
Hopefully, you know, through process, moving in the direction of their aspirations and what they’re hoping to get out of the time that we have together. So I’m often navigating or understanding all of that stimuli that I’m receiving from them, that it helps me to better navigate how to get from A to B, you know, assuming that like A is where we’re starting and B is like, you know, landing at the goals or aspirations that they have for our time together.
Beth
You talk about noticing and there’s a lot there that you’re noticing. That’s so interesting. How do you start off though? Do you say something? Do you act a certain way as you come into a room? Like what do you think that you do – and it could be subtle or not – to open up the group so that they, I don’t know, can be fully themselves in the room or you know, get more easily to where they want to go. Is there, is there something that you do to invite that in?
Khari
That can start even before we ever see one another. Could be in the invitation that I extend to the group, could be in the very top of the morning before the program’s even started. I really make it a point to introduce myself to every single person that I can. Obviously often I’m doing prep, sometimes when people are arriving, setting things up, but I really try to take a moment to connect with every single person, to have them see and feel me. One of the roles that a facilitator has is to model what is possible or what the expectations are or, you know, a way of being with people. Again, I think I said this earlier, I have this natural curiosity about people anyway, so it just kind of lends itself to me really wanting, like being internally motivated, intrinsically motivated to want to discover who these people are. My curiosity inspires curiosity in them. I tend to be playful. I want to like create a situation where there’s this like inverse relationship between levity and depth. I’m also trying to represent that in those opening moments with people, and then that definitely is happening as we start to unfurl a program. I often start with something like an invocation at the beginning of our time together to, again, invoke a spirit, an ethos, a vibe, a way of honouring ourselves and each other in the journeys that we all have had, and to just mark the opportunity, imbue it with a sense of meaning and that there’s a special possibility that’s present.
So, you know as I said before, it can be really early questions that I might ask someone even before I meet them, whether that’s through an email or some other form of communication, a call. Could be a video message that I’m sending, could be just a prompt that I give them before everybody enters the room that lets them know, oh, this is the kind of tone that’s being set. Here’s a little bit of what I might expect from my time with Khari. I also try to lay out the goals, community agreements or encouragements, an overview of what I’m imagining our time together will be, and really trying to, along the way, make sure that I have investment from them, that they’re with me, that they agree that what I’m imagining is going to take place during their time together, they also can see that same vision or journey, and then it’s reflective of their own needs and aspirations. So yeah, that’s I think a little bit of how I am initially feeding and helping to share a way of being in relationship early, and where I see things that may be not in alignment with how I may have imagined how we’d be together, that I again become very curious about that.
Like maybe there’s actually conflict in the group that hasn’t been shared with me earlier, and that’s like trying to, again, read and understand what’s actually present as opposed to what I’m imagining should be present or could be present. I think there’s something about being okay with what is and not needing and not trying to force something to be different than what it actually is. There’s something for me in that too.
Beth
That’s so skillful, Khari, because I can imagine that would scare the heck out of a lot of people that are new to the field. That they would think, okay, you know, I’ve prepared well to come into this room, this experience, and this is how it’s going to go, you know, like, we can make that mistake, can’t we, of thinking, Okay, we’ve, we’ve got it, we’ve got our plan, we’re coming into the room, and we know how it’s going to go. But you’re really leaving this wide open space to keep noticing what’s going on with the group. And if they are in the space you thought they were in, not a physical space, but in the mental or emotional space that you thought, and if not, you’re okay with that, you’re curious about it. I love that you’ve used the word curiosity. And you, what do you do? Do you make changes as you go, in true facilitator flexibility style? Like, you’re learning things as you talk to the folks as they come into the room and you’re chatting with them. What do you do when you realize it’s something different than what you thought?
Khari
I think I always try to like be really flexible around what the goals could or should be for our time together, whilst also understanding the limitations of time or, you know, resource, like maybe they can’t have two days because what they actually have the resources to do is like one day or four hours or two hours. And so we have to make the most of what that time is. It always behooves me to just be really open to the possibility that what I thought it should be is actually different from what the group thinks it should be. And I like always going to default to the group and the group’s needs as opposed to my own needs. Because I got hired to do a thing, you know. People paid me to help them meet their aspirations or goals for the group, for their organization, and sometimes for them individually if I’m sort of running a different kind of workshop. So I’m really trying to be open to what the group needs and to just be present with what is as opposed to what I’ve imagined. And then, you know, hey, let’s reset the goals then. Or, oh, we realize like what we actually need in this community are some different kinds of agreements or guideposts for how we can be together. Could be process-oriented. Oh, we realize that, you know, this is a group that really, really needs to be embodied. Let’s see if we can shift this program so that there’s more physical engagement or that there’s greater opportunity for creativity to emerge. Or that people need visual cues. They need to see tech in particular ways that allow them to participate. Or what we realize is that the pacing needs to shift. Like I’m really always trying to get that feedback and be really curious about what the group wants and needs.
Beth
I’m so curious about how your background as a musician informs this because, you know, you talked about things like alternating between levity and depth, and you just mentioned pacing or, you know, physical activities that need to be added in, or, you know, there’s kind of musical terms that are coming up for me [chuckles] around some of these things where we can draw parallels to. Do you think that your musical abilities help you do some of those kind of multi-modal changes along the way? Or am I putting ideas in your head? [chuckles]
Khari
I mean, I don’t think we can remove the experiences that we’ve had, that they inform us. And so one of the experiences that I’ve had is, yeah, playing a lot of music, engaging with audiences, engaging with other bands, improvising with other band members, but also improvising inside of a structure, not being able to pre-plan what every moment is going to look like, and to just be really present, because often the magic happens in the present and in the presupposition. Not in the thinking mind, but in the being with mind. So yeah, definitely. I’m sure that music has influenced me greatly, but also it’s a tool that I use inside of my facilitation. And I think song, and the written word, and poetry, storytelling, the contrast, and composition, what the arc of a day looks like, or the tonal shift inside of a day, and how to move with different kinds of energy. We talked about pacing and rhythm, feeling a beat inside of a room, and actually trying to get participants to feel the beat of conversational space, how to be with each other in a way that has both breath, so pause, and action, movement, voice.
Yeah, I get really excited. Also, even the idea of like, oh, this person’s taking a solo for a minute, or this is a duet kind of activity. This is like a pairs activity. Or, oh, no, what we really need is a triad. Or what we need is like a group of six or seven. Trying to actually feel into those different textural things, but also how they help us meet different kinds of purposes. So yeah, all these metaphors and analogies related to the arts, and music, and creativity all feel fitting. And I feel like there’s probably lots of people who have come to these things in different ways, from different angles, that aren’t necessarily musicians. But it would be impossible for me to pull that apart, because it’s so interwoven into my being.
Beth
Yeah, and there’s so much complexity to it, isn’t there? I mean, you’ve just named so many different ways that we can learn from music, both using it in the session and just taking ideas from it to inform the way we do things.
Khari
Absolutely.
Beth
You’ve worked a lot across cultures as well, facilitating. Do you think you’re always correct in the way you feel things are happening when you go and work in those rooms or have you been surprised by some of that work? Because yeah, we all grew up in our own culture and then we cross cultures and maybe things work differently. So have you been surprised in any of those ways and learned from them?
Khari
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that there’s 100% different like cultural modalities, like the norms around, you know, people keep a sort of a distance between them, like facially, like what’s normal? Do we stand really close or far apart? What kind of questions might be okay to ask inside of this particular context? Or what are the things that are motivating people in terms of their behaviour or what kinds of outcomes they might be hoping for? And what I’ve really noticed is that I just feel like as long as I’m really, really curious, and that I’m able to communicate with a sense of honesty and forthrightness about what my hopes and aspirations are, like individually, but also in service to this larger collective. Again, I’ll use music as an example. It’s like music translates across culture very often. You know, it’s like Michael Jackson, globally popular for many audiences. You know, I don’t need to know every word that the Buena Vista Social Club, you know, a band from Cuba, is saying in order to feel a sense of where the energy is, like, oh, this feels like this is fast, and it’s really triumphant and joyful, it’s anthemic. Or, oh, this is fatter, it’s slower, you know, understanding beyond the words, the things that people’s bodies hold, and that sort of thing. So I think there are obviously like such huge cultural, linguistic, expressive differences.
And I also love, like, I love languages, I love different kinds of music, I love different cultural spaces. It kind of lights me up. And I kind of get very excited by the idea of like, how can I communicate in a way that will be easily understood inside of this space? And what do I, how can I support those people participating to feel really heard? And for me to really genuinely be understanding and grasping what it is that the community or the groups need from me? So maybe that was like a long answer, but I hope that that helped to bring forward just a little bit of like how I understand that. I’ve really had a lot of and what felt like a lot of success being with people from a lot of different kind of cultural spaces. I come with a lot of humility. I think that’s probably number one. Be humble and be curious. And be joyfully excited by, you know, what people are sharing with you. Show your not just excitement, but the sense of honouring that you have from receiving people’s stories, people’s hopes and dreams and aspirations. These are deeply important to the people that are sharing them with you. And it’s a deep honour to be in the space of receiving those and to embody that and to, with the fullness of your being, really try to be present in that way.
People feel a sense of reciprocity in the relationship. And so even if we’re not understanding all of the different like linguistic or cultural cues, I think when that really, you know, when somebody is really speaking truthfully and authentically with a great deal of humility and compassion and a desire to serve, people receive that. They feel it, even when they don’t necessarily understand all of the the words or the cultural cues.
Beth
You have shared so many words that are so wonderful and it makes me think that I don’t hear them enough in the world of facilitation. You know, some of them are honour and witness, humility, transformation, you know. There’s wonderful gifts in even just the way you’re thinking about what that experience is. To feel all that as a facilitator and bring it into the room. Like we need more of that. We need people to think of those words more deeply and how they, how we all bring it to our groups that we’re working with. I don’t think we have that enough.
Khari
Yeah, thanks, Beth. I often do these listening activities with groups, and what’s become abundantly clear to me is like how profound it is to feel really heard. How profound it is to be the person who receives a story that’s really meaningful for someone, even if it’s like work-related. But for that person, it’s really important. They really care about that thing, and to listen to somebody in a way that really honours that is game-changing. It is transformational. It can completely change the way that somebody understands themselves, whether or not they feel deserving of their own feelings, desires, hope.
Just to be seen and to be witnessed is such a powerful, powerful gift. And to be the person who feels like their story matters is a tremendous gift. So I take it very, very seriously that I create a space or a culture where this deep kind of honouring is possible. That people really feel like their humanity, their offerings, their questions, they’re deeply important, and they matter.
Beth
I really feel that from you and it makes me think about how you get feedback from people on your work because these are deep, deep things that you’re coming into the experience with and does a one page feedback form that your participants fill out on your skills as a facilitator or the experience they had, does it ever do it justice what you’re really going for? Like what do you do about that? How do you talk with people about that so that you can keep growing as well and deepen your practice?
Khari
I think there’s a lot of different ways to get feedback from a group. You know, obviously there’s like, here’s the anonymous survey. And there’s like the sort of pre and post evaluative like thing, especially if you’re trying to like build skills in a group. You can ask like, Hey, you know, how familiar with X, Y, or Z concept are you? How comfortable would you be in having a conversation about X, Y, or Z? Or how confident would you be in leading or participating in X, Y, or Z. Like before and after. I think those are things that help me to know whether or not I’m effective and sharing the sorts of things that I’m trying to share or in growing kind of understandings.
I think also there are, you know, things that are more qualitative, which could be, you know, having people do something creative in reflection to what the time has been together. To have people do something that is not just witnessed by me, but witnessed by the entire group as a way to reflect on what the experience has been together. And, you know, asking directly like, what would you like more of? What would you like less of? Is there something that I missed or we missed? There are obvious limitations to how much time one has in a day. But I think also, I have a fairly open door kind of policy with anybody that I’ve ever worked with before to, you know, oh, is something like lingering with you? Are there questions? Are there things that you wish would have been a little different? That I really avail myself to being in relationship and receiving those kinds of, yeah, words, ideas, different possibilities for how things could be. I, again, become very excited by people who are willing to actually engage with me about the things that they are hopeful for, the things that work for them, but also the things that maybe didn’t work for them and could be different.
Beth
Yeah, and I bet they tell you more than they might tell another facilitator who didn’t create that whole container and that whole experience for them, you know. We know as participants who we can share all the things with and who we can’t really, don’t we? [Khari: Hmm mm.] So you might get some wonderful engagement there that other people might not get.
Khari
Yeah, I think that’s possible. I think also I really set the expectations for the group and for me early that like nobody in here is perfect and there are going to be things that we’re going to be trying to practice and we won’t get them right the first time. And we’re also like just getting to know each other potentially and like sometimes that’s a clumsy effort. And it’s not always as graceful as we would like. And that we have to be forgiving of ourselves and each other as we attempt to move forward together and offering those kinds of ways of being together and again highlighting a sense of humility.
I often am not the expert in the rooms that I enter into. This person’s really into public health or this group’s really into public health. These people are working hard on an environmental justice project and this other group is working with youth in films and you know on and on and on and on governments blah blah blah. I want them to know that like yeah I’ve got a lot of experience around bringing people together in a good way and I still don’t think that I’m the expert on everything there is to know about bringing people together. And that it is completely likely that somebody in that room can school me, give me information that would be really powerful for me to know.
And I believe that about the group field in general, that there’s some kind of wisdom or possibility that can happen when everybody in that room feels like there’s a space for them to share what’s going on for them and to share their wisdom and experience. That the collective wisdom is always going to be more powerful than me or any other single individual inside that space, that the group has this potential for yielding something far more powerful than what again myself or any individual might be able to create. So I hopefully you know again seeding this kind of invitation but also responsibility. It’s like also a call to leadership that I have an expectation around amongst the people that I’m working with, that they should understand that like it’s not going to be made or broken because of what Khari alone does. That we have a responsibility to each other and that I’m not the only person who can support the group’s thriving. Like the power of the group’s ability to meet its own aspirations and goals, that’s a shared responsibility. And I’ll do my part but also it requires everybody to step up and do their parts too.
So like the onus of what what’s possible or what could work or what didn’t work is one that like obviously where it’s directly in action that I’ve taken that I that I really take that on. But I also am curious about participants’ own sense of like how did I contribute to what this gathering is? And for them to understand their own power in that regard. Because I think, for me at least, I always can see in a room where there’s quiet leadership happening from different individuals. Like they’re helping to provide clarity around maybe an instruction that I gave that wasn’t as clear as it could have been.
That they’re supporting other people in the room to find where the resources are that they need. You know oh I don’t have a pen or I need some paper or can you repeat that instruction in me one more time? You know those small acts are also creating the experience that we’ll have together.
Beth
I love that you mentioned that and really close this out here as we get to the end of our conversation on that shared responsibility. That is great facilitation, isn’t it? I mean, if we only looked at facilitation with groups, of learning or process, that way, that it’s a shared responsibility, we’d be doing a great job. That’s the first step in some ways to have that kind of attitude. So I love that you closed on that note. Thank you, Khari. Can I ask you one last question and that’s what’s next for you coming up? I know you have a big gathering that you’re planning. Do you want to just tell us briefly about that so that people can come if they’re interested?
Khari
Well, this year – we’ve had a couple of iterations before – it’s a gathering, a collaboration between myself, Hollyhock, Simon Fraser University’s Community Engaged Research Initiative, the Centre for Dialogue, and the College of Lifelong Learning at SFU.
We put together a gathering that’s called Together: A Gathering for Facilitators. And it’s really just to serve the community. I, for many years, had this aspiration or desire to just like be like you know with a bunch of facilitators who weren’t necessarily all from the same school or same region or had you know differing experiences and ideas around how they were able to work with community and organizations. And it felt like you know like a superhero convention or something and I wanted to just like bathe in the goodness that is all of these facilitators.
So what this event is, it happens March 5th through the 7th, and if you’re curious look to Hollyhock to find out more information. They’re sort of doing the organizing and logistics around the event. And also feel free to find me on Instagram or you can look up my website www.kwmfacilitation.com and drop me a line.
I’m really, again, excited and curious to learn about other people, what they’re up to, how they’re practicing, what they’re learning. And yeah I’d love to to meet anybody who is trying to surface these similar kinds of questions and work in this facilitation world and to be in service to communities in more and more powerful and supportive ways.
Beth
Thanks for sharing that and I’ll make sure we get those links and so on in the show notes so that people can find the gathering and they can find you and keep connecting with you. I know you’re going to get some people reaching out for sure.
Khari
Thank you so much, Beth, really appreciate the time with you, your considerate and thoughtful questions and the shared curiosity. I didn’t feel like we were at other opposite ends of the table. I felt like we were walking alongside one another on a journey, so I really appreciate that. That felt really nice.
Beth
Oh, that’s nice. Thank you. That’s a big compliment. I appreciate that. And thank you for sharing in just the deep way you think about our work. It’s been wonderful to learn from you today.
Khari
Thank you, Beth.
[Episode outro]
[Beth]
In my conversation with Khari, you know, he talked about the fullness of human life and moving towards things like challenging situations and being really excited by that, and what he could do with that as a facilitator. And I was so struck by the fullness of my conversation with Khari as he used really precise and almost unusual and unique language that I don’t hear very often, as I’ve said, to describe the things that he’s seeing and he’s experiencing and he’s feeling in the room with participants–and that they feel as well.
One of the things I thought it was so interesting that he said was that participants are all reading the room. They are noticing what’s going on with people’s faces, with people’s bodies. They’re noticing their feelings when they come up in the room and it could be that they don’t know what to do with that, but they’re noticing it. And I think sometimes we forget that. I don’t know if I talk about that as much with facilitators when we get around the table and talk with each other. We tend to talk about what we’re noticing as facilitators. We don’t really recognize or bring to the surface, like Khari did, the fact that participants do notice those things.
So we can sure capitalize on that and ask them about that and bring it into the room and get their suggestions and their solutions and so on. But we also do have to recognize that sometimes they might not have the skills to do that, and that’s where we can come in and be suggestive and helpful, potentially, as facilitators. But just to recognize that there’s so much being noticed by participants as well as ourselves as facilitators was just so important for Khari to have mentioned. And I really appreciate him coming on the show and sharing his deep thoughtfulness around our work with me and all of us.
On the next episode of the podcast, I talk with Dr. Suzanne Wertheim. I picked up Suzanne’s book, it’s called the Inclusive Language Field Guide, and I really enjoyed reading it. And I thought, oh, inclusive language, that is something absolutely that we designers and facilitators of learning have to think about a lot and it’s constantly evolving. So I thought, I’ll invite Suzanne onto the show and have a great conversation and learn from her about what’s current in inclusive language so that we all can learn as well. So that’s coming up next time on the show. Until then.
[Show outro]
Beth 46:21
Thank you for listening to Facilitating on Purpose. If you were inspired by something in this episode, please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them expand their facilitation practice too. To find the show notes, give me feedback, or submit ideas for future episodes visit facilitatingonpurpose.com. Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions for producing this episode. Happy facilitating!
