Do one less thing

The power of restraint in facilitation

Planning a workshop or an away day can be a deceptive activity. We underestimate the capacity of the participants and overestimate what can be done in the time. If we’re not careful we enter a world of delusion that has little to do with what we actually encounter.

Perhaps the greatest skill in planning, therefore, is restraint. About taking away. About less, not more.

Designing a workshop is a bit like packing for a holiday. You lay out everything you might possibly need, then start putting away those things you can do without. Harrison Owen of Open Space famously drilled the mantra: do one less thing.

Lucky for us, being based in the UK, NZ/Aotearoa and Australia, we can offer each other the restraint of distance. Unencumbered by history with the group, by connections, expectations or responsibility, we’re good at being ruthless in catching each other making a meal of planning.

We remember, for each other, that the group knows things we don’t and can quickly hone in on what’s important to them, if we get out of their way.

We facilitators often imagine ourselves as more central to what’s happening than we actually are. What we’re really doing, most of the time, is offering people a kind of permission to meet differently, to have the conversations they’re usually too busy or too tired to have in the ordinary run of things.

When people are working in difficult circumstances and with very real institutional pressures, the last thing they need is a clever process. They need some space and someone willing to get out of their way.

And you, the facilitator, also need to give yourself space, which is where you’ll grow the capacity to read what’s needed in the moment, and not to rely on a cunning plan.

Do one less thing.

Picture by Steve Xoh