It’s important that you “get” the participant.
That is, you need to understand what they want, and what is in the way of them getting it, at least as well (if not better) than they do.
When you communicate this understanding to the participant, their trust in your facilitation will increase — along with the velocity and depth of their process.
In this new video I talk about the two things you’ve got to understand if you want to “get” the participant, and show a route to understanding those things that you can start using right away.
As usual, post your questions or comments below.
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About Dmitri
Very clear, thanks.
Dmitri, the categories you named in your message today are very useful to me. I thought of a way I could have used them, tho a little differently, yesterday with one of my clients. I might have been more helpful if I had said to her, “So are you saying you’re really longing to take the risks to love, but what you’re doing instead is …?” I think just the framing words you have offered us would have been helpful for her to consider.
Glad to help!
Awesome.
I know what I want. I want Dmitri Bilgere available to more facilitators. And I want his wisdom integrated into more carpet work … What’s a promotion that would work? MKP Journal. MKP Facebook. Twitter?
I would love to showcase you somehow to help us and help you.
Boysen – I’ll hit you up on FB or Skype and let’s set up a time to talk….
Dimitry, I saw this work at this week’s igroup where I facilitated a man who was complaining about being sad. I started with the standard questions of where is the sadness in his body, what color is it, what does it sound like. Then I asked him what he wanted to replace the sadness with: happiness. It went fine from then on. Thanks for the coaching.
Steve
I’m glad it went well!
There seems to be a fine line between the tenativness of leading from a step behind and the confidece of trusting the process to know the participant better than they know themselves. Any thoughts?
It’s best if you are confident in your leadership of the participant, but you should DESERVE to be confident. Ie, you should know what you are doing.
That means
- having a sense of the landscape the participant might travel — the “menu” of options that are before him or her — and
- “getting” the participant so you know him or her better than he or she knows himself, if at all possible.
Problems happen when
- A leader “trusts the process” but has no idea what he or she is doing and whom he or she is working with, or
- A leader is totally controlling and has no trust in anything, and it MUST GO THE LEADER’S WAY.
Like any mastery situation, there’s internal learning and external learning. You have to know what you are doing, but the fact that you aren’t as good as you want to be yet will be upsetting, which will mess with your head. So you have to do YOUR work, so you can be transformed into the “next better version of yourself” who can actually lead more powerfully AND trust the process more fully.