…and stay focussed on the purpose of the session.
A mistake I made a few times in the early days of facilitating group sessions was to think we could take on some of the undercurrents and tensions within the group that were surfacing as the strategic issues were being discussed.
We’re group facilitators, not therapists or mediators. You need to be aware of the tensions in the group, and manage them, but not feel responsible for resolving them.
The group’s there for a purpose. Tension needs to be acknowledged, but the focus needs to stay on the work to be done.
This is an important issue, and one of the topics we will be discussing in the upcoming series of group facilitation skills workshops I will be running in different locations around Australia.
I explain more about the workshops here –