Holding a mirror…

Transcript of this video:

I was at an event recently with my good friend Rob Poynton where the client had had some adverse experiences of facilitation before, where they felt that the facilitators had tried too much to be the experts, to be smart-alecky in shorthand. So they asked us to do what you might call a more pure form of facilitation where we set up a process, but we’re very careful not to offer them too much advice or instruction.

And Rob said that perhaps our role then might be to sometimes act as a mirror to the group. The idea being that when you act as a mirror, you might make some observations about what you’re seeing, but you may not tell people so much what they should do. So, for instance, you might observe at a certain point in the process, if they were organizing their own breakouts, you might notice that they do that in larger groups and standing.

Now, that observation isn’t completely neutral. They might perceive that as offering a hint, but know more than that of what they should do. Now, that’s not to say that’s the only way you should facilitate. Sometimes in facilitating, you do need to give a firmer instruction. But I like this idea of holding up the mirror as a way to think about how you might respond to a group.

It reminds me of a story I’ve told before by the brilliant Tim Galway, who wrote The Inner Game of Tennis, who had a tennis client come to him as a tennis coach, and the gist of it was something like, I’m having a problem with my backhand returns, I’m not reaching back far enough, or something like that, I’m not a tennis player, forgive my ineptitude if I’ve got that wrong.

And Galway asked him, oh, and have you been to any other coaches? Oh yes, I’ve been to lots of coaches and they all agree with me, but they don’t seem to be able to help me make a difference. And Galway said, oh, that’s interesting. Well, show me, show me your backhand return. Served him a few balls, watched his backhand and went, oh yeah, no, he’s not reaching back far enough.

But thought, but it’s no good me telling him that because he’s had that from several people already. I wonder what I could do differently. And then he had this idea to get the player to stand in front of a large window that was nearby and served him and had the player watch himself in the reflection in the glass.

And as soon as he served him and the guy did his backhand, he went, oh, oh no, I’m not reaching back far enough. I love this story because the surface content was the same, but clearly he understood that in a different way. Before he was saying it because his brain sort of technically understood it and he was saying what he’d been told, but until he’d actually seen it, until he’d had that much more visceral feedback, he didn’t have the information he needed to make any change. And now he had the seeds of progress.

And that’s a literal example of holding up a mirror, isn’t it? But I’m talking about less literal versions where just offering each other more helpful visceral feedback and observations about what we’re seeing rather than telling them what to do is an interesting move to consider.

I think leaders are often in a tricky position with this because they often have this experience of telling people to do things and restating values and themes again and again and again with this vague sense that even though people are nodding they’re not really getting it. And the trouble with leaders is the followers often find it hard to challenge them or ask them or say what they really think so that the leader can speak, but he isn’t getting that visceral sense of a real connection to people. It’s being blocked by, in this case, the hierarchy.

And that happens in other contexts as well. And in a way, it must be a bit like trying to ski where someone has numbed your legs. You’re lacking in skiing, you’re lacking that vital visceral information that allows you to do it properly. Without the feeling, the visceral feeling in your legs, no amount of visual data is going to help you to do a good job.

Another version of this, I experienced myself a few weeks ago when I was interviewed for his podcast by Will Flindle. And it was videoed, so I get to watch myself back in this very engaging conversation with Will, and I notice he started interviewing I realized, oh, it’s like you’ve held up a mirror to me. I get to see myself and hear myself talk, see myself respond to you, and I see a version of myself that I find quite interesting, that gives me a different sense of myself, allowed it to feel more like a very real conversation and less like, as it can sometimes happen with these kinds of things, less performative and more real, because in his way, he held up a mirror to me.

So, those are just a few thoughts that really were provoked by the idea of holding a mirror.

Thumbnail photo by Tuva Mathilde Løland on Unsplash