As Facilitators, our role is often to help participants make sense of what is going on during the Event but without giving them answers. In fact, most of the useful learning isn't about the 'plot' or the problems to be solved or their solutions. The useful learning is typically about ourselves, our perceptions and interactions, our strengths and struggles.
To tease these out in a non-threatening and therefore accessible way, we use a guided discovery approach. This involves asking questions that only the person being asked can answer, given time and space.
There are lots of questioning approaches and a simple approach we might use is these five questions:
1. What do/did you notice happening ...?
2. Why did that happen? What explanation(s) do you have and are possible? Of those, which are most helpful?
3. Does that happen in real life/at work/during your community activity?
4. Why might that happen in real life/at work/during your community activity?
5. How can you use that? What useful general conclusions can you draw from that?
Similarly, the following useful questions (adapted slightly from the British Psychological Society's Power Threat Meaning Framework) are the kinds of tools we might use during the Event to help build awareness. The material focus is on current experience and, where appropriate, broadened out to other experiences:
- What is happening right now to you? (How is power operating in this activity/in your life?)
- How is it affecting you? (What kind of challenges or threats does this pose?)
- What sense do you make of it? (What is the meaning of these situations and experiences to you?)
- What do you have to do to make it through/survive? (What kinds of threat response are you using?)
- What are your strengths? (What access to Power resources do you have?)
- What is your story, how do you explain what's happening/happened overall? (How does all this fit together?)