Felicity Steadman
Felicity Steadman is co-founder and Director of Conflict Dynamics and Chairperson of the Conflict Dynamics Empowerment Trust. She has been a professional in the field of dispute resolution since 1989, 'the IMSSA' days of ADR in South Africa. She co-designed the training materials for the first cohort of CCMA commissions and was herself a senior CCMA commissioner. She was trained and accredited as a commercial mediator by the London-based Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) in 2003, with whom she is actively engaged as Head of Faculty of mediator training. Felicity is certified by the International Mediation Institute, registered with the Civil Mediation Council in the UK, and is on the CEDR Chambers and Oxford Mediation panel of mediators. She currently works as a full-time mediator and maintains a steady caseload. She mediates a wide variety of disputes including employment and workplace, information, communications and technology, right of way, trusts, wills and probate, financial services, and partnership and shareholder.
Vanessa Botha
Vanessa (BCom Hons, University of the Witwatersrand) is the Training Manager at Conflict Dynamics. In this capacity, she manages client relationships and marketing and is also actively involved in the design and development of our training materials. She also facilitates a number of our training courses and workshops. She is an experienced consultant in the areas of Labour Relations and Learning and Development and was previously a part-time lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Business School and Faculty of Commerce for 17 years.
You are no doubt aware of the use of the mediation and arbitration processes for dispute resolution, but is there a process that one can use for managing conflict effectively so as to prevent formal disputes from arising in the first place? Facilitation is one such process.
What is facilitation?
Facilitation is a method for helping others to manage a process or to reach an agreement or solution, without prescribing or dictating a solution or outcome to them. Essentially, facilitation employs a variety of techniques and methods to help others to work effectively together during a process in order to achieve a favourable outcome or work towards a common goal.
Facilitation can help tremendously to make decisions, create consensus, share knowledge, solve a problem, generate ideas, or transform and resolve a conflict.
Why use a facilitator?
A skilled facilitator understands the nature of collaboration and is able to design an appropriate process to achieve effective collaboration between parties. A facilitator helps a group of people to work together better, understand their common objectives, and plan how to achieve these objectives.
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Facilitation works well in situations where parties have the following objectives in mind:
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There may be some scope to use facilitation to build team spirit and camaraderie and to ensure that all members of a department or team “toe the line”. There may even be some scope through facilitation to increase awareness of important policies and procedures and consequences of non-compliance and to build skills, for example, conflict handling skills, but these are not primary objectives for facilitation. Typically training will be a more appropriate intervention for increasing knowledge and building practical skills.
Choosing a facilitator
The choice of the facilitator is key to the success of the process. Facilitators should be trained in needs analysis, process design, and process management. Facilitators are ideally also trained and accredited mediators who know how to manage:
- communication and conflict in the process;
- multiple stakeholders and interests;
- large groups;
- time-keeping;
- dominant or withdrawn/quiet individuals; and
- potential deadlock
amongst other possible challenges.
Designing the facilitation process
Prior to designing the facilitation process, the appointed facilitator/s will conduct a needs analysis with the parties, or a few of their representatives. During this discussion the facilitator will probe the intended purpose of the facilitation and clarify the expected outcome/s. The facilitation process will then be designed by the facilitator to deliver the expected outcome/s.
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The facilitator will work to identify all interested parties to ensure that the process is as inclusive as possible. The rule of thumb is that any party who could ultimately obstruct the implementation of the agreed outcome should be included in the process. This might mean, for example, including minority unions within in a unionised environment. |
Consensus-based processes, such as facilitation and mediation, work best if they are conducted on a voluntary basis, i.e. that all parties agree to participate rather than being required to participate. At the pre-facilitation stage, the facilitator will work to get buy-in from all involved parties.
Of course, budget is a consideration in any process design and implementation. Both the actual cost of the process, as well as the time to be invested in the process, must fit the available budget. There is a definite benefit to holding a facilitation at a neutral venue away from the workplace as it can evoke a sense of “being away together” which can add a “team-building” benefit to the facilitation. The approach of booking a neutral venue for the facilitation is therefore commonly used in relationship-building processes involving unions and management. Ultimately the time and financial budget devoted to the process should be realistic.
Having discussed all of the above with the parties, the facilitator will design the process, including a step-by-step process flow. This will potentially include ice-breaker exercises, discussions in joint and separate groups, in plenary and in smaller groups. The process flow will be based on modern problem-solving concepts, most notably the importance of understanding the problem before trying to fix it.
- Facilitators might use various tools in the implementation of the process, for example:
- A ‘temperature gauge’
- Whiteboards and flipcharts
- Participlan tools
- Preference indicator assessments such as the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Styles Inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or the Belbin Team Roles test
- Interactive software such as Mentimeter or Slido
- Climate survey
- SWOT analysis
etc.
The outcome of the facilitation process
The facilitation will typically result in agreed actions. Each action is time-tabled and individuals or groups are allocated responsibility for implementing the agreed outcomes.
Actions arising from a relationship-building initiative often coalesce around topics such as communication, training and development, discrimination, procedural change or implementation, and such like. On the other hand, actions arising from of the facilitation of a strategic planning session might include matters such as marketing (for example, brand building and social media presence), business development (for example, reaching more clients, converting more proposals and processes) and enhancing staff capacity and wellbeing.
The outcome of the facilitation is documented by the facilitator and delivered to the parties in soft copy typically within a few days after the conclusion of the process. This record of the process outcomes will provide a valuable guide to the parties as they commence work on implementing the agreed action plan.
In some cases, there may be a request for the facilitator to be involved in future follow-up on the progress toward achieving the action plan.
What is an RBO process?
A process known as Relationships-by-Objectives (RBO) was pioneered in the 1980s by the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa (IMSSA). It is well suited to repairing seriously antagonistic, mutually destructive relationships by building a common vision and strategic direction, and/or as a form of periodic mutual review to keep relationships on track. An RBO process is not appropriate as a method for conducting substantive bargaining or as an alternative to a disciplinary hearing, although it can certainly be an extremely valuable tool when used as part of the preparation between the parties leading up to collective bargaining.
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The RBO is a structured process that seeks to assist parties to listen to each other more effectively and to generate proposals for future relations which are founded not only in their own but in each other’s interests. It seeks to create a platform for long-term relationship-building and requires a commitment to use it in good faith for relationship-building purposes. |
The RBO process draws from a number of disciplines, including: organisation development, mediation & facilitation, management by objectives, change management, system design, and employee participation.
Examples of key questions typically posed during an RBO are:
- “What are the key issues that we need to address to improve the relationship between the parties?”
- “What could the other party do to develop and maintain a constructive relationship with me/us?”
- “What could I do to develop and maintain a constructive relationship with the other party?”
An RBO should be facilitated by a mutually acceptable, neutral, and properly trained third party. It will be important that the leadership of each of the participating parties actively champion the process from its early preparatory stages, through the actual RBO process, as well as into the future to ensure the implementation of agreed action plans.
In conclusion
A customised facilitation process can prove to be an invaluable tool for relationship building, conflict management, and dispute prevention.
Conflict Dynamics administers facilitated processes from start to finish using its panel of trained and accredited facilitators. Contact Vanessa Botha (vanessa@conflictdynamics.co.za) for further information or to receive a proposal for running a facilitated process for your organisation.