Aberystwyth University Who You Are as A Facilitator Discussion

DISCUSSION BOARD #3 ASSIGNMENT: WHO ARE YOU AS A FACILITATOR?

Basic Assignment

The purpose of this discussion post is to reflect on your own stories about yourself and how those stories influence your facilitation style. You will also use this 1 -2 page discussion post as an opportunity to set goals for yourself and to extend, enrich, and change the aspects of your story that you want to improve.

Benefits of the Exercise

For this discussion post, you will use reflection as your primary resource. Writing and reflection go hand in hand. This is an opportunity to reflect on your strengths and the areas of yourself that you’d like to “extend, enrich, and change.”

Directions/Organization of the Message

First, for this assignment you will read Pearce’s chapter, “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?: The Importance of Knowing Who You are as a Facilitator.”

Second, you will take the questionnaire (pp.25 – 29 in the Pearce Reading).

Third, you will use the results of this questionnaire to reflect in your essay on four categories: conflict, listening, curiosity, and facilitating. You should consider the following questions for each of these four areas in your essay:

• Questions 1-8 ask you to reflect on conflict situations or disagreements and how your views and responses may vary depending up the type of relationship you have with the person. These questions are designed to help you think about the stories you have about yourself in a variety of conflict situations. Are there patterns you notice about your style of managing conflict? What differences do you notice in your response if you don’t know the person or don’t feel much stake in the outcome verses feeling passionate about the topic and/or the relationship? (Make sure to discuss at least three different contexts in your analysis.)
• Question 9 is about your listening patterns. What do you notice about your listening? When is listening easy for you and when is it difficult? When are you listening openly and when do you tend to listen for the flaw in the argument or perhaps listen half-heartedly? (Make sure to discuss at least three different contexts in your analysis.)
• Question 10 relates to your level of curiosity in conversations. To what degree and what contexts are you curious to know experiences and perspectives of others? What engages your curiosity and what closes it down? How do you show your curiosity during conversations? (Make sure to discuss at least three different contexts in your analysis.)
• Questions 11-14 invite you to think about your views about yourself as a facilitator. Please reflect on the following 3 questions: What stories do you have about your strengths and fears? What are the hallmarks of a successful facilitation? What areas would you like to develop?

Finally, you will end your paper with a fifth section entitled “Extending and Enriching My Story.” The stories you have been able to tell about conflict, listening, curiosity, and facilitating are the stories that you author and, therefore, are the stories that you can enrich, extend, and change. Once you have an idea of areas you would like to develop, here are some questions to provoke your thinking for this final section:

• Being as specific and concrete as possible, identify the areas that you would like to develop or change.
• For each area that you identify, describe concrete steps to move you closer to your desired goal.
• As you think about the steps you’ll take, identify the people and outside resources that will support you. Think of role models that you might observe and who might also work with you. And think of people who are also committed to their own growth and development who might be interested in providing and receiving mutual support.

Make sure you cite two different pages in Kim Pearce’s article.