Recognizing the “Flags” in Your Own Life
We all bring personal biases into a conversation. As a facilitator, we have to become familiar with the biases we carry so that we can best serve the audience and participants.
Conflict gets a bad wrap. But conflict doesn’t have to be destructive. Actually, the only way to be productive is to embrace conflict. We can’t repair a tear we don’t know about. But conflict often leads to an emotional reaction within us as we’re facilitating. It can be difficult to hear hard truths and not react defensively. Non-defensive listening is a skill we must work to develop. I don’t want you to think that non-defensive listening is always the answer; sometimes the language being used or ideas being expressed are dehumanizing and require an ending of the conversation. What I’m talking about are the feelings we get when someone is telling their truth and it feels to us like an attack.
There may be times in conversations where you (or a group you identify with) may feel attacked. In those moments, in a good faith conversation, I need to let myself feel that reaction, but choose a productive behavior.
Productive behaviors can take on many forms. It can be:
- Taking a pause to let the statement hang in the air before responding
- Asking a question rather than responding.
- Landing on qualified agreement, which means you agree with part of the statement that is factual to redirect the conversation
- When feeling emotional, go to dates, data, and safe questions with closed answers to regain a sense of calm
To prepare for the hard conversations we may have as a facilitator, we need to understand our own personal biases so we can remain calm and in control when we may feel emotionally charged by a question or comment. The following exercise will take you through exploring your own personal biases.