Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
Introduction:
How much preparation should go into facilitating
a meeting, a retreat or a negotiation? According to Suzanne Ghais,
Program manager at CDR Associates in Boulder, Colorado, it is extremely important
for facilitators to have an in-depth understanding of the situation before designing
and intervention.
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Preparation
Suzanne Ghais
Program manager at CDR Associates, Boulder, Colorado
I put a huge emphasis on
preparation. I believe that you need to have an in-depth understanding of the
people that you're working with and their situation. And then you can design a
customized intervention. The example I just gave was not a retreat; it was a
facilitation. I view the role of the facilitator as an architect of a custom
process. If you were an architect designing a custom home, you would need to
know that family. How many kids do they have? What relatives stay with them? Do
they like to socialize and have friends over? Do they entertain? Do they cook a
lot? Do they like to watch a lot of TV? What do they do? What do they like and
what is the environment around them like? What are their neighbors like? Their
neighborhood, is it trees or mountains or plains?
You'd have to understand the external environment as well as the internal
dynamics and culture of that family. So, when I look at designing an
intervention, by the way the terms facilitation and mediation are really very
fungible in my view. When I design an intervention whether it's called
facilitation, or mediation, or whatever else, I think the most important thing
is to get a really in-depth understanding of the situation. More specifically,
of the people involved and of the external environment that they're operating
in, and then design accordingly.
If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? -- Joan Baez
The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors c/o Conflict Information Consortium(Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309 Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact
