This is the third of four parts of general feedback to advanced facilitators. The others are:
- Questions I frequently ask of facilitators.
- Things facilitators tend to do too early – and what to do instead
- How not to make decisions for the client.
- How to track where the client is perceiving from.
3. Not making decisions for the client
Suppose a client says:
I can either stop and stay there or move on through the feeling.
What question would you ask, and what would you ask it of?
Whether you ask about “stop”, “stay”, “there” or “move on”, “through” or the “feeling”, you will have made a choice to attend to one ‘side’ of the client’s ‘either/or’ rather the other. Whichever you don’t choose could be more important. Since going back takes extra effort, many inexperienced facilitators take the path of least resistance and keep going in the direction first chosen. But then the client does not find out about the other side of their story. There is an alternative – and it’s much easier: Don’t decide. Why choose when you have so little to base it on? Better to let the client decide. To do this you can simply ask:And when you can either stop and stay there or move on through the feeling, is there anything else about either stop and stay there or move on through?
This way you facilitate the client to consider both sides together. Then you notice whether they go one way or the other. If they do, always note the option the client didn’t choose, and later in the session come back and check the choice not taken – the road not travelled. There are other questions you could ask which don’t choose for the client, and here are two:And when you can either stop and stay there or you can move on through the feeling, what would you like to have happen?
I would consider this question if it seemed the client didn’t know which choice to take and that gave them a dilemma (i.e. a Problem in the PRO model). If you choose one or the other, you may ‘solve’ this particular dilemma for the moment, but what will they have learned about handling dilemmas? Probably not much. Better to ask WWYLTHH? of the dilemma.And when you can either stop and stay there or you can move on through the feeling, then what happens?
This is a clever question because by moving time forward the client finds out what happens next. We know they ‘“can” do either, but what do they actually do? I have a slight concern that, depending on how the question is asked, it may be seen as favouring ‘moving on’ rather than ‘staying there’.
