All of us have learned, one way or another, that it’s often easier to give advice to others than to take your own. In team building, the facilitator guides teams to their own advice-giving through experiences that can motivate a change in perception, behavior, or relationship. It’s a careful process, often with intentional dancing around the big takeaway by the facilitator in hopes of letting those we serve make meaningful connections for themselves. But how do we, as those who serve others, serve ourselves? How can we better turn our skills inward to improve the qualities of our own lives? While we build teams around us, who builds the team builders?
The Humanity of Human Services
As a graduate student in Recreational Therapy, the relationship between someone in a “helping profession” or human services and their own health has been the point of significant discussion. The nature of this work often incurs a phenomenon called “compassion fatigue”, a type of interpersonal emotional burnout. Those with compassion fatigue often cite the emotionally intense nature of their work; case workers, social workers, or hospice care employees. That intensity can create a deteriorating ability to remain compassionate about the work that they do. This often causes a disconnect or apathy toward what was previously motivating and personally aligning work. Compassion fatigue also tends to increase over time, and may partially explain the low retention rate of some human services jobs within the initial years of employment. Check out “Professional Quality of Life in Recreational Therapists” by A. Wozencroft for more on this.
The flip side of this phenomenon is compassion satisfaction, and is where many of us begin! It’s often the largest appeal to this kind of work, drawing in those who feel genuine satisfaction in their work knowing that they’ve done something to improve the quality of life for another. It is among the greatest strengths that we possess, and we should celebrate it whenever possible.
It’s “Human Knot”, not “Human Not”
For team builders, the emotional intensity of our work can be more subdued, and the conflicts we encounter may span a different range of intensity than that of other human services. For example, when faced with the challenge of “how can I get this group of high school teachers to identify the building blocks of communication that they’re employing while stacking as many plastic cups as possible”, it is not a common immediate response to think “how am I protecting my own health at this moment?”.
While lighthearted, this example frames the point: The work we do is well-equipped to support a wide variety of emotional intensities, and every team builder has found themselves in a highly charged moment during their work. For each of us, how we deal with the challenges that a group we facilitate faces relates directly to how we ideally deal with our own: with flexibility and individualized compassion.
Putting the “I” Back in Team
I have always disliked the phrase “there’s no “I” in team” because it stifles the recognition of a team being composed of individuals. It’s my personal nitpick! In relation to self-care as a facilitator, however, it’s particularly important. When we engage with how teams deal with challenges, we employ an incredible level of support, flexibility, and compassion unique to the members of the team. Identifying internal emotional responses, communication styles, assumed roles, and personal boundaries are some of the bread-and-butter points for team builders to highlight–often to the surprise of the participants!
Have you ever had someone describe to you a quality about yourself that you then could not stop noticing? A professor once told me I walked with my head down and it permanently changed where I look when I’m walking. One observation (for example: mirroring your authority in the workplace by being highly directive during a team-building puzzle activity) can make a huge impact on how individuals perceive how they operate.
So why not apply it to ourselves? We can respond with compassion and support in an individualized way to some perfect strangers who signed up for a three-legged race. Why not afford ourselves the same forgiveness?
It may help to think of it this way, you are as much a part of any team that you work with while you’re working with them. You, like every other member, deserve to be supported! If you are helping a team work through a difficult problem, you too are doing something difficult! Now, does this happen differently? Of course. But the tools are the same.
3 Ways to Hammer a Nail Backwards (Using Facilitator Skills for Your Own Health)
1. Emotional Debriefing
One of the most common things I ask groups to do when debriefing an activity is to shout out some “feeling words”/emotions that they noticed during the session. There’s a simple beauty in this activity because it immediately brings the focus inward. It also gets the ball rolling on discussion. Oftentimes, one participant will relate with an emotion another has stated, or note that they felt differently. This allows us to compare our experiences with others while holding authority in our own emotions.
When applying this idea inward, it’s important to note that this articulation is not the inception of the emotion itself, but identifying and authenticating the existence of that emotion. By placing an intentional effort on looking internally at our emotional responses after the fact, we can allow for a better understanding of why we feel the way we do!
Identification also paves the way for larger connections in understanding your emotional responses. For example: I like to think that I am reasonably scared of heights and high speeds, but handle them well. This is evidenced by my work on a high ropes course and my tendency to drive fast. However, I also hate roller coasters or water slides. It wasn’t until I started identifying that I was scared of those things, and honoring and accepting those feelings, that I was able to see a connection point: Control. I don’t do well with heights or speed when I’m not the one in control of how fast or how high I’m going!
Making space for reflection for yourself may look like a number of practices. Simply speaking emotional words aloud, describing it to another person, or journaling all can serve this purpose, as long as there is intentional effort to recognize how you feel.
2. Forgiving Flexibility
There is no guarantee except that something, somehow will not go as planned. One of my favorite quotes (from Eisenhower, of all places) is “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” In work involving human collaboration, it is inevitable that any number of parts of the process will change along the way. That inevitability can be frustrating, exciting, or a completely neutral development, the important part is how we respond.
It is often the case that changes are frustrating. Work we have done or events we have prepared for may become moot points or require dedicated reworking. We may not always have the time or resources for these changes. In the spirit of emotional awareness, recognize and accept those feelings!
In the work of team building, it is essential to keep your core priorities in mind during this rerouting, focusing on just the most important parts. Flexibility does not mean completely re-inventing what you are doing, it means adapting to where you are and what you have. I often find myself asking “Is this going to make for the best use of the group’s time?”. You only have a certain window to share these experiences, so it’s important to provide what you can, even if that’s not what you had planned.
To be effectively flexible in planning, I believe that you must also be forgiving. When we are caught up in the frustration of a plan having changed, it prevents us from moving forward with the reality of our situation. Afford that forgiveness to yourself, your peers, and your clients, and accept that things will go differently! The threshold for what has gone “wrong” is much higher than what has simply changed shape.
For yourself, sit deeply with that internal forgiveness. We are often our own worst critic, while also being the only one who can change how we act or feel. Preparing for an unknown change can feel like a bizarre oxymoron, and it may always feel a little uncomfortable! But when you fully accept that change does happen, you can be ready to change with it, and that is a powerful facilitator and life skill.
To be effectively flexible in planning, I believe that you must also be forgiving. When we are caught up in the frustration of a plan having changed, it prevents us from moving forward with the reality of our situation. Afford that forgiveness to yourself, your peers, and your clients, and accept that things will go differently! The threshold for what has gone “wrong” is much higher than what has simply changed shape.For yourself, sit deeply with that internal forgiveness. We are often our own worst critic, while also being the only one who can change how we act or feel. Preparing for an unknown change can feel like a bizarre oxymoron, and it may always feel a little uncomfortable! But when you fully accept that change does happen, you can be ready to change with it, and that is a powerful facilitator and life skill.
3. Doing it Scared
I wish I had a dollar for every time I said: “If you know you want to do something, but it makes you scared, your only two options are to not do it at all, or to do it scared.” Team builders face the challenges presented to them by those they serve, as well as the challenges with doing the work itself. There’s an accompanying discomfort, resistance, or fear to having to do that, regardless of the specific challenge. It’s scary to work through a problem! We are often asking people to do something completely new to them, or to be vulnerable in ways they may not be used to.
It’s comforting to remember that we often feel scared because we are trying to protect ourselves. Weirdly, it’s similar to a base level of self-care baked into our instincts. It’s important to keep our own safety in mind as we move through experiences, and sometimes judging what is an appropriate stretch outside of our comfort zone or a step too far can be more complicated than we anticipated. It’s all too easy to prevent ourselves from having new experiences simply because they make us scared, and we do ourselves great disservice by doing so!
Striking a balance between self-protection and scared exploration doesn’t happen by itself. It takes our own willingness to learn about ourselves, experience new things, and appreciate what we’ve gained from doing it before to venture outside of what keeps us 100% comfortable. Personally, facilitation of team building has been a more powerful force for finding that balance than anything else. It takes time, and it’s surprising and unfamiliar. Bravery does not happen without fear. If you can be brave enough to ask someone else to be, you can be brave enough to try something new.
Credit: Sarah Nilson Trying New Things – Sarah Nilson Art
That Warm and Fuzzy Feeling
My hope in this is to provide some general findings on how the skills I’ve learned to help others have helped myself as well. I believe it’s a phenomenon that extends well beyond the scope of team building or group facilitation. It spreads into any profession or role that involves the support of another person. Look inward with those supporting tools, and you may be happily surprised with how well you can use them for your own benefit. Take joy in giving help to yourself, as much as it gives you joy to help others! Take care of yourselves; you and everyone around you will thank you for it.
