Silent Role Plays: Honing Facilitation Skills

  • Objective: To help staff practice and reflect on the components of good facilitation and teamwork.
  • Materials/Preparation: Flipchart paper, markers. Other materials for props, as needed.
  • Participants: CARE staff and partners.

Steps

Staff are divided into 3 teams of 6-8 people. Each team to takes 20 minutes to develop a silent role-play to illustrate:
  • Excellent facilitation
  • Good – but not exceptional – facilitation
  • Terrible facilitation

After preparation is complete, each team performs their role-play without using words. Following each performance, the facilitator leads a discussion with the audience about facilitation dos and don’ts based on what participants have seen in the role-play. Once the audience members have discussed their observations, the facilitator asks the performers if there are other dos and don’ts that they also portrayed. The facilitator jots down observations on the flipchart. Facilitation tips can be general, or discuss specific exercises that will be used in the study.

 

Example Tips:

Facilitation: Dos

Facilitation: Don'ts
  • Be respectful, friendly, open, and engaging attitude- oriented toward learning and listening.
  • Enable everyone to engage in discussions.
  • Give space for people to discuss issues, priorities and ways forward (NO PRE-DEFINED RIGID AGENDAS).
  • Avoid taking notes if people are not comfortable with it
  • Be sensitive to how water bottles, cell phones, etc. perceived
  • Be sensitive to seating arrangements: sitting on floor v/s chairs, circle etc
  • Ensure open and equitable environment
  • Find a neutral meeting place
  • Composure: Unfriendly, distracted serious, condescending
  • Being directive: No flexibility or curiosity to learn from others
  • Not taking time to understand local realities - only consulting elites
  • No space for discussion or influence to adapt plans (top down)
  • Using / flaunting personal wealth and status (water bottles, cell phones, dress, laptops, etc)
  • Environment: Seating enforces power imbalances

Variation

In an East/Central Africa Region (ECAR) workshop, participants also used role-play not only to discuss facilitation dos and don’ts but also teamwork dos and don’ts.

For this role-play, two teams illustrate excellent and poor facilitation teamwork, for each stage of facilitation: from preparation to facilitation and follow-up/processing as well as presentation of analyses.

Within that same workshop, some teams also used (not silent) role-play to rehearse the exercises they would facilitate during the preparation time preceding work in the field. While these preparations were sometimes presented and critiqued, most times they served as an opportunity for teams to run through each step of new exercises, and consider how each member would support the process.

Example Tips:

Facilitation Teamwork: Dos

Facilitation Teamwork: Don'ts
  • Consensus in dividing roles, clear roles and stick to them
  • Act as a team and help each other: be professional, respect teammates
  • Respect community knowledge, hand over stick
  • Make sure note-taking takes place and is precise
  • Respect the time village people are giving you
  • Reach agreement with participants on results before leaving
  • Participatory and agreement about who does what
  • Clearly explain objectives of the exercise
  • Arrive on time
  • Discuss work and help each other
  • Compare notes with each other
  • Be flexible for change, as well
  • Try to stick to one lead facilitator
  • Clear in stating objective
  • Have supplies ready ahead of time
  • Plan scenarios ahead of time: greeting, cut-off and when, where to meet later.
  • Subtle timekeeper to help with pace and time.
  • Talk on the phone or be distracted while in the community
  • Rush through the planning process
  • Lose the notes
  • Only consult too few person to represent a community
  • Hold up your team-mates
  • Right cards in English
  • Disregard community member knowledge

Working Ethically with Communities

Preparing teams to work in facilitation requires reflection and discussion on ethical ways of working with communities. Helpful guidelines for working respectfully and sensitively with communities is features on the Ethical Considerations page.

Related Tools

View more tools related to:

 

Resources

  • B Bode (2010). East Africa Regional Capacity Building Initiative in Situational Analysis. CARE International – East/Central Africa Regional Management Unit.