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Mastering Group Facilitation: Goals, Balance, and Engagement · Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom

• 0:05
  Welcome to Professor Peterson's Psychology Classroom,
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  connecting the science of human behavior to everyday life.
• 0:13
  Here's Dr. Curtis Peterson.
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  All right, so if we were to summarize Whoops.
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  Summarize this first part of class and what we're
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  talking about,
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  about being a good facilitator,
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  we could put it in these 4 categories.
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  And this is again just a summary, summary of
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  everything. So being a good facilitator
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  is first understanding the goals.
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  This goes into the planning process.
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  This should be the continued way you want the group
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  to goal, go, go,
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  or goal. I'm trying to figure it, got my words mixed
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  up.
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  And continue, and this one is important,
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  and I do want to just spend a little bit of time on it just
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  just a minute or two. Understanding goal,
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  the goals, isn't just because that's the purpose of
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  the group or that's what you're getting
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  paid to do, okay?
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  Understanding the goal is making sure that the group members will leave
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  with skills and abilities that they didn't come to
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  the group to start with. The other part of it is,
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  is that it's about helping and keeping the
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  group focused. Okay, in,
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  in some groups you might be discussing
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  things that then just make the group
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  take a complete U-turn or a complete offshoot
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  of what you're really trying to, uh,
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  have the group focus on. Okay,
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  and if you don't have a clear idea as a facilitator
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  what the goals are, your groups can make a
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  right turn all of a sudden, and you may go
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  with that right turn instead of recognizing
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  that we're getting off task and saying, okay guys,
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  so this seems to be an important topic for you guys.
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  And, but we'll come back to that later. Let's get
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  back onto the path of what we're trying to achieve today.
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  Okay, and keeping that in mind so that your
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  group is most beneficial in
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  that setting. Okay. Um,
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  and then we've been talking about this and we'll continue to talk
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  about this. But involving everyone,
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  always trying to give the quiet person space to exist
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  and setting boundaries for the person that wants
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  to exist during the whole entire group.
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  And getting that all,
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  the whole group to be involved, keeping the
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  group and the agenda moving forward. This kind of goes with understanding goals.
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  We're there to Uh, for specific reasons.
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  Um, and, and we have an agenda that we
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  need to make sure we get through so that the, the group members aren't
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  continually stuck in this cycle of non-growth.
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  And then decisions are made democratically, going back
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  to this as a group process. This isn't someone— this isn't where
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  someone says we're gonna do You know, if you think about the education
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  setting, and I, and I'm poor at doing
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  this at the beginning of the lecture, but the instructor always starts
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  with the learning objectives,
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  right? And then the instructor
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  goes through those learning objectives methodically
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  through the lecture and
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  doesn't leave any room for the class to say,
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  hey, we want to talk about this more, or we want to focus
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  on this, because they have to get through those
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  learning objectives. While in the group,
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  we need to provide room for understanding
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  when the group decides that we need— they need to focus
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  on that more, but also keeping us going
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  through those learning objectives. And balancing those is
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  a job, as we would say, of the facilitator.
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  Okay,
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  since that was a summary, I won't make you put in the