Role of the Facilitator
The facilitator gets the book group started. This involves setting a time and place for meeting and then inviting participants. We have flyers to help in publicity, or you can invite people from your networks in the community. We also have people who are looking for a book group to join.
There are several tasks involved in facilitating the book group. These can be done by one person, or shared among several people, or the roles can be rotated:
- Be a timekeeper.
- Start and end on time.
- Make sure ground rules for discussion are respected.
- Make sure everyone has a chance to talk.
- Don’t allow anyone to monopolize the conversation.
Your First Meeting
Take time to introduce yourselves to each other and agree on practices for ensuring that everyone has a chance to speak and that in your discussion all views are respected.
You may wish agree to observe such practices as:
- Listen compassionately.
- Honor and respect each person’s contribution.
- Speak from your own experience.
- Avoid criticism and persuasion.
- Agree to disagree.
- Be aware of how often and long you speak.
- Seek to understand and learn.
- See www.effectivemeetings.com for other ideas of ground rules.
Session Format
The way you structure your meetings is up to you and your group participants. Decide how you will divide the time between a welcome activity, large group and dyad discussions, debriefing, and closing.
Welcome: We suggest that you start with some sort of welcoming exercise that helps participants center such as several minutes of silence or lighting a candle.
Discussion: For large group discussion, decide how many questions of each type you would like to discuss, and how much time should be used for each. Large group discussion can be conducted by going around the circle to allow participants to express their views, or through a “popcorn” style, which allows people to speak when they are ready. For dyads participants pair off and instead of dialogue, each person has uninterrupted time to answer a question, while the other member of the pair listens actively. A timekeeper is necessary to announce the time segments (usually 5 minutes per person), with an announcement when 30 seconds remain for the speaker's time, and when it is time to change speakers.
Debrief: Use this time (20 minutes suggested) to summarize some of the major ideas of the discussion. You many wish to assign someone to record these ideas, and then at the next session, if they are posted they can serve to focus attention and add continuity between sessions.
Closing: End with words of appreciation, announcement of the next meeting time and place, and moments of silence/ blowing out the candle.
*Many of these ideas are taken from The Great Turning by David Korten; Discussion Guide: Notes to Facilitators.