Counseling Group Basics: When It’s Your Turn To Facilitate
It was my turn to facilitate today. I looked forward to this day all week and found myself feeling anxious all day. When I arrived to our group room, the group was having a discussion about something that appeared to not sit well with some of our group members. I asked the one guy in my group what he was talking about when I walked in, since he was the one leading this discussion. Apparently, it involved “a favor” by one of our group members who was not in with us at that particular time. I did not agree in carrying out that favor so I asked the members how they felt about it right before I shared my feelings of disagreement with the situation. It was like opening the flood gates. Nobody agreed but everyone appeared to have difficulties expressing that initially. We decided to talk more about it at the end of group. We did and the favor was not carried out. I guess I put everyone at ease in expressing their feelings when I spoke about mine.
My goal for today was to increase the comfort level in our group. Personally, I also wanted to get to know everyone on a deeper level. For that reason, I initiated an activity that offered the group members an opportunity to share something intimate. One of the women, for one, came right out of her shell. It was amazing. It was almost as if somebody else was sitting in her place. She came right out and admitted to not being assertive and shared her feelings about how others make her feel unimportant because she does not speak up, particularly a work. The guy even said to her he feels everyone else in our group is “loud” and she is not, so it is a lot more obvious. I agreed and told her I did notice she was not as active in the group as most members were. For the remainder of the session, she continued to actively participate. Everyone listened and respected her comments. She definitively was not invisible today.
Another girl also shared her feelings about being introverted. She even told us that she is not quite sure she will feel “comfortable” by the end of our last session because that is just the way she is. It is so hard to tell how she feels sometimes. She just appears indifferent a lot of the times yet she verbalizes otherwise. She also offered positive feedback on my first activity. She seems to be one of those people who force themselves to engage. I cannot tell if anybody else feels this way about her.
It was really interesting when the guy shared his intimate experiences. Apparently, he didn’t feel listened to while growing up. This really put everything into perspective for me. Now I know why he seems to be so attention seeking. For every activity, he has an example about how he has perfected it previously or something to that effect. He always tends to find justification on just about everything he says. However, it is not obvious to me that most group members feel this way about him.
As I am typing this paper I realize that I am able to observe a lot more as a group member than as a facilitator. I always thought I would be more conscious about other people’s behaviors if I were leading the group. I realized I was a lot more focused on myself and my personal gains as a facilitator than the interactions the group members had with each other. I just did not notice a whole lot of it. It is definitely something I feel I need to work on. From my perspective and interest, I think all I was focused on was hoping that my group would buy into what I was talking about and that they have fun doing it.
I believe I achieved both. Everyone was focused and interactive and appeared to be having fun. Nobody challenged my sales pitch. In fact, every single member verbally expressed agreeing and displayed agreement with what I was presenting. I see myself as the trend setter and I think at this point my group members are following my lead because I’m not afraid to speak my mind and I appear to be confident in what I say without offending people or being aggressive. This became apparent to me during this session.