Critical facilitation: Learning through intervention in group processes

What managers do in terms of managing groups of people in the workplace, or interacting with different stakeholder groups, requires similar skills to those of the process facilitator in management consultancy. There are different views of the role of the facilitator in the management literature that have been advanced as ways of aiding group processes. This article offers an account of how the role of facilitators might be extended towards a process of 'critical facilitation'. The view that we present is elucidated through our using an exemplar of our application of this approach. This mode, of facilitation was used by us as part of a research initiative aimed at exploring standard setting in the National Health Service in a region of the UK. It involved facilitating peer-group and multi-agency workshops involving six cross-organizational groups. By using this exemplar we show how facilitators might intervene in group discussions and become involved in various ways in the challenging of statements made, as part of the process of discourse. Our view of how statements can be scrutinized is based on a pragmatized version of Habermas's concentration on different types of validity claims that may be invoked in speech situations. We suggest that critical facilitation does not consist of assuming an uninvolved (more or less detached) attitude, but rather of developing an orientation of openness to discourse. We rely to some extent on Habermas's view of what discourse might involve, although we do not concur with his requirement that the search for consensus must inform the process.