Notes on Facilitation: Holding Change by adrienne maree brown
As part of my ongoing study and practice in working with others, here are my most revisited highlights from adrienne maree brown’s book Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation.
As always, books are best consumed in their entirety and in the context they were intended. This is my context, curated through my lens, shared here primarily for my personal reference. There are entire sections of the book I’ve omitted (the chapters on mediation) because they’re not currently relevant to my work/study.
I’ve organized these highlights by section/chapter and anything with quotations around it is adrienne’s words, unless otherwise specified (like in the Black Feminist Wisdom section).
If this sparks anything for you, I encourage you to buy/borrow the book!
Core invitation of the book:
“How do we attend to generating the ease necessary to help us move through the inevitable struggles of life and change? How do we practice the art of holding others without losing ourselves?”
“Holding space is a variation of holding change.”
“Emergent strategy understands that all is change.”
“All of us have the potential to feel the space we can’t see.”
Emergent Strategy
“Emergent strategy is fundamentally about how we get in right relationship with change, realigning with an indigenous worldview that understands the relationality of all things.”
“Emergent strategy invites us to give up competing for death and begin collaborating with the planet and each other towards life.”
Select principles:
“Small is all.”
“There is always enough time for the right work.”
“There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.”
“Move at the speed of trust.”
“Less prep, more presence.”
“What you pay attention to grows.”
Select elements:
“Change comes from cumulative shifts.”
“Help people see, celebrate, and build on the small shifts they are making.”
“We must deal in reality. It is nearly impossible for people to build trust over time if they cannot name and face what is actually happening.”
“Never a failure, always a lesson—help people find the lesson.”
“Perfection is a commitment to habitual self-doubt,” Prentis Hemphill. “Create spaces that support participants to learn to trust themselves.”
“In healthy ecosystems there are many ways to be and many ways to grow, many paths to the future. The less you pre-process, the more you are actually present, the more possibilities are available in the room.”
“Invitation goes further than manipulation. If you manipulate them to completion, the results won’t stick, because they didn’t do the work to actually get to the conclusion themselves.”
“Help people see themselves. Help them harness the full potential of their work, intention, skill, and capacity in this moment.”
“Help people change with intention.”
What is Facilitation?
To facilitate is: “to make easy, or easier.”
Facilitation is: “making it simple to be complex together.”
“We are at a very particular moment in human history, a period of time when we need to shift away from the competitive, directive, combative, colonial energy of toxic leadership at every level of society. […] It is time to move towards ways of being that are focused on listening to each other deeply and accepting each other, whole.”
“Facilitation is a commitment to the power of the collective.”
The work is to:
“Make it easier for a group or organization to understand where they are going and how to get there.”
“Understand the culture they are trying to create, and give them a place to practice.”
Facilitation is not manipulation. “We are out of integrity if we use our power at the front of the room to make people do what we want, or think they should do.”
“Facilitation is a way of listening through and beyond the words being spoken, feeling for the current of longing underneath what can be spoken, listening through the fear, listening through the scar tissue: What is possible? What is the next step towards that possibility?”
“Facilitation is about being the grounding presence in the room”
“To hold change is to make it easy for people with shared intention to be around each other and move towards their vision and values.”
Types of Facilitation
Fractal Facilitation
“Facilitation keeps people turning towards the most necessary next step.”
“We are often our truest selves in solitude—as facilitators we want to make room for true selves to be in relationship with each other. We want to continually invite the selves that are unmasked, not performing and not repressing what is felt and known.”
“Most changes happen in small ways, and then build up. In our bodies, what seem to be sudden changes in health are often the final throes of long-term visible and invisible health struggles and choices. […] We need to pay attention to what we practice. Each practice of an organization is a small scale way to grow or shrink its own realization of its espoused mission and values.”
“Most of the time when the group feels overwhelmed by the task at hand, the task is too big. Make it smaller, find the practices that can help create the shift. It takes humility to attend to the small practices, changes and steps that actually lead to massive change.”
Attend to movement and momentum. “As facilitators, we must learn to discern when we’re feeling a way forward, versus the most elegant and right next step for this particular group of people. I can often see a way forward that doesn’t suit where a group actually is, the trust they actually have in this moment.”
Trust is strategic. “Any group that is supposed to make decisions together needs to have some basic trust-building time.”
Grow rigorous with small, repeated practices. “Practice is the path to embodiment, which is when a way of being is not just something we believe in our minds, but something our bodies can fully hold, something becomes a default in our behaviours, choices, and actions.”
“It is strategic to take the time to build internal trust in our work.”
Intentional Adaptation Facilitation
“Change is constant. You can’t stop change, control change, or perfectly plan change. You can ride the waves of change, partner with change, and shape change.”
“Loving life means committing to the adaptation to stay alive, rather than the stubbornness to stay the same.”
“Adaptation is long term or structural change in a creature or system to account for a need for survival. Adaptation is not about being reactionary, changing without intention, or being victimized, controlled, and tossed around by the inevitable changes of life. It’s about shaping change and letting changes make us stronger as individual and collective bodies.”
“If plans aren’t informed by feelings, they will inevitably end up inhumane, out of right relationship with the planet. […] Feelings are not the truth, but can often face you in the right direction.”
“We begin by listening, we presume our power not our powerlessness”
“In order to grow, in order to have impact, people do eventually need to articulate what they long for. As a facilitator, you need to make sure, above all else, that the deepest longings within the group align.”
“Center in dignity.”
“What is it you love, what is it you most long for? Whatever vision you have of the future, who is it you must be in order to realize that vision?”
Nonlinear/Iterative Facilitation
“We are always practicing something, and those practices move us towards and away from liberation. The relationship we have to time is also a practice. If we pay attention, we can shift the relationship we have with time from scarcity to abundance, from obligatory to desired, from a policed, colonized space to a practice ground on which to learn to live liberated lives.”
“Release perfection. The idea of iteration is that we are repeating—not failing, but practicing and learning. And with each repetition there are things to learn, notice, grow from. Love the body that does the practice…”
When facilitating, “track what the group is practicing.”
Mistakes can be a learning opportunity. “What makes this group tender? Angry? Freeze?”
“Learn to acknowledge when what is happening is not what you planned to happen. As the facilitator, it is particularly important to be able to take accountability if things are not going to hit the articulated goal. You may get to a place more necessary, but do so without hiding the shift in direction.”
“Don’t lie. If the group is off course, say so. Let them be mindful of their mistakes, to see their choices with dignity.”
When in doubt, “find the next relevant conversation.”
“Help people relinquish “the paths of familiar failure.”
Interdependent/Decentralized Facilitation
“Each life is an opportunity to realize and practice divinity, or connectedness. This is why spiritual experiences often feel like “all is one” or “we are all connected.” Any meeting, gathering, or process you are holding is an opportunity to create a container for that connectedness.”
“Your work as a facilitator is to help them see any unhelpful patterns of isolation, independence, or competition in their behaviours, and let a new truth of mutual support emerge. The people are almost never right the first time around. And they will never find their way if they don’t have adequate room for both making mistakes and giving/receiving feedback.” [...] “That said, only facilitate groups you trust to make the right moves, including the right mistakes.”
“Under pressure, people both give less room for mistakes and are much more likely to make mistakes, to overlook crucial information and dynamics. Your work is to help groups stay centred, connected, and focused under pressure, and to remove false urgency from the work.”
“Trust the people by asking real questions, good questions that everyone doesn’t already know the answer to. Trust the people to learn together, in real time, in small groups. Help people find each other in the space.”
“At first, the speed of trust is very slow. And then, as trust deepens between people, the speed increases.”
“Real relationships make it harder to waste each other’s time.”
“Presence increases trust.”
Principles of Embodiment
“Something else becomes possible when we orient to the body in a spirit of invitation and respect. Listen to your body to learn what you need in order to heal yourself and others. The initial messages might be confusing, still distorted by systems of oppression. Keep listening.”
“Find teachers who want to build you up, not break you down or make you into them.”
“Take responsibility for your change process. Instead of focusing on what you lack, fixing yourself, or the impossible endeavour of eliminating all hurt and harm, keep your attention on what grows your ability to feel.”
“Understand what you’re saying yes to. Look at how you spend your waking hours to get clearer on what you are saying yes to.”
“Humble yourself to what is, and appreciate that this is what has unfolded so far. Then notice that you have your whole life to shape what’s next.”
“Only teach what you know. You only know what you practice.”
Transformative Justice/Resilience Facilitation
“Your work is to break the cycle of punishment in any room you hold.”
“If you are uncomfortable with an emotion, it will be harder for the truths that speak with that emotion to move through the room.”
Creating More Possibilities Facilitation
“In the foundational period of an organization there is chaos. Accepting that the chaos is normal and natural will help us claim our creative potential in it. Accepting the chaos allows us to stop demanding impossible things from each other (such as clear prophetic answers on how everything in the future is going to work) and shift into inviting each other into co-creation of futures that work for us.”
“Help the group identify the priority conversations that need to happen. Most of the time, groups are trying to do more than can be done in the time allotted, so none of it can be done well. Priority conversations are ones where the people in the room can take action afterwards to move toward their shared goals.”
Prioritize. “What is for now, and what can be placed in a future conversation?”
“Conversations that keep going around in loops or stagnating are conversations that the group is either not interested in, or not ready to have.”
“Always be able to take a breath, that’s how you know you are not moving too fast.”
“Negative or positive attention is like cold rain or warm rain, it all waters the seed. It is amusing and alarming how often we are surprised when we give our negative attention to a person or organization and they/it wins. […] Facilitate as often as you can towards positive attention: what is needed? What is actionable? What is a solution we can experiment with? What you pay attention to grows.”
“If you are connected, there is less to figure out, less to analyze. How do you bring back connection?”
Generating Hope
“Some of your main work is helping people change their minds. And helping “keep hope alive.” Not a false hope in changes that are never coming, but practiced, informed optimism rooted in tangible changes of behaviour, attitude, beliefs, and motivation.”
“Find out who the group wants to be, and give them opportunities to become that. Reflect back to them all the ways you see them growing, attending to the smallest shifts like a gardener....”
“Skepticism is part of what is, but so is the attendance and participation of the skeptical. Even if someone comes to the meeting frowning or sucking their teeth in doubt, there is hope in that showing up, in that entering. Don’t waste it. Often the grumpiest person in the room is the one with the most tangible vision, or the most need for our efficient and impactful work.”
Black Feminist Wisdom
“As you facilitate, you are modelling one way it looks to be present to birth, change, and possibility.” — Alexis Pauline Gumbs
“Physiologists have proven that when people constrict their breathing out of fear they lower the amount of oxygen going to their brain. Millions of us are holding our breath and hoping a change comes worthy of our exhalations. What I know is that if we breathe for a change we will have more access to each other and the energies that can move us through this moment and the next.” — Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Things to check in on during facilitation (Autumn Brown):
“Are we the people who need to make this decision?”
“Look at scale and scope: what scope of decisions can we make in the time we have?”
“Is it important, urgent, and/or both? Give the time and space required of the subject.”
“Know that you cannot meaningfully agree until you have meaningfully disagreed, and that disagreement requires honest assessment of ourselves and our conditions. […] Consensus is magic. When we fully consent, we are in our agency. In our agency we can do anything.” — Autumn Brown
Culture is not accidental. “What would happen if I approached every room I facilitated as an opportunity to support the creation of a culture of liberation, creativity, and inquiry?” — Sage Crump
“A strong facilitator supports groups in shaping the experience they want to have together.” — Sage Crump
“A facilitators role is not to make everyone comfortable. Our job is to help people through their discomfort while using all of the knowledge and feelings in the room to make meaning and take actions informed by the learning. Facilitated environments working in this way open up a space where people get to live into new roles/new shapes.” — Sage Crump
“Boundaries are how you guide and protect your life energy.” — Prentis Hemphill
“Seek deep understanding. Do not assume that everything you say is instantly and fully understood by others, and do not assume that what you are hearing is necessarily what the speaker intends. As the speaker what they intend, ask for clarity instead of asserting it.” — N’Tanya Lee
“Take responsibility for your own feelings and actions. Part of how power is removed from people is convincing us we do not have it. And part of stepping into collective power is recognizing that you have power, you have agency.” — N’Tanya Lee
“On either side of change is loss. To reimagine and reshape the world, grief is a skill we need.” — Malkia Devinch-Cyril
“We can trust grief. The goal of grief work isn’t to get rid of grief, but to move closer and closer to it.” — Malkia Devinch-Cyril
“The means are the ends—and if we simply confront the oppression “out there” (the white supremacist, capitalist, heteropatriarchal structures) and not “in here” (ourselves) and “in here” (our movement communities), we will only be creating more culturally familiar versions of the systems we say we want to dismantle.” — Micky ScottBey Jones
All photo excerpts are from the book, Holding Change by adrienne maree brown.
The Group Assessments near the front of the book are a fantastic resource for teams/organizations.
Her book Emergent Strategy is a wonderful foundational text for anyone interested in non-linear growth/change.
