A facilitator who steps back does not neutralize the power relations in a group, they let them play out freely; a facilitator who imposes their vision closes thinking down. I defend here a third position, which consists in speaking in the first person, as one person among others, without confusing oneself with one’s own ideas. It translates into concrete gestures, which I detail at the end as directly usable methods.
« That I would almost no longer be there »
During a training session with a theatre company, an actress voiced an aspiration that kept coming up in the exchanges: « I would love for the children to talk among themselves. For me to be almost no longer there. For them to manage to put things into words by themselves. »
Another, a few minutes earlier, had said what seems to be the opposite: « I think adults need to show that they are not all in agreement with this stance. That young people understand that not all adults think the same thing. »
To my mind, these two positions describe two moments of a single tension, which lies at the heart of what it is to facilitate a discussion with young people about things that matter: what place should one give to one’s own adult voice?
The void left by the adult does not stay empty
In the world of cultural mediation there is a recurring aspiration to the disappearance of the facilitator. The ideal would be a framework working so well that the person running it would become invisible, the participants creating, exchanging, thinking, without needing an adult to authorize them to do so.
This ideal has real value. It says something important about the purpose of the work, which is the participants’ autonomy, their capacity to think for themselves, to build together something that does not depend on the presence of the expert. It is the goal of any education properly understood, and Paulo Freire, in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968, English translation by Myra Bergman Ramos, 1970), gave it its most condensed formulation: « no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught; people teach each other, mediated by the world ».
But applied too literally, this ideal produces a paradox. When the facilitator steps back to « make room for the young people », the void they create is immediately occupied by the most spontaneous group dynamics, that is, by the informal hierarchies already existing in the class, the ones that have long decided who always speaks, who never speaks, and which positions dominate because they are already dominant. The absence of the adult has not suspended the power relations, it has given them free rein, since no one comes to temper them any more.
« A feeling which exists within himself »
There is a considerable difference, and one not always well understood, between imposing one’s vision and being present as a person who has a point of view.
Imposing one’s vision means using one’s status as an adult, an artist, an expert to steer the participants towards what one has planned for them to think. This is the conception Freire calls « banking »: one deposits what one knows into those who do not yet know.
Being present as a person who has a point of view means saying: here is what I, with my history, my lived experience, my way of seeing things, felt or thought. One does not tower over the discussion, one contributes to it, as one voice among others, with the specificity of an adult voice that has reflected on these questions, that has a different experience, and that can bring something the young people do not yet have.
Carl Rogers, in Freedom to Learn (1969), described this shift with great precision with regard to the teacher. The teacher who owns their feelings as their own no longer needs to impose them. They can like or dislike a student’s work without that making the work objectively good or bad, because they are merely expressing, writes Rogers, « a feeling which exists within himself ». What then becomes possible is an exchange between real persons, in place of a disembodied transmission.
And above all, this presence tells young people something that cannot be said in any other way: adults too have positions, doubts, contradictions, they are not machines for producing consensual truths. Seeing an adult own a particular position, not as the truth but as their own, authorizes young people to do the same.
To think is to be two
There is an element that this description still leaves aside, and which seems to me decisive: one does not oneself hold a univocal opinion. On things that matter, questions arise within one and the same person, contrary positions coexist there. And this can be frightening, because not being sure of oneself, in our culture, feels like having no identity, like not knowing how to think.
Hannah Arendt makes it possible to turn this fear completely around. For her, thinking consists in a silent dialogue of me with myself; the one who thinks is « two-in-one », and it is this possible inner disagreement, this back-and-forth between self and self, that constitutes the very activity of thinking (« Thinking and Moral Considerations », 1971, and The Life of the Mind, 1978). In other words, disagreeing with oneself is not a defect of personality, it is the sign that thinking is taking place. Arendt reminds us, moreover, that Socrates, in the dialogues, did not seek to destroy the opinions of his interlocutors in order to replace them with a truth, but to reveal the truth proper to each opinion, to set it to work. This is the very gesture of a discussion facilitator.
An adult who says in front of young people « I am asking myself the question, I am not sure, there are two ways of seeing this within me » is not showing weakness. They are showing what living thought looks like, and they authorize everyone to host their own contradictions instead of being ashamed of them.
We are not our ideas
If this uncertainty is so frightening, it is because we identify with our ideas. We believe that we are our points of view, so that a disagreement over an idea is received as an attack on the person, and giving up an opinion feels like an amputation.
This identification was worked on very early in the history of thought. The Aṭṭhakavagga, one of the oldest surviving Buddhist texts (a chapter of the Sutta Nipāta), is almost entirely devoted to this subject: the sage is described there as one who does not make of their views a possession or an identity, and who for that reason does not enter into disputes, for one only quarrels to defend what one believes to be oneself. This is not esotericism, but a very fine psychology of debate, formulated some two thousand five hundred years ago.
Contemporary experimental psychology has arrived at the same place by its own paths. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, developed by the American psychologist Steven Hayes, rests on what it calls cognitive defusion, that is, the capacity to observe a thought as a thought, one mental event among others, instead of living it as a truth or as a part of oneself. Controlled studies (notably Masuda, Hayes and their colleagues, in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2004) show that this simple shift, looking at one’s thought instead of looking at the world through it, reduces the grip it exerts. If I can observe my ideas, then I am not my ideas.
For the facilitation of a discussion, the consequence is direct. A facilitator who does not confuse themselves with their ideas can place their point of view in the middle of the circle as a common object, which the group has the right to examine and to transform. They can welcome a young person’s disagreement without feeling attacked, and change their mind in front of the group without losing face, since there is no face to lose, only a thought that goes on being made.
Seven gestures for being present without crushing
Here, drawn from my practice and from the references above, are concrete gestures for holding this place.
- Speak in the first person. « It is important to respect differences » closes the debate, because it is a norm. « When I saw that scene, I felt something that made me uneasy » opens something, because it is an experience, and an experience cannot be wrong, it can only meet other experiences.
- Voice your doubts too. Say out loud that you are not sure, that you have changed your mind, that there are two ways of seeing this within you. This shows young people what thinking in the making looks like, and authorizes them not to be univocal either.
- Present your idea as an object, not as a part of yourself. Saying for example « this is where my thinking stands, it may change » places the point of view in the middle of the circle, at the group’s disposal. It can then be discussed without anyone being attacked.
- Welcome disagreement without resolving it. If a young person contradicts what you have just said, automatic validation (« that’s a very good point ») and correction (« but in reality ») both close something down. Curiosity opens it: « that’s interesting, tell me why you see it that way ».
- Stay silent after speaking. The temptation to fill silences with new questions and new prompts is strong. Yet the silence that follows a contribution is often the moment when someone, elsewhere in the group, is thinking, and interrupting it means interrupting that thought. I developed this point in the article Listening and silence.
- Watch who is not speaking. Attention to how speech is distributed is part of presence: noticing those who stay silent, opening a door for them without forcing them through it, and not letting the already dominant voices occupy all the space.
- Do not aim for final agreement. A successful discussion is not one that ends in consensus. It is one from which everyone comes out with their thinking a little more worked through than when they came in, including when disagreements remain, and including for the facilitator.
Someone who takes seriously what is being said
There is no formula. There is a particular quality of attention, to what is happening in the room, to who speaks and who does not, to what is said and what is avoided. This attention is itself a form of presence that young people perceive, even without naming it.
A facilitator who really listens, not to validate or invalidate but to hear, creates what neither self-effacement nor imposition can create: the confidence that there is someone there who takes seriously what is being said. This confidence is the condition of true speech.
So, must you have something to say to facilitate a discussion? Yes, but not a message to transmit. What you need to have is a point of view you agree to put at stake, doubts you agree to show, and a way of listening that gives every word the weight it deserves.
