Facilitation

The role of the host/facilitator is key. Don’t worry if you have never done it before or if you struggle your first time. Practice makes perfect. And if you are nervous about doing it on your own find a friend (or two) to do it with you. Also who you choose for the salon will help a lot as they can help take ownership and facilitate with you. The first salon was the most challenging for me as it was hard to stop people when they were talking too much or move the group to a new topic or cut off a vulnerable story that had gone on too long. Don’t worry you will get there, just do everything with authenticity and generosity and you will find what works for you. A few ground rules:

Explain your role. When you start a salon, tell everyone the purpose of the salon and what your role is. Tell them you are not here to lead or dictate the discussion, and that you will create this salon together. Your role is to move the conversation along, bring in voices that you have not heard, and gently ask people to wrap up if you need to move on. Tell people not to be offended if you have to stop them, sometimes the conversation needs to move on. We have found that if you tell them your role upfront it makes the actual performance of that role much easier.

Also, it is important that you invite them to facilitate with you. Tell them to ask questions, draw themes, move the conversation forward. You will be surprised how much ownerships people will take if you just allow them the space.

Perform your role. Make sure you do what you say you are going to do. You don’t want someone going on too long or someone stepping in and cutting others off. Your job is to be the invisible hand moving the group along.

Ask people to share personal experiences. Ask people to share personal experiences. There is a beautiful quotation by Krista Tippett the curator of “On Being” on NPR. She said, “I may disagree with your opinion but I cannot disagree with your experience. This creates an opening. I may still leave disagreeing with your opinion but at least we have creating an opening for conversation and understanding”. This is exactly what you are trying to do.

Don’t go around in a circle: When you start with people sharing personal experiences try to do it more like a popcorn experience rather than one by one in a circle. The circle model leads to long drawn out stories and makes you feel you have to have everyone take a turn. Just chose a few people to share to get their themes and get the idea going. When someone starts with their story try to draw key theme from the story and ask does anyone also share this key theme?

Prepare. In the guide to your first salon we share key questions that will help you steer and direct the conversation. You can also prepare your own from the pre-readings. Having extra questions is very helpful if the conversation stalls.

Draw themes. It is important to try to draw themes from people’s comments and put them out to the group for discussion. This is important as you don’t want to get stuck in people telling their own stories and then then next and so on. You want dialogue. Having a few academics in the room helps with this. They are normally good at extrapolating themes. That being said many people have this capability but just be thoughtful who you might invite in this regard.

Be Curious. Ask a lot of questions, dig deeper into people’s stories. Ask the “why” questions.

Don’t be afraid of conflict. This is critical to any good salon. Make sure you invite open and honest thoughts even when seemingly controversial. Let the person finish and then seek gentle responses from others around them. There will be some pretty tough statements but the group always finds a way to move through it.