Let’s Define Facilitation as:
“The art of leading people through processes toward agreed-upon objectives in a manner that encourages participation, ownership and creativity from all involved.”
Principles of Facilitation: The Purpose and Potential of Leading Group Processes, David Sibbet, The Grove Consultation International, 2022
A Chrysalis is:
A temporary container that holds a caterpillar while it undergoes a complete change and transformation into a butterfly.
So what do Chrysalis have to do with Facilitation?
I understand my role as a facilitator as being like a Chrysalis’ role in the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly.
As a facilitator, I create temporary but critical containers for transformation. Before beginning any transformation, I work with groups to understand its essential purpose (i.e. shared vision, values, outcomes and outputs) and create the shape of the facilitative container accordingly.
While I hold a group during facilitation, I expect that we will melt like a caterpillar in a Chrysalis. In our protected space, I help groups explore what is most important to them, understand the contributions and strengths of all participants, evoke their imaginations and intuition to experiment with new ideas and forms, and to even get messy when needed. But all of this transformation is creative, inclusive, and efficient, oriented to the specific outcomes of having your group experience existing and functioning in a new way.
Once I gently remove the facilitative container, your group will be ready to practice its new capabilities and perspectives, with the confidence of a transformed butterfly.
(Sources of Inspiration: adrienne maree brown blog post “deep change”, June 8, 2009; Leon Vanderpol’s book A Shift in Being (p. 57) via Tema Okun’s White Supremacy Culture – Racial Equity Principles; National Geographic’s “Butterfly: A Life”; Science Insider’s “What’s Inside a Caterpillar ‘Cocoon’?”; Leah Penniman and Grassroots Economic Organizing’s butterfly model of transformative social justice via Yes! Magazine, November 2021; Training for Change Handout, Meeting Facilitation: The No-Magic Method)
Hilary Pollan Facilitation 