The art of meeting in facilitation

Since beauty is encounter, always unexpected, always unhoped-for, only the attentive gaze can confer astonishment, wonder, emotion, never the same.

Francois Cheng Eternity is not too much

The different forms of encounters

The word encounter is evocative of a cocktail made of the unknown, surprise, and possibility. The 3rd type encounter with aliens has occupied the imagination of linguists. How to prepare to communicate with beings with unknowable languages? The encounter imagined by the writer Camus in his novel "The Stranger" reminds us of all the potential for violence and destruction placed within ourselves confronted with an other of whom we know nothing.

This stranger that we come across and that vaguely worries us can turn out to be a surface of expression to all our frustrations and our anger. Observing the spacing of the tree canopy, the encounter can also be understood as an art of avoidance. What if we also lived this shyness of the trees? What if we were to seek, through an accumulation of protocols and prevention rituals, to filter out anything that might disturb us? Isn't it comical that coaches and facilitators take so many precautions and lay down relationship frameworks advocating benevolence, confidentiality and listening as if it were not natural? 

The encounter is at the heart of serendipity, that is, a confrontation of prepared brains and chance. The encounter between cultures forces one to step outside of one's most ingrained habits and beliefs. What if the encounter was the passage through the other to know who we are ourselves, what we absolutely hold on to?

Dance is an art of the meeting of bodies at which micro adjustments go through us to synchronize us. It reminds us of the importance of rhythms, the strength of movement and the pleasure of gliding. 

Lately online dating and the famous "dating sites" are activating our minds.  This being the case,  we will have fun observing the cleavages that are organized between groups that seek to remain between them. It is indeed possible to live meetings between oneself and to remain deaf to what disturbs us and comes from another world. This type of encounter confirms our beliefs and the ready-made paths of our lives.

The mysterious moment at which unknowns are unraveled.

At this moment beliefs, representations, bodies, emotions, gestures cross and come to shake up the environment that each one has built for himself.

There is such a part of mystery, that each one seeks to build a protection to border a framework of confidence, to assert its specificity to control where it will let itself be touched. Some overplay shyness while others take the light to shine in the encounter.

Life could be an art of the encounter. Indeed the art of encounter is celebrated in education by Albert Jacquard. He advocates making it a full-fledged school education. This is a great idea because our lives are woven with encounters and recognizing in each one what transforms and transports us would be an asset to learning from our experiences throughout our lives.

This learning about otherness through questioning stands in contrast to the usual practice of placing a label on others or making a definitive prognosis. Meeting is difficult because we do not know what we are giving in the exchange and we are in total uncertainty of  what we are receiving. The encounter is never fixed, it is in the process of becoming.

In facilitation the encounter is a moment conducive to emergence

The encounter is multipolar, it concerns people, situations, knowledge, intentions. It brings face to face representations and even more so projections on others. Often it is attributed to the trainer a vigilance on the framework guaranteeing the good mediation of a content, it is also attributed to coaches a high posture on the processes and their balances.

Many facilitators are former coaches and they imagine using the same posture to facilitate groups, however in facilitation, i.e. in the art of making simple,  it seems  that there can never be a high posture. Above all, it is about circulating energy, leadership, and enriching meaning, which is why this intention cannot be placed under the responsibility of one.

In the idea of facilitators' control of the process, the question of "power over" or "power to" has simply slipped from control of content to control of form. The question of power is always present in the encounter. What will happen? What margins of uncertainty will be controlled by whom? What will the mediator-facilitator do?

The power over the other or the power of initiatives is played out in the encounter. Will what I am be able to express and be recognized? What uncertainties are acceptable to me?

It is the unpredictability of the living that predominates 

Illustration: TarasMalyarevich - DepositProtos

Sources

Channel U. Albert Jacquard. The Art of Encounter https://www.canal-u.tv/chaines/pf/jacquard-albert/education-l-art-de-la-rencontre  

Action Research. Here is teaching the art of the encounter http://recherche-action.fr/intermedes/2011/10/21/ici-est-enseigne-lart-de-la-rencontre-albert-jacquard/ 

The art of the encounter: collaborative practices https://youtu.be/gS7UkKPqCYA 

The art of the induced/uninduced encounter in Montreal's health care setting https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/23388

Françoise Hatchuel (2003), Pour une anthropologie clinique de la rencontre pédagogique Spirale - Revue de recherches en éducation  Année 2003  31  pp. 91-103 https://www.persee.fr/doc/spira_0994-3722_2003_num_31_1_1413