How to facilitate

Terrence Seamon, who I discovered via a comment, comments on facilitation skills.  Don’t Know? Facilitate!

Does a facilitator know stuff? Sometimes, as a facilitator, I feel empty. Like I am content-free. But that's not really true.

The "body of knowledge" that a facilitator brings to his or her work includes what some call "group process:" understanding groups, how they work, the Task and Relationship dimensions of groups, the problems that groups often experience, and ways to help groups achieve their objectives.

I like this.  A major component of the training I took this summer was instruction on how to facilitate a specific Theory of Constraints process.  In this case, we need to know the material deeply, as we are teaching the material at the same time we are facilitating a larger discovery process. 

The challenge for all the students was the requirement that the facilitator remain seated at all times, meaning that there would be no illustrations on the board or scribing for the group.  That has to be done completely by the client. 

The other challenge - even harder for me - is to respond to questions by probing for more information, rather than answering the question directly.  (We're talking about questions that cover the material being discussed.)  Essentially, this is the Socratic method, but this was only taught by example.  Maybe that is the way to teach it.  What do you think?