Page 343 - Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills: A Guide for Professionals

CASE ANALYSIS 7

How should Betty set up the meeting room to encourage group interaction?

Nutrition professionals and managers need to assist in group problem solving by developing their roles as
group facilitators. Effective facilitation requires training and discipline to stay in the role of guide, monitoring
unobtrusively and adding interjections only as needed to maintain group process and functioning, while not
actually becoming a participant. Described in the following paragraphs are specific skills that need to be
practiced to develop group facilitation skills.1,13

Relieving Social Concerns

A tenet of group dynamics suggests that social concerns take precedence over task-related or work-related
concerns. In other words, a person’s first concern is with being accepted and acknowledged as worthy. If
people feel anxiety about being with unknown others, they generally do not participate. One way in which a
facilitator can attend to social concerns is to spend a few minutes at the beginning of each meeting allowing
people to interact socially, providing “open time” to establish or reestablish positive regard for one another.
Only after the members have had their social concerns met can they wholeheartedly participate in task
concerns.

Tolerating Silence

After facilitators have made opening remarks, have made sure that everyone knows everyone else, have
articulated the desire for everyone’s participation, and have stated the reasons or purpose for the meeting, they
might rephrase the topic in the form of a question and then invite someone to comment. Because members
frequently hesitate to express opinions with which their superior or facilitator might disagree, they often wait
to hear that person’s opinion first.

At times, no one may want to initiate discussion. Silence is likely to occur most during the early stages of an
ongoing group. After the group comes to understand that the facilitator truly does not intend to dominate,
lead, or force opinions, members begin to use the meeting time to interact with one another. For those first
few meetings, however, the facilitator should repeat the intention not to participate, should encourage others
to participate, and then should just sit patiently.

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