Facilitation and Conflict Management

The facilitator plays a critical role in community engagements. A community engagement is more than a typical meeting; it is a complex process driven by group dynamics. A good facilitator will properly manage the overall flow of engagement activities, diverse and competing views among participants, and the interaction by court actors and other partners. The facilitator should advance engagement activities in a dynamic and positive manner.

Key roles and responsibilities of your facilitators might include:

• Welcoming all participants and ensuring everyone starts with a common understanding of the engagement process and goals
• Involving contributions from all participants
• Providing encouragement to participants who may be reluctant to offer opinions
• Using prompts and questions to clarify discussion points
• Acknowledging and summarizing important points that emerge
• Keeping the discussion focused on the engagement topic
• Following the schedule for the engagement and keeping activities on time
• Summarizing and wrapping-up the engagement, thanking everyone involved, and identifying any next steps

The lead facilitators are highly visible throughout the engagement process. Because a facilitator serves as the face of the engagement session, it is crucial there is a good balance of skills and fit between the facilitator and your court’s engagement process. Skills and experience to think about when identifying a facilitator include:

• Professional experience: The facilitator should be skilled with facilitating discussions in a variety of contexts. This requires strong public speaking skills, active listening, effective time management, and the ability to quickly respond to discussion dynamics.
• Relationship to your court: The perceived legitimacy and neutrality of the facilitator is an important consideration. A facilitator without a personal or professional stake in the issue of engagement is usually preferred. Many sponsors of community engagement projects hire professional facilitators from outside organizations or communities. In other situations, it may be appropriate for facilitators to have a relationship with your court or partners, but that relationship should be told to participants for transparency.
• Relationship to the community: Although a facilitator should be neutral towards the issues of discussion, a facilitator with general knowledge of the community is important. For courts targeting historically underserved populations such as racial or ethnic minorities, professional facilitators with connections and credibility with the community can help bridge these gaps.
• Understanding of systems: Community-court engagements often focus on difficult problems related to criminal justice, fairness, and equity. It is important that facilitators understand the social and cultural context of the communities involved, power dynamics, and historical relationships to your court. A facilitator with experience or understanding of the law, court functions, and the community-court issue(s) of interest can be very valuable.
• Conflict management: The facilitator should be prepared to manage spontaneous disagreements that arise. Conflicts can occur among engagement participants, between participants and engagement sponsors (i.e., your court), or even between participants and facilitators. Facilitators should be comfortable with managing yet affirming differences of opinion in a nonjudgmental way, modeling active listening, and finding common ground among different views.

The pilot teams used a variety of strategies to meet their facilitation needs. At times they hired facilitators, especially if they felt they needed a strong lead facilitator. Other times they trained community members to facilitate small group discussions. Often the teams created documents to describe facilitator roles and tips and tricks for facilitation.

• The Franklin County, Ohio Municipal Court partnered with an expert from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University to both train team members about racial inequality in the Columbus area and facilitate their engagement with local stakeholders.
• The Nebraska Supreme Court Office of the State Court Administrator contracted with two external facilitators with backgrounds in Native American legal affairs. These experts provided facilitation and tips for this toolkit. One was a former state and tribal court judge and expert on policies impacting Native American children and their families. The other was a tribal court judge and former lead counsel to the California Tribal Court-State Court Forum.
• The Administrative Office of the Massachusetts Trial Court developed guidelines with strategies and tips  for their engagement facilitators.

• The Kansas City Municipal Court worked with Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) which provided lead facilitators, training for community facilitators to lead small groups, and printed guidelines  for the community small group facilitators.