Mai-Anh Tran on Facilitation

A year and a half ago I went to South East Asia with some of my seminary peeps, including Professor Mai Anh Tran. It's been my experience that cross-cultural encounters often highlight the different ways people understand modes of communication and how those modes meet up with/in/through power dynamics. Dr. Tran helped me think about those things in depth during my last year and a half in seminary. We kept in irregular email communication and what I've posted below are her thoughts about speaking, listening, role, facilitation, intuition and power. She gave me permission to post this. I am deeply indebted to her not only for the gift of these words, but for her role as co-journer with me along the path of life-long-learning. Please, please, please add your own thoughts about the issues raised...

Email from Mai-Anh Tran April 2008

With regard to facilitating process, my educational training allows me to think of pedagogical & communication skills and sensibilities in group facilitation that my own feminist consciousness can intuit. I constantly pay attention to what is explicit, implicit, and null; to how power dynamics & power differentials are expressed verbally & bodily-kinesthetically & "psychically"; to the styles of communication which different people are operating out of; to the "horizons" that participants may be coming from (as in Gadamer's "fusion of horizons"). Like the Dean, I, too, am led by intuition, but I think my intuitive skills are sharpened only through critical analysis of why I must do what I do. I must also be aware of what my own patterns & tendencies, so that I would be aware of what I would "fall back to" in crisis mode, for instance.



In a classroom setting, I am the type that would plan the session down to the minute (I do break-downs of the session by time blocks), ONLY IN ORDER that I would be able to throw the "plan" out of the window and "go with the flow." I always try to have in my head an understanding of the overarching goals to be accomplished, and if we need to deviate from my well-orchestrated plan to accomplish those goals, so be it. This is why I think good discussions are harder to plan for than lectures-in a lecture, I only have my own thinking to account for, and the trajectory of my thinking doesn't have to be shaped by interlocutors, at least not until I stop talking.



There's also the level of perception: how I am PERCEIVED by others in my authoritative role and in the way I make decisions. My rationale for doing something one way may be misunderstood by others as being something else. Example: If I make a conscious decision to not cut off a student who doesn't often speak in class and let them speak for more than their "fair share" of time, I might be accused by other students of not being able to manage time so that "everyone has an equal chance to speak" (the ever so problematic liberal democratic assumption of "equality"). OR, if I refuse to interject and adjudicate a conflicting debate between students, I might be accused of not being able to assert an authoritative voice. I must also be aware of how people try to peg me into various "identity holes" as they size me up and determine whether or not to give me credibility & respect. (Communications experts seem to think that within the first 10 seconds or so of your appearance, even before you get to utter anything at all, people have already sized you up in one way or another to determine whether they should listen to you!)



I could go on and on. But let me stop before I bore you. Bottom line: I am one to believe that we learn through PROCESS, not content; so if I must choose, I would use the best of my thinking & intuition & training to make sure that I can sustain a process that leads to engagement and insight for participants.