Find Your Why: a practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team pdfdrive com

FIND YOUR FACILITATOR
PREPARE FOR YOUR SESSION
INVITE PARTICIPANTS
We recommend that you prepare by taking the following steps.
Find Your Facilitator
The Tribe Approach requires a facilitator. The ideal person
for this role is someone trusted by the organization who has
a desire to serve, a strong natural curiosity and an ability to ask probing
questions. While a professional facilitator can bring confidence and experience
to the job, it’s not necessary for the process to be successful. If you’re not a
seasoned facilitator, or if one is not available, don’t worry! We wrote this book
to help you take on the job.
The facilitator must be objective, so think of someone who has a little distance
and perspective—for example, an outsider, someone who wasn’t present at the
founding of the company and isn’t one of its long-standing executives. This
ensures that the facilitator won’t accidentally bring preconceptions or biases to

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the process. In other words, sometimes knowing less is more. Working with an
objective facilitator also means they can run the process rather than be part of it.
That said, we realize it may not be possible or practical to bring in someone from
the outside. If this is the case, you can choose one of your colleagues to act as
facilitator or choose to do it yourself. As long as the foundation of the process is
understood: that a WHY is discovered, not created, and that the Why Discovery
process is not aspirational. Nor is it a branding or marketing exercise.
Approaching the process that way would completely undermine everything that
makes a true WHY so compelling. The WHY is about who we are, not what
we’d like the company to become someday.
Whomever you choose, the facilitator will lead a group in a workshop setting.
This requires its own unique set of skills: the abilities to manage time and
logistics, to listen actively and to draw connections from various contributors.
The facilitator also needs to create a “safe” environment in which people,
regardless of rank, position or personality, feel comfortable sharing their
thoughts and stories.
This list of capabilities and attributes may seem daunting, but, in truth, anyone
who loves to learn and is comfortable working with a group should be able to
lead a Tribe Why Discovery. Of course, the more practiced they are, the better.
Above all, they need to have a strong sense of curiosity and to be excited about
the idea of leading the session. In the end, if you feel comfortable with the
person, it’s likely they will be able to create the environment that will promote a
great Why Discovery. Think of it this way: There are lots of equally well-
qualified doctors out there, but given a choice, we will select one over another.
Why? Because we like how that doctor makes us feel. Apply the same thinking
when you select your facilitator, and you’ll be in a good position to move
forward.
The remainder of this chapter and the entirety of the next chapter are addressed
to the facilitator of the Tribe Why Discovery. Based on what you’ve read so far,
if you feel that you aren’t the right fit for that role, choose someone who is and
ask them to read the next section and the other chapters it references. If you do
plan to fill the facilitator role, keep reading. The rest of this chapter and chapter
5 are for the facilitator to prepare to run the Why Discovery process for tribes.

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