Facilitating design: examining the effects of facilitator’s neutrality on trust and potency in an exploratory experimental study

Abstract

Facilitation style appears to be an important determinant of design team effectiveness. The neutrality of the group facilitator may be a key factor; however, the characteristics and impact of neutrality are relatively understudied. In a designed classroom setting, we examine the impact of two different approaches to group facilitation: (i) facilitator’s neutrality expressed as low equidistance and high impartiality and (ii) facilitator’s neutrality expressed as high equidistance and low impartiality, on team trust, trust to the facilitator and team potency. To do this, we conducted a repeated-measures experiment with a student sample. Our results indicate that facilitators expressing neutrality through low equidistance and high impartiality had a greater positive impact on team trust. The two approaches did not differ on team potency and facilitator trust. These results contribute to developing theories of design facilitation and team effectiveness by suggesting how facilitation may shape team trust and potency in group design. Based on our findings, we point to the need for future work to further examine the impact of facilitator’s process awareness and neutrality, and show how facilitation methods may benefit teams during creative design teamwork.

Science facilitation: navigating the intersection of intellectual and interpersonal expertise in scientific collaboration

“…It can be exceedingly difficult to both represent one's own research area of interest within the team and simultaneously serve as facilitator, especially if the facilitator role is being filled by someone with less power in the team, such as a more junior scientist, a graduate student, or a member of a marginalised group (e.g., a woman or person of colour in STEM; Carpenter-Song and Whitley, 2013; Gaughan and Bozeman, 2016). Conversely, if the facilitator is someone in an authority role within the project (e.g., programme manager or PI), they may struggle to be seen as neutral by the group or may find it difficult to separate their own vision for the scientific collaboration from their role as the facilitator (Halpern and O'Rourke, 2020;Wróbel et al, 2021). Both of these cases can create tensions for the individual in how they experience their role and can also constrain the contributions that other group members feel comfortable making.…”

Facilitating creativity: Shaping team processes

“…These above‐described ‘conflicts’ have been a subject of discussion for decades (Schein, 1978), yet existing descriptions in this area remain scarce and are insufficient to design a comprehensive facilitator education, which still requires further reflection, discussion and targeted research (Thomas, 2004). The current time considerations in facilitation are often limited to ‘before, during and after the workshop’ (Bens, 2012; Wardale, 2013) and only outline what should be done at each stage of consultant (facilitator)—client collaboration at a general level or with respect to improving a specific process characteristics, for example, trust (Maister et al, 2001; Wróbel et al, 2021), without providing an in‐depth perspective on the temporality of facilitator's actions during the creative workshop. Furthermore, the literature on facilitating creativity revolves around either the role or competences of the facilitator (e.g., Azadegan & Kolfschoten, 2014; Stewart, 2006), or the composition and dynamics of the team itself (e.g., Hoever et al, 2012; Kratzer et al, 2006), leaving the interaction between the two somewhat disconnected.…”