I’m enjoying the advanced facilitation course, but I yearn for a deeper sense of connection (empathy) with the various roles presented in the scenarios. For example, at this past session (on 11-28) we had a scenario that involved objecting to the selection of a circle member into the secretary role, where the person objecting was telling a story that the proposed secretary had a history of being overly detailed in their note-taking. From my perspective we (in my practice group) struggled to identify who would take on each of the scenario roles, and then we further struggled to fill in the details of the scenario to a degree where we could empathize with the proposed secretary, and others.
I can imagine a few possible strategies for quickly sharing some scenario details, and I’m curious what you think about these and what you might add. One idea is that our practice group could establish some context before launching into the scenario. (Is the proposed secretary aware of the level of detail in their notes, and if so, why do they value it? Why does the objector dislike this style? If the proposed secretary is going to fall into the “victim” role of the drama triangle, what about their history might inform that?) Another idea might be to have a roleplaying session at the beginning of each course session that helps to provide background for each scenario right up to the point of conflict, and then the practice groups could break out and take it from there.
For filling in the details ourselves, I’ve been wanting to consider two levels of facilitation within each practice group. The top level of facilitation would exist outside of the roleplay, and would help structure the roleplay. This facilitator would help establish this scenario context, select people into functional roles at the practice level (such as a timekeeper), and select people into roleplaying roles for each scenario. Perhaps we would choose different names for the roleplaying in order to keep clear what state we’re working in with any given interaction.
What do you all think about these ideas?