(Or, Why Thou Shalt Not Be an Inept Space Holder)

It happens in an instant.

The well-intentioned facilitator, drunk on his own perceived presence, opens the space to sharing and transparency, only to be deafened by the cricket symphony. 

Worse, an explosive chaos erupts: some raw, emotionally loaded participant goes on a rampage and sucks all the oxygen out of the room with a prolonged sermon on their self-proclaimed mount. The facilitator is at an impasse: provide divine intervention or let the group wade through their own dubiously productive purgatory.

Just like that, the group fractures: the faith of some is shattered, others escalate, organizing into battle lines, and behold: a space made sacred for authentic relating spawns a cesspool of distrust.

Hyperbolic? Perhaps. Heavy-handed? Definitely. Yet, every facilitator I have ever known has fallen victim to one or another of what I explore here as the 7 Deadly Sins of Facilitation to the inevitable wroth of the group. Each of those sins, in a moment, can appear as salvation to the uninitiated, but the persistent test of unending hoards of participants, will challenge the virtue of each.

1. Sloth: "Thou shalt not sit idly by and trust the vibes to do thy work."

2. Hubris: "Thou shalt not demand vulnerability before it hath been earned."

3. Wrath: "Thou shalt not flee when the fires of discord arise."

4. Gluttony: "Thou shalt not perform surgery with chainsaws."

5. Envy: "Thou shalt not covet the illusion of neutrality, nor pretend all voices carry the same weight.”

6. Greed: "Thou shalt not mistake thy own voice for the voice of the group."

7. Pride: "Thou shalt not believe thyself above continuous improvement."

Yes. I am going to adopt this tone for the rest of the essay. I assure you, it is a fun ride. Strap in and get preachy with it. 

Thus, it is written: facilitators, whether in corporate boardrooms, mediation sessions, or community town halls, are the gatekeepers of harmony and destruction alike. 

Done well, facilitation is a holy act, fostering human connection, bridging divides, guiding souls through the fires of discomfort toward productive transformation. 

Done poorly, it is pretty much just thinly veiled social malpractice, deepening wounds, reinforcing oppression, ensuring that never again shall these people voluntarily sit in the same room together.

Indeed, in these unsettled times, we need good facilitators more than ever. Loneliness is the 11th plague of the modern world, a public health crisis linked to heart disease, dementia, and depression. Standing at the frontline of this crisis is the social health facilitator, clipboard in hand, post-it note in pocket, and premeditated pauses on lock, so as to save us all from the collapse of social intelligence and impending societal implosion.

But lo, dear facilitator, thou art not safe. For there are seven great sins, ancient, insidious, and damning that will turn thee from trusted guide to cautionary tale. These sins have claimed many before you, reducing once aspiring guides to the facilitatory equivalent of demonic spirits, cast out and never invoiced again.

Let us now, together, reflect upon the Seven Deadly Sins of Facilitation, that you may know them in thyself, repent, and redeem thy practice ere 'tis too late.

Sloth (Believing Presence Alone is Enough)

"Thou shalt not sit idly by and trust the vibes to do thy work."

There is a type of facilitator, in my in-no-way-even-remotely-humble-opinion, the worst kind, who seems to operate on the principle that their divine presence alone will suffice to shepherd a group through that most treacherous of valleys: interpersonal dynamics. Armed solely with an aura of serenity; they broadcast "space holding" vibes; and they believe, oh sweet baby insert-obscure-divinity-here, how they believe, that the container shall self-regulate.

This… is a lie.

Take Mark, for example, a very experienced men's group facilitator who trusted himself to "hold space" and followed his intuition rather than any structured methodology… at all. When a session on toxic masculinity descended into an all out shouting match, unironically summoning the true demonic spirit of toxic masculinity himself, the Alpha Male , he did what all lazy facilitators do. He did nothing. He allowed the room to "self-regulate," trusting that the spirit of the container would prevail.

Two participants stormed out. One was whisked to the hospital with a cardiac event. An undisclosed number vowed never to return. The group imploded in chaos like a medieval kingdom brought low by the complacency of its own success.

The truth is: facilitation is not passive; it's an active craft. 

Research into group dynamics confirms that skilled facilitators do not simply hold space. They shape it. Craft it. Bend it to collective will. They intervene before tension escalates into destruction. They use structured dialogue, reframing, and de-escalation techniques.

If thou desirest to be more than an overpaid houseplant, thou must learneth thy craft. For at the moment of reckoning, presence alone shall not save thee.

Hubris (Failing to Read the Social Temperature Before Diving In)

"Thou shalt not demand vulnerability before it hath been earned."

Ah, the sweet-sweet-summer-hubris of the inexperienced facilitator walking into a room presuming that the group should be prepared to bare their souls on command.

A room full of straight backed participants, arms crossed, garments pressed, tension thick as smoke. The facilitator opens brightly, eyes aglow with sorely misplaced confidence: "Let's start with a deep share… Tell us about a time when you felt utterly broken." 

And then…? Silence. The sweet symphony of the cricket collective. Awkward looks. Somebody checks their watch. A participant breaks out in a cold sweat.

This, dear reader, is the Temperature Gap, a little known aberration of a poorly calibrated Vulnerability Dial: the deadly chasm between where the group actually is, and where the facilitator is trying to drag them, forcibly, by any means necessary.

Consider the tragic tale of yours truly, a once corporate facilitator who, back in 2016, was hired to mend tensions between two feuding teams. I, naively, thought they were ready to heal and thus opened the floor of an all hands meeting with: "So, what needs to be repaired?"

The response? A cold, deadly silence. Then, muttered resistance. Then, open hostility. The session imploded, again going from reconciliation toward outright warfare. Again, hyperbolic, but people in ties were actually screaming accusations at each other in a room equipped with a Keurig. It felt apocalyptic. 

Let this be a lesson: Thou shalt warm up the room before demanding vulnerability.

This means:

• Starting with low-stakes engagement-low-stakes sharing, mutually shared observations, light check-ins.

• Gradually progress to more in-depth discussion by facilitating structured partner shares instead of throwing lambs to the slaughter.

• Provide opt-in participation without the demand of instant emotional exposure.

For coerced vulnerability is betrayed vulnerability. Thou shalt establish psychological safety before demanding emotional depth.

Wrath (Neglecting Conflict Navigation Skills)

"Thou shalt not flee when the fires of discord arise."

Conflict cometh, y’all. It is inevitable, as sure as the turning of the tides, the rise of the moon, and the unsolicited monologues of That-One-Guy™ in every discussion circle.

The great facilitator is aware that conflict is not to be feared but is a potential opportunity for deeper understanding, transformation, and, every now and then, catharsis.  It is uncomfortable, it is unpredictable, but it is also essential. The moment a group is allowed to wade into real conversation, into the murky waters of authenticity and stakes, conflict is never far behind.

Many facilitators are unfortunately anemic when it comes to their conflict skills development, it seems. They see the coming conflict and they freeze, they deflect, they let the moment pass, praying that the storm will simply blow over. They tell themselves that their job is to be neutral, to trust the group to navigate its own challenges. But this is not leadership, nor is it effective facilitation. It is cowardice dressed in the robes of non-intervention.

Thou shalt learn to navigate the dark arts of conflict.

Thou shalt not simply "hold space" and hope for the best when tensions rise.

Thou shalt not assume that conflict will resolve itself.

Thou shalt not be so naïve as to think that all people enter the room with the same emotional toolkit.

Instead, thou shalt learn to navigate the dark arts of conflict.

This means:

• Noticing the early warning signs. The energy in the room will shift before the first raised voice. Watch for crossed arms, deepening silences, muttered side comments, or the subtle sharpening of tones. Conflict does not explode out of nowhere; it builds, and those who are attuned to it can intervene before it escalates.

• Cutting in before the spiral sucks the room in. Conflict, left unchecked, does not simply "play out." It intensifies. The facilitator who waits too long will be overwhelmed when the moment finally demands action.

• Directing conflict, rather than avoiding it. This does not mean controlling it or shutting it down. It means guiding it, making sure it is productive rather than destructive. The best facilitators know how to turn conflict into clarity, not chaos.

• Wielding the weapons of the enlightened facilitator. Nonviolent communication, looping for understanding, mirroring, tactical curiosity, de-escalation techniques, and self-regulation are the everyday-carry weapons of those who do this work well.

Thou must read a book on negotiation. Read another on mediation. Read a third on relational conflict. Practice these skills with others who will challenge them. Conflict skills are not thought experiments. They must be lived and applied.

For the facilitator who does not learn to navigate conflict is a shepherd who cannot defend the flock. A leader whose authority dissolves the moment it is truly needed.

This is the work. Thou must learn it. Thou must wield it.

Lest thy session become a battlefield.

Gluttony (Over-Reliance on a Single Modality)

"Thou shalt not perform surgery with chainsaws."

He hoards his favorite facilitation tools like some dragon atop a hoard of gold. He finds something that seems to work for him and promptly grips it with the fevered grasp of a cultist clutching forbidden scripture. His precious.

Whether open dialogue, structured exercises, or experiential games, he runs every session the same way, irrespective of context, audience, or common sense. Sound familiar?

And predictably comes the fallout.

Elijah, a seasoned facilitator of authentic related games, honed his craft among circles of eager, vulnerability-loving weirdos. His methods worked in those spaces but then came the corporate gig.

Armed with his usual exercises, he approached the room with zeal:

"Let’s all make eye contact and breathe together. Now, turn to your partner and tell them something you’ve been afraid to say out loud."

Visible discomfort. Executives shifting uncomfortably, regretting the interminable string of causal choices that led them unerringly to this one, specific, moment in their lives, an inflection point beyond which there was no return but updating their resume.

He had mistaken his own comfort for universal effectiveness.

He had assumed that what felt right to him would feel right to all.

He had been wrong.

At some point in our careers, we have all mistaken our own preference for universal effectiveness. We fail to notice that people have different ways in which they receive and learn from information. 

Some thrive in experiential exercises, immersing themselves in embodied learning.

Some flourish in structured discussions, preferring clarity and order.

Some need personal contemplation time, space to process before they speak.

Let it be known: Thou shalt diversify thine toolbox.

This means:

• Balance structure and spontaneity.

• Provide multiple means of engaging: reflection, small group work, full-room discussions.

• Read the fucking room in real-time and adjust the approach.

Forcing one method onto an unconsenting group is not facilitation, it is tyranny. 

And tyranny hath no place in these sacred halls.

Envy (Failing to Account for Power Dynamics)

"Thou shalt not covet the illusion of neutrality, nor pretend all voices carry the same weight. Nor shalt thou deny that some voices bear greater wisdom than others."

Power is a tricky beast. It hides in plain sight: in job titles, in social status, in the unconscious biases that shape who speaks and who stays silent.

The naive facilitator enters a room believing in the myth of equality. That all voices are given equal weight, that the floor is open to all, that "we’re all just people here." They envy a world in which everyone can bring their voice openly.

But this is Envy's great lie:

• That if we ignore power, it ceases to exist.

• That by flattening hierarchy, wisdom self-distributes.

• That if we give each opinion equal air, truth self-emerges magically.

Imagine that town hall facilitator in their eagerness to be "neutral" stepping back and letting the most privileged voices take and hold the floor, letting the less socially-capitalized fall silent, unheard, erased. They say to themselves: "I am being just. I'm not here to take sides. Everybody gets an equal chance to speak."

What they do is envy a world which doesn't exist and, by hanging on to this mirage, maintain the very inequalities they claim to abhor.

Power is real. Power talks first. Power talks loudest.

The commandment of the envious is: "No person shall know more than others, or be more privileged to speak about a thing more than others. To pay respect is to repress!”

So the facilitator denies expertise exists at all. 

They claim the opinions of the uninformed weigh as much as those of the experienced. They give equal time to the person who has spent their entire career studying an issue and the person whose contribution is an expression of a personal grievance.

They say to themselves:

• "All perspectives are equally valid."

• "Wisdom is no more than a form of privilege."

• "No one should claim to know more than anyone else."

And therein, they do not elevate the unheard, they degrade the wise.

Not all voices are equal in knowledge, on every topic.

Not all insights are of equal value.

Not every contribution is worthy of equal weight.

Not every voice is equal in wisdom, and justice isn't achieved by flattening intelligence to appease insecurity.

Pretending otherwise is not fairness. It is foolishness.

The facilitator that would repent must let go of the false idol of neutrality and, instead:

• Understand power as a real presence, whether or not it's acknowledged.

• Know when the voice of expertise should be given space, and when an unheard voice should be given room. 

• Interrupt monologuers, because equality is something we cultivate with intent.

• Discriminate between opinion and expertise. 

• Own their discomfort and cease wishing for a world in which the power dynamic is irrelevant. 

If you truly want fairness, then you can not act as though the playing field is level. You must till the field.

And if you want truth, you do not act as though all words were equal, but value wisdom without silencing the vulnerable.

Let me repeat: power imbalance never corrects itself.

The clear-sighted facilitator sees that invisible architecture and works to adjust it.

Greed (Dominating Space as a Facilitator)

"Thou shalt not mistake thy own voice for the voice of the group."

There is no creature more odious than the facilitator who is in love with the sound of their own voice.

You know the type. They walk into a room masquerading as "space holder" but what that means is greedily clutching a captive audience in their grimy little hands.

They can't help:

• Elaborating on their own brilliance.

• Adding their own two cents.

• Sharing just one more story.

• Responding to their own rhetorical questions.

This, dear reader, is not facilitation; this is performance. It belongs in a theater.

Consider Dante, a facilitator who was brought in to guide a community dialogue. The group convened to share ideas, but old Dante, bless his thespian’s heart, could not shut up.

Every comment by a participant received a micro lecture from Dante, an insight into the life of Dante, or a five minute detour into what Dante thought about the matter. Instead of facilitating the group, they were subjected to a TED Talk they never signed up for.

By the time the session had concluded, participants were exhausted and felt unheard. The dialogue hadn't deepened, it had drowned beneath the weight of Dante's ego.

Let it be known: Facilitation is not about thee. 

Thy job is to: Talk less. Smile Listen more. 

Avoid the need to "fix" or "add value" to every statement. Guide the conversation without hijacking it. For verily, if thou dost findest thyself speaking more than the participants, thou art no longer a facilitator, thou art a preacher. And facilitators are not priests.

Pride (Refuse to Learn, Adapt, or Take Feedback)

"Thou shalt not believe thyself above continuous improvement."

And finally, we arrive at the gravest of the sins, the one suckling the rest, the sin that blocks all the others from redemption.

Pride. The attitude that perfection is a destination.

The facilitator who stops learning has died already, though they still walk amongst us.

• They reject feedback.

• They hang on to old ways, resistant to change.

• They feel that, after all these years, they can do no wrong.

This is folly.

Facilitation is a living art. The greatest facilitators are those who never arrive. They continue to study, to refine, and to expand.

In the same way a musician builds mastery through practice and exposure to new styles, so too facilitators must:

• Seek ongoing training: adopt mentors, find inspiration from others, challenge new models and disciplines. 

• Fail Forward: Debriefing with other facilitators, sharing notes on what worked and what bombed spectacularly. 

• Practice self-reflection: interrogating one's own biases, blind spots, and impact. 

For facilitation, done well, is not a static skill. It is a lifelong pursuit. 

And lo, the facilitator who ceases to learn shall find themselves in the darkest of purgatorial fates: stale, outdated, and increasingly irrelevant.

Redemption is Possible 

If Thou Art Willing to Do the Work

Thus have the Seven Deadly Sins of Facilitation been laid bare before thee. If in reading them, thou hast felt the creeping dread of recognition, fear not. For we are all sinners in this sacred craft.

No facilitator is truly a saint.

Whether we've just stepped into or for decades walked the labyrinthine halls of group process, one way or another we've all fallen into these traps, clung to the false wisdom, and from time to time failed those we should guide. 

The difference between the damned and the redeemed is not whether we have sinned. Sin is inevitable. It is whether we seek atonement.

It is a matter of whether we choose to acknowledge our mistakes, to humble ourselves before the honest mirror of feedback, and to forge ourselves anew in the crucible of continuous improvement.

In this craft, perfection doesn't exist; only practice.

Mastery by facilitators is achieved each day and only over themselves. Not by those who act as if they've already arrived but by those remaining eternal students of the work, embracing critique as an offering. Those who see training not as a badge of inadequacy but as dedication to excellence, holding themselves accountable with a sacred knowing that we can always do better.

The Great Work

Many hands, many lifetimes.

Facilitation is neither a job nor a show. This is service: a commitment to the creation of spaces where people could listen, speak, learn, unlearn, and change. It's an invisible architecture upon which trust builds up, on which ideas take wings, on which conflicts become bridges, not chasms.

The greatest facilitators seek not to over power but to empower. They don't raise their voices. They create conditions to be heard.

And this is a calling greater than any one of us.

We are the stewards of dialogue, architects of connection, and in these times of loneliness, division, and ever-growing cynicism, we are needed more desperately than ever.

But need alone is not enough.

The world does not need more facilitators. It needs better facilitators. It needs facilitators who are not afraid to confront their own blind spots, who are willing to sit in the discomfort of their own limits, who hold themselves accountable for the influence they wield.

For every room has its ghosts.

We are the invisible hands forming a world in which people come together, connect, and shift without fear. We can be the reason dialogue deepens instead of fractures, that trust grows instead of erodes, that people walk away from our spaces feeling more whole, not less.

And this, dear facilitator, is no small thing.

It is the job of a lifetime: It is the job of a thousand lifetimes.

And it is, in the end, the job that shapes the work.

So go forth. Atone for thy sins. Seek wisdom. Do the work.

For facilitation, done well, is not just about leading a room,

It's about leading us into a better future.

And together, we can do magic.

Looking forward to you, always, 

Geof.