Last week I co-facilitated Holding the Space for Selkie Educational Foundation, a training for 30 emerging youth workers and facilitators. Together with trainers Jennifer Kumer, Pati Janczukowicz, and Dejvid Bartolo, we spent a week exploring how to stay present in a group and respond when things don’t go as expected. People disengage, emotions come up, a carefully prepared activity goes somewhere else. What do you do then?
We brought in roleplay, movement, reflection, conversations and several of our own toolkits. Looking back, I noticed how often we returned to something very simple: how do you feel, and what do you need? I’m still thinking about what happened around those questions, partly because some of it challenged my own assumptions.
I had wondered whether everyone would be willing to enter that territory. These were people interested in supporting young people with their needs, desires and ambitions. But sharing your own emotions and needs can feel quite different from learning how to help someone else. One participant was a little sceptical about all the socialising, the sharing circles and the hugs. He made his boundaries clear, and I wasn’t sure how those parts of the week would be for him.
Participation remained an invitation though. You could share, but you didn’t have to disclose something personal. You could also just listen or observe. There were repeated opportunities to join in, keep a little distance and find out what you thought of it.
On the last day, when we gave everyone some time off for themselves before the final sharing at the end of the day, that participant shared how much he had missed the circles that morning. Without those moments together, he felt "uncomfortable". I found that very intriguing. In a week where we kept asking people about their needs, he was now expressing a need he hadn’t expected to have.
I don’t know exactly what changed for him. There were the activities, the people, the conversations between sessions, the way we approached one another. I wouldn’t give one exercise the credit for a whole week. But his reflection made me reconsider my assumption that some people naturally enjoy these experiences and others simply don’t. His experience seemed to have surprised him. Hearing about it surprised me too.
As facilitators, we had also checked in that week and each of us mentioned we wanted to have room to explore this experience for ourselves, not just to facilitate from a distance. Thus we agreed to take turns leading sessions so we could participate in one another’s activities. This was something we often missed in other trainings. You spend all this time making experiences possible for people, and then you don’t get to experience them yourself. We wanted to learn together. And, honestly, we wanted to have some fun too.
I discovered that participating takes some practice. During one of Jennifer’s exercises, we sat in groups of three. One person shared an emotion and what they needed when they felt that way. Another asked clarifying questions. The third gave observations. As I remember it, there was a minute for each part, with a little bell signalling when to move on.
Now, I found that quite difficult. Sometimes we lost track of which part we were supposed to be doing. The bell rang, but did that mean questions, observations, or changing roles? And a minute seemed very short. I would probably have given people more time and let them work out the timing themselves. What if someone needed longer to share? What happened to the observations if the time was already gone? All these questions and possible improvements raced through my facilitator's brain.
So I was sitting there, already redesigning the exercise in my head. At some point, I thought: let’s just see what happens. I started doing what I was there to do. Sharing, asking questions, listening. And I really enjoyed it. We managed to have a deep and meaningful exchange in those few minutes, which I hadn’t expected.
I still think the bell could have used a few words. But my assumption that three minutes wouldn’t be enough was challenged by actually participating. If I had stayed on the sidelines, I might have spent the whole exercise wondering whether it would work. Being inside it gave me an experience I could learn from.
There was another moment, in a different sharing exercise, when I made the opposite choice. I was sitting with someone who took a little time to find the words for what he wanted to share. When he did, it became emotional. He said that what he needed was someone to talk with, tears swelling in his eyes. Then came the instruction to change partners.
I gave the facilitator a small signal that we were going to stay together for another round. She understood, and we continued while other participants changed partners. I told him that I was there, that we were all there during the week, and that he was welcome to share what he wanted to share when he felt ready. We spent much of that next round in a hug.
Afterwards, some of the participant team members he was working with came over and embraced him too. That meant a lot to me and him. I didn’t want this to become a situation where I was suddenly responsible for making everything better. And it didn’t become that. Other people were there. Connections were already forming.
Pati had said something early in the week that became an ongoing reminder for us all: "the participants are more important than the workshop". In one exercise, I stayed with a structure I would have designed differently. In another, I stepped outside the structure because of what was happening between us. My preferred way of facilitating wasn’t automatically the most useful guide. Neither was blindly trusting the process.
I think people learn a lot from seeing how you make those decisions in the moment. I think they learned something from how we as facilitators worked together. But I learned from watching them too. And being a participant gave me another way to hold the space: listening, leaving room, letting someone else take the lead. I could contribute more by not trying too hard to contribute.
As I like to say: "sometimes checking out is just another word for checking in". After the training, I needed a day with very little social interaction myself. We had been together all week, during sessions and between them. I enjoyed that enormously. I also needed some quiet afterwards. I didn’t need another deep reflection exercise. I needed to let things settle. And today I began to feel curious about being with people again.
I suppose that brings me back to the same questions: how do you feel, and what do you need? Sometimes I need connection. Sometimes I need enough quiet to become curious about connection again.
There is something very human in being able to share your needs and finding someone willing to listen. I want to keep making room for that in my work. I also want to keep noticing when someone needs another way to participate, or a little longer than the format allows.
For me, that is becoming part of what holding the space means. Staying curious about the people who are actually there, including myself, and allowing what happens between us to affect what we do next.