Establishing Good Working Conditions
Contents
Trust
...is important because people should feel safe, especially in heterogeneous groups in which the feeling of uncertainty among participants and facilitators is normal and common. In this sense, we define trust as the certainty that at any stage of the shared learning process, everything will happen according to the values of common respect, autonomy, and personal responsibility.' This necessitates that everyone monitors their own goals and needs and decides what to do.
Transparency
...is needed to give orientation and is therefore the basis for participation: Only those individuals who have all the relevant information can participate in an optimal way. This includes transparency in terms of our motivations and facilitating goals. The second important aspect of transparency is clarity on conditions and rules. Both facilitators and participants have certain rules in mind, which is fine. But even if we think that facilitators’ rules might be the best for the group, what makes us think that way? Imposing rules on participants leads to an ineffective and dissatisfying cooperation. We should instead share our power and enable participants to discuss their own rules and goals. [1]
Establishing basic rules
Introduce the rules outlined in the table below: discretion, stopping, and disagreement. Let the group discuss and find their own the seminar rules, reflecting their personal needs and goals. Here the Code of Conduct or a similar method might help.
Name games: Getting to know each other
You’ve already learned a lot about your participants through working with their needs and discussing the basic working principles with them. It is essential to a good working atmosphere that you as a trainer and the participants know everyone’s names and the right pronunciation. The deeper sense behind name games is that learners may interconnect independently of the teacher, that they build trust which is a precondition for deeper experiential learning later.
