We began experimenting with this kind of group structure to see how far we could go in sharing the leadership function among all our members and in practicing our values of cooperative and egalitarian group process. Learning to operate as a collective has not always been easy, but it has been rewarding and educational and has vastly improved our ability to help other groups in our function as a skills-sharing center. Collectives, operating on group concensus, are only one of many possible forms of group structure. We do not feel that every group has to be a collective to use the concepts and skills that we describe in this manual. However, we are convinced that a group is most effective when all its members can participate fully in decision making and group activities.
People support what they help to create.
Most individuals in leadership roles understand this, but for a variety of reasons, they are often drawn into taking more responsibility than they need to or want to. We have decided to write this manual in order to synthesize all we know about non-directive leadership, which we call facilitation, and to make this information available to others. This manual is especially addressed to persons who are inexperienced in performing the role of facilitator, but who are called on to act in that capacity. However, we expect the information in this manual to be useful to people in a wide variety of group situations in addition to the ones we specifically address. We do not expect this manual to be the only learning resource for people who are acquiring facilitation skills.