Podcast Transcript: Facilitation Challenges in Intimate Partner Violence Education

Series' Guests

• Loretta Frederick, JD, the former Senior Legal and Policy Advisor of the Battered Women’s Justice Project
• Associate Justice Anne K. McKeig, Minnesota Supreme Court
• Ret. Judge Jeffrey Kremers, Milwaukee County Circuit Court
• Gretta Gardner, JD, the Deputy Director of Ujima Inc.: The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community
  
  
   

GRETA GARDNER: I did this whole bias training about black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Latinx. And a gentleman in the audience, he said, "Well, what about Native American? And my explanation was I don't usually bring up Native American survivors because I don't have either professional or personal experience in that." And he says, "You have to understand we're always so invisible and we're here at this conference to learn a great many things. And so without you speaking on it, we feel invisible sitting here in your workshop." And I said, "That is certainly not my intent, but intent does not equal impact. I would like to invite you to come up here to co-facilitate this section with me so that we can do that together."

AARON POLKEY: Welcome to the third podcast in the series, Facilitating Complex Topics With Complex Audiences. I'm one of your hosts, Aaron Poque from Futures Without Violence. You may recall in our previous podcasts, first we spoke about engaging judges and court staff on conversations about intimate partner violence. And then we talked a little bit about preparing for complex topics, how to prepare for facilitating courageous and challenging conversations. And that podcast was hosted by my colleague Danielle Pew of the Center for Court Innovation. And today we will be talking a little bit more specifically about intimate partner violence, education and programming, and leaning a little bit more deeply into facilitation challenges.

Our expert panel today, we are happy to bring back Greta Gardner, who serves as a deputy director of ujima, the National Center on Violence against Women in the Black community. We're also happy to welcome back Judge Jeffrey Kremers, the retired Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, and we are happy to welcome a new panelist for this conversation. Loretta Frederick, who is a former senior legal and policy advisor for the Battered Woman Justice project, and is also distinguished for having co-created the safer approach to IPV involved custody cases methods. So welcome Loretta. Welcome Greta, and welcome Jeff.

GARDNER: Thank you.

LORETTA FREDERICK: Thank you.

POLKEY: All right, Loretta. So we're going to talk a lot about identity on this podcast and the reason why we're talking about identity is because we know that when it comes to the identity of a facilitator, the identity of a participant, the identity of even the individuals who we might hypothetically reference in fact patterns as part of a curriculum, we know that identity is probably one of the most challenging aspects of engaging in conversations about intimate partner violence. So Loretta, I'd like to ask you exactly why does identity matter when it comes to having these conversations?

FREDERICK: Well, identity matters. So if you haven't listened to the first two podcasts, please go back and do that because there was a lot of really good information shared and points raised in those about this topic. But I think that all in all, identity matters a great deal because in intimate partner violence sessions of whatever kind, educational or otherwise, intimate partner violence raises very deeply held and complicated issues for nearly every person. And their own identity affects greatly what kinds of issues are raised by them when talking about IPV. So that's one thing I think and if I could just give a couple of examples of this. I am a white, lower middle class, middle class raised in suburbia Minnesota, raised Catholic person from a family of four children and a very, very, very straight laced family structure where there were high expectations.

You couldn't ride a bicycle until you were 10 because you had to be able to follow all the street signs and all traffic laws in order to ride on the street and you couldn't ride on the sidewalk because that's where the pedestrians and the little kids on the trikes were. So we had rules on rules on rules on rules, and I brought all of that stuff to the table when I'm talking about the intersection of IPV and the law. Just real goofy things like that affect how you show up for this kind of a thing. And the other significant thing about my identity that I bring to these things is I am not a survivor of intimate partner violence myself. And having that experience brings a lot to one's own analysis and ability to talk about these issues. And so I have to account for that by being really, really deeply aware of how individual survivors actually experience that in their lives so that I can talk about it meaningfully.

However, I also have the identity of being the sister of a woman, my sister murdered by a man who was distressed that she wouldn't move from a friendship to a lover relationship with him at the age of 26. And that was seven, eight years after I'd started in the domestic violence field in the early, early, early stages of this anti-domestic violence movement that we're in right now. And it radically shifted the way I thought about it because it was no longer something that was academic and experienced only by people that I didn't know. And here it was my own family. And so I have to decide, this is an example of how identity affects who you are as a facilitator. I have to decide every time I talk about this, every time I could talk about this as an example of how lethality factors can show up and nobody notice it, which is what happened in her case.

I have to decide whether raising this fact about me and my life will help me raise the issues for people and help them think about stuff in a way that will make them do a better job with these cases and understand more, or will it close them down and make them think, ah, that girl, she's just got a big agenda and so I can't really pay attention to what she's talking about because she's got this personal thing. So it's really weird that at the same time as having the experience of IPV makes you smarter about it in some ways, it also can make you look dumber about it in some ways if you catch my drift and depending on who you're talking to. So those are just some examples.

POLKEY: Indeed. And thank you Loretta. I'm sorry that your family had that experience. My heart goes out to you. And Greta, Loretta really laid the foundation here. She began with the fact that gender is inherent to conversations of intimate partner violence and then she unpacked it to include other aspects of privilege or lack of privilege. And then she also talked about personal experiences, whether it be the fact that she didn't have an experience but her family did. So in light of that pathway, Greta, I'm wondering if you can talk to us a little bit more from your experience about how all of those complexities have come up in conversations that you've had about intimate partner violence and then also as they come up, what techniques have you used to make sure that the conversation maintains its constructive and transformational tone from learning experience perspective?

GARDNER: Sure. Thank you Aaron. And it's always great to be in a room with Loretta and Judge [inaudible]. So thank you for the opportunity to be here. So right, I think one of the things that I was thinking about when Loretta was talking was how there are so many intersections of my identity that often time when people ask me to facilitate or be a part of an educational venture, they'll say, you're a threefor. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. And I've often been asked to facilitate one discussion that had to do with legal interventions, culturally specific services, because I am a black woman as a prosecutor's perspective and as a mom. And I've had to tell hosts, wait a minute, that's a lot in and of itself. I need to know what you want this audience to come away with so that I know which of my identities to put to the forefront.

I can't put everything all together in some melting pot and then just hope that it'll come out well to be able to facilitate the conversations or the modules that they want used. So I think the techniques I definitely employ are, one, what does the host want out of this conversation? Two, particularly if I'm co-hosting with somebody, what do they bring to the table so that we can give a balanced facilitation as opposed to if it were two black women talking about culturally specific services, then perhaps I'll pick a different angle to make sure that there is that kind of a balance. Thirdly, it's really important to read the room. Like Loretta said, I personally don't have an experience with intimate partner violence and sometimes that gives me credibility depending on the audience, and sometimes it decreases my credibility in the audience.

So if I am trying to facilitate a conversation or if I am giving an anecdotal story about something, whether it's mine or someone else's, to be able to take the temperature in the room and being able to have a way to pivot to get out of the situation so you can move to something else that they'll absorb or to figure out in that moment how to engage them. And sometimes that's if they're not listening to me, either because I'm a woman or because I'm black or because I was a lawyer, I am a lawyer. Sometimes that can diminish your credibility too, depending on the audience. Who is in the room that even for a hot second can say something or bring something into the room so that I can then end up with the tail of that to whip it around and create a different environment? So those are just some of the things on how I use all of my identities. Sometimes I bring them all in the room and I pick one, or before I get in the room, I pick one particular identity that I think will resonate with the audience.

JUDGE JEFFREY KREMERS: That to me, what the two of you have just talked about and really I felt like listening to Loretta because she really hit all the high points, which is terrific. But I was sitting here thinking, I can't think in my almost 50 years of participating in adult education related to the criminal justice system, I can't think of another topic of any seminar I've been to where the personal experiences of the presenter and the audience are so critical for all the reasons that Greta and Loretta talked about because everybody as Loretta pointed out comes in with these kind of life experiences either directly or tangentially or maybe it's through their job and what role they play in the criminal justice system. And then you overlay that with whatever the presenter or me as a facilitator, what my experiences are. And all those experiences and backgrounds, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, all those things help form the lens through which each of us and each of them view the world.
    
And so then you've got the two coming together in the form of the facilitator and the participant. And we have to make sure that we're all focused using the same lens analogy in the same way to achieve some positive result from whatever the conversation is going to be about. And most of the time when I go to a conference or a seminar, I'm wondering why is this person up there? What's their background that they have the ability to stand up there and tell me about something? And really, it's what is their subject matter expertise that puts them up there? But in the IPV, whether it's sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, or the umbrella of IPV that we use, it's much more than that because it's what do I bring as a white male and the white privilege thing. And my background is not terribly dissimilar from Loretta's.

I was allowed to ride a bike much earlier than 10, but I grew up in an upper middle class area. Crime wasn't endemic in my neighborhood and in the areas I grew up. I got to go to the schools I wanted to go to and the jobs I wanted to have. And the biggest thing for me in all of this, understanding everybody else's lens that they see the world through, I come at it with an attitude of the people in the room at these kinds of trainings that we're talking about, most of the time they know more than I do about intimate partner violence either because of their experiences, personal, or the work that they're doing. So I view it as a let's see where we can work together, travel together to achieve some better understanding of the dynamics of whatever we're talking about. But I absolutely agree with everything Greta and Loretta said about this. It's just such a nuanced topic that personal identities of everybody in the room is critical and understanding that is critical.

POLKEY: Thanks Jeff. I wanted to ask you, Jeff, actually about another item that might be considered a challenge from your point of view. And it's the fact that you're a judge making these presentations or facilitating these conversations. And the reason why I wanted to ask you about that is because I think there might be an expectation for those who wear the black robe that the symbolism of that is what it is, that you're all the same, that you're all objective, that you're all free from influenced by your identity or any detections of the identities of those who are before you. So as a judge and our audience here judges, people who facilitate for judges and court staff, how do you balance everything that we've just talked about with that added expectation that you're to put aside aspects of your identity or how you process others under this veneer of objectivity?

KREMERS: Yeah, I think there are several layers to that question. I think it's a great observation. First of all, we have this silly idea, although accurate, that if you're teaching a bunch of judges, you got to have some judges up there or they won't listen and pay attention. And frankly, I know that's the case and I try and disabuse judges of that idea that we got to have a judge up here to make this right or explain everything in the best way or a way that judges can understand. And I try and defer as much as I can to the other experts, the real experts in the room, the subject matter experts. And by doing that, showing that, listen, just because you're a judge, you don't have all the answers.
    
The other thing that I think happens very quickly in at least all the trainings I've done because we have judges from all over the country in many of these trainings, is it doesn't take long to hear from judges from all over to disabuse everyone of the idea that we all think alike or that we all have the same background, especially in the late 2010s and 2020s compared to what it was in 2000 or the 1990s when most of the judges in the room were white males, old white males.
  
And now the diversity in the room is starting, I'll emphasize, starting, to look more like what the communities they judge in looks like. And so I think it is a challenge as a judge to recognize that, to bring humility to it, to not ever try and take the position, well I know more because I somehow magically got to be a judge. And anybody who's a judge knows the way they got to be a judge could be as serendipitous as they went to school with the right person or their parents had money or their friends had money or whatever the case may be. It's just not like, I know I remember in law school I thought judges were the elite, cream of the crop and then I started appearing in front of some of them and realized not so much. So I think if you have a right balance of humility with experience, you can overcome that.
    
But it's like everything else that we're talking about, the biggest challenge I think for any facilitator is understanding the biases that you bring to the presentation that we all have inherent in us or implicit in us along with the ones that the audience has. And learning how to spot your biases and account for them in your decisions. So it doesn't mean that you cast aside your humanity or your background in judging, but that you figure out how you bring those experiences into the discussion and into your decisions in a way that is impartial but acknowledges who you are, if that makes sense.

POLKEY: Indeed. Thank you. So Greta, you and I have been in some rooms before some audiences together and I wanted ask you a question about identities that might not be so obvious. I know in particular a training that you and I have done before where the fact that I'm married to a man, that I'm in a same sex marriage was an identity that I strategically withheld because I made a determination that that would be distracting for that particular audience. And maybe in a perverse way impinge upon my credibility to be able to relate to their experiences. So I ask you to reflect on that but also reflect on anything else that might be overt or less overt or things that may be strategically withheld or strategically deployed. How do we navigate our identity while at the same time doing what you said just a moment ago, maintaining the goals of the training and trying to have some modicum of impact on those who are participating?

GARDNER: So I think it's hard. Not to be too simplistic, it's hard because when you do come into a training or facilitation, you bring all of you and that means your humanity too. And so that brings also your vulnerabilities too. If you cut me, I will bleed. And there have been circumstances where we as facilitators have been harmed, not physically, but I would say emotionally, intentionally. We talk a lot about having a thick skin and how do you pivot? How do you move, how do you not give into the moment because it's intended to distract or to cause harm because the person who is being either forced or encouraged to learn is in an uncomfortable place. And so that's also for me to remember of like, oh, I am hitting a nerve because this is uncomfortable. And so how do I either push a little bit further or pull back a little bit more?

And that's what I meant by keeping your finger on the temperature. Who else in the room with the head nods, you know when you're looking at juries and you're seeing who's with you and who's not, like who in this room is with what's going on and who's not? So I think to protect myself again, you're a great co-facillitator, and we talked about it beforehand, if this were to happen, who's going to step up? Who's going to step back? How do we address this? I think for me in my identities, the only real trigger or where somebody could harm me is my children. I will choose very carefully where I share stories about my lessons learned as a mom relating to the material. And so I'm very careful about keeping that private and not sharing that a lot of times, unless I have to. I am also very protective of, and it may come up sometimes around when I disrupt people's stereotypes about black women.

I've been in many, many rooms where I'm really the first time they've seen a black female lawyer, the first time they've seen a black woman from the middle or upper middle class. And it's just like people say, I thought the Huxtables were fiction. I didn't know there were black lawyers and doctors. And I'm like, that's all I've ever known. So sometimes it's to my benefit to push that, but it's also times that I really do try to keep what I consider a very privileged background covered so that people can hear me and I just try to move the subject. But I do try to keep my private life very close because I've seen it be used against you.

The only thing that I do bring up, because I think it's important that even though I am not a survivor of violence, I am a survivor of many forms of oppression. So I will try to not compete or say it's the same, but that I am empathetic and I can understand and I can relate, particularly when you're dealing in the systems. So I do bring up a couple thing. I've been divorced a couple of times. I have had to deal with family court a couple times. And so I think those experiences are important and I don't quite keep them close, so to the best.

POLKEY: Well thank you. And the fact that you were able to articulate your boundaries. You have a line of demarcation when it comes to your kids, but there's other spaces that you can adjust and I think that that's important to assess and advance the same way that we discussed when we previously in the last podcast talked about triggers. Loretta, I wanted to talk with you about the arc of your experience. I'm not going to say how many years that you've been engaged in facilitation, because I actually don't know, but if you'd like to say so please do. But I'm interested in the changes that you've witnessed over the course of your work in your career, in how identity comes up in these conversations, what happens when they come up, and how facilitators have adjusted or maybe how you've adjusted your approach to managing a challenge that might occur with respect to a participant's identity and how that affects their capacity to receive the information. Or as a facilitator, your capacity to deliver it. Which changed?

FREDERICK: Holy buckets, that's a really big question you just ask Aaron. Okay, so 45 years basically is how long I've been doing the domestic violence related trainings in work. And when I think back on it, I am fortunate enough to have had experiences in the late seventies doing presentations at the Elks Club lunch meeting in a town of 27,000 people in Minnesota. A pretty non-diverse in terms of culture and race and so forth setting, but exclusively male audience because that was in the days before the Supreme Court said you had to let girls into these men's clubs. So at that point in time, my primary identity that I brought to those early trainings where we were just trying to convince people that domestic violence was a thing, was that I was a female raising this issue about gender based violence, which we were then calling wife beatings.

That's where we started, or at least the folks I was around were doing that. And so my goal was to just get out of the room without people laughing me off the dias. So that was what it was about then. And my identity was exclusively as a woman challenging a patriarchal practice. And so that was my thing and that was for a long time we were just completely blind to and didn't address. That is the people in my little town, in my little organization, other forms of oppression other than poverty, which we explicitly acknowledged was part of the entrapment of women by their abusers and the system. But when we were challenged, I did a presentation for the county board in support of them thinking about someday spending money on domestic violence services and sexual assault services in the community.

And one of the members of the county board said, "Well I don't know what the rest of you guys, but I beat my wife once a month whether she needs it or not, just so she makes sure she remembers what's up." Now I couldn't throw up in the room with the county commissioners, but I wanted to. And I'm telling you, that was kind of where it was at. So my identity then was a woman, and I didn't even know that when they came back with these under the table comments that said we're not going to fund your little nonprofit because you're a bunch of lesbians that are trying to convince straight women to become lesbians and that's what your goal really is. And I mean it was that kind of stuff. And we said in response to that, no we're not. That's how out to lunch we were about other forms of oppression and biases, our own and everybody else's.

So I've watched the field and me in particular get much more aware and competent at helping people draw connections between the ways we allocate privilege and to keep my eye on this very intractable version of that, which is about gender. So I had to be really, really, really, really, really, really careful in the early days about how I responded to that kind of thing. Or you would literally never get to go to another session in your town as long as you lived. And there are people who got blackballed. Then I got the very good lucky happenstance of being able to work with Ellen Pence who trained in a very different fashion. She said the most outrageous things to people and got away with it because of her personality. And she pushed people and pushed people and push people and she managed to move people because she facilitated in a very different way.

And she taught me how to throw something out to the group instead of telling them what to think and hope that somebody in the room would come up with the right answer or something that would lead her towards the place where she could give the right answer. And the answer would then get in the minds of people. And I would stand in the back of the room going, oh my God, no, don't ask that question. I would have a heart attack. And over and over I watched it work. Somebody in the room would come up with the right answer or something that would lead you to the point where you could lead them over the edge to the place you wanted them to get. And that is the most effective way, really one of the most effective ways to get people thinking their own way out of a problem they've got with their biases. And so I think those changes over time had really enabled us to be smarter way facilitators of adult learning, especially the kind of adult learning that means you have to challenge your own biases and preconceptions about everything.

KREMERS: Well and what both of you have just been talking about, Greta, in terms of where does she go with her personal experiences and boundaries and when to disclose those and what audience is not. And Loretta's comments about how to facilitate. That seems to me that's true for all of the facilitation we do in this area. And that is there are different ways to get to the same place. You have to, as Greta said, read the room and know that some groups are going to be more receptive to it than others, but you also have to develop the skill that Loretta talked about of knowing when you can confront them to the facilitator obvious bias and when it's okay to challenge them and when you can try and get the rest of the room to help bring them along. But bottom line is you'll never do it, especially for me as a judge standing up there, you'll never do it by saying the Mandalorian, this is the way kind of thing. It's got to be let's figure this out together.

Or at least try and build a consensus of the right way to do it. But again, coming back to where we started, this is such a nuanced and multifaceted topic that it's just not as simple as bringing in a bunch of subject matter experts and having them gorge out a bunch of data and say this proves our point. That stuff doesn't matter if you're not hitting them on an emotional learning level. So I think that's important and you got to be able to show empathy even if you don't have those personal experiences. You have to be an empathetic listener to be a good facilitator, I think.

POLKEY: Yeah. And Jeff, that's a great reminder of the podcast where we talked about what is the mean to facilitate, right? You're not just there to do a PowerPoint and deliver information and give a lecture. You're there to facilitating an experience, the transformation. Greta, I wanted to ask you to reflect on the scope of your experience too and see if there's any other additional tips that you can offer as you've seen the rooms that you've appeared before evolve. How have you adjusted your approach to reach people?

GARDNER: I read evaluations and take them to heart. I really do. Even the bad ones, they're so rare though. But I think that that's a really good learning tool. I can give you one example that I thought was really helpful, not in evaluation but in the moment. So I did this whole bias training and it's around foundational language and what do we mean when we say prejudice versus bias, et cetera, et cetera. And then we like do this whole matrix chart and then we talk about stereotypes about different races and ethnicities. And so usually I do what I call the top census five. So I talk about black, white, Asian, Pacific Islander and Latinx and a gentleman in the audience, he said, "Well what about Native American?" And my explanation was I said, "I don't usually bring up Native American survivors because I don't have either personal experience in that."

And I feel like as a facilitator, if there was a question or a pushback or a comment or anything, I am not in a position to speak to that and I would not want to disrespect my Native American sisters and brothers by even pretending to be an expert in that. And the gentleman was so kind and so gracious and he says, "I can understand that. I get that." He says, "But you have to also understand, we're always so invisible and we're here at this conference to learn a great many things and so without you speaking on it, we feel invisible sitting here in your workshop." And I said, "That is certainly not my intent, but intent is not equal impact. I would like to invite you to come up here to co-facilitate this section with me so that we can do that together. Would you be willing to do that?"

And he's like, "Absolutely." And he was so happy and he came up there and we finished the workshop together. And it was just such a really great teaching tool for all of us. Of one speaking up, one not being defensive, one coming up with a creative solution that the audience learned from. And I've replicated that in several different trainings now so that I don't exclude a population and to include the audience because I think one of the things that I say all the time is I am not the expert on everything with regard to IPV and or culture specific services and or black people. And I give a couple examples of that. So I think finding an expert in the room has been a really great tool when I get stuck or if I get challenged like that. But I will say, I think one of the greatest challenges I have as a facilitator, because again you have a very specific role, is when there's conflict in the room among participants.

And so yeah, I'm still working through that. And again, it's helpful when you have a co-facilitator. Usually the crowd will handle that themselves, but folks are looking at you as like, this is your room, take control of your room. And so that has been challenging. One of the ways is that you just address it head on, kind of like Ella Pence's way. Somebody else will jump in from the group and talk about it. But I had one particular experience where that was really bad and I felt bad because it was a woman of color who backed down when she was right because it was just time to end it and to move along. So that is one thing I would love myself to create more strategy around whenever there's pushback or conflict among participants.

FREDERICK: Yeah, I agree with you Greta. That is probably one of the most difficult challenges that we get into, especially on this topic because there are so many very strongly held beliefs about stuff. And I think one of the most effective approaches that I've been involved in is in some of them with each of you, is where we decide in advance, likely this scenario is going to raise this set of conflicting use.

And how are we going to manage that? Because sometimes it's going to be we got to put the white male judge up at that point to say the following thing, or we put Greta up to make the statement about this thing and then Jeff's going to say exactly, and here's why I agree with Greta. So everybody's got their thing in charge of settling. Or if people come to blows or nearly that, who's going to be the one to step up? The one with the most privileged probably is going to be the one that's going to wade out into the room when you're physically in the same space and go up to the people who are having the problem and literally stand between them. So these strategies developed in advance.

KREMERS: And I think that's what the biggest change I've seen in the 20 some years that I've been doing the intimate partner training facilitating, is we are getting more disagreement in the room. And that's good because what we had before was the old white boys network and they all felt the same way, not usually the right way, but they were at least of one voice. And now with the diversity of backgrounds that we have in the room, we're getting more voices speaking the truth kind of thing. And I think the biggest challenge is getting people, the old voices, to understand that the basis for their opinions were often not their lived experience because they came from a position of privilege, but rather that it was based on this heuristic of remembering a few anecdotes that stuck out in their mind and then they generalized that to a conclusion about all people that fit in that category react this way or think this way or should react this way.

And it's drawing that out and talking to them as non-confrontationally as possible about what's the basis for why they feel that way. We've done this exercise where we ask how many people think women lie when they come into court with sexual assault allegations or domestic violence allegations. And then you put up and they all have much higher, not all, but some of them have much higher numbers than are backed by the data and it's because they just remember the few cases that happened that way as opposed to the great body of cases where it didn't happen.

So being able to draw those out and getting people with a different experience to step forward. I have great respect for Greta's ability to bring somebody else up to co-facilitate. That is such a, to me, it would feel like a really risky thing to do. If you brought the right person up, great, you've hit it out of the park, but if you bring the wrong person up, what a challenge. Because now you've really given them a megaphone and now you've got a real challenge on your hands. But when it works, it's amazing.

GARDNER: Yeah, Loretta made me remember about something too around, yes, sometimes when you're co-facilitating or you have a pool of facilitators, that's great because you can strategize who does this, that or the other. There's conflict. There's also in thinking about facilitation challenges now in education in our work, particularly in the movement, there's this other challenge where I was facilitating, I was the only one, there was a table full of my colleagues, faculty and facilitators. I was being challenged and basically attacked by one or two participants in the room. I was able to deescalate it, the audience came to my rescue, but it was very uncomfortable and very tense for about a good five minutes.

At the debris, I looked at my colleagues and I said, at no point did anyone want to step in? And their responses were we didn't want to step on your autonomy, we didn't want to look like the white saviors, we didn't want to diminish your credibility in the moment and it looked like you needed help. And that's kind of symptomatic of the work where we get so into our heads that we don't actually see people who need help. And I said to my colleagues, I get you. I appreciate that. You're thinking too hard. I was in trouble and no one came to assist me. That's problematic. I hereby give you permission if you see me being attacked to please step in and provide some assistance so I'm not out there by myself. And they said okay.

POLKEY: And what you're all highlighting I think is worthy of a mention of not only what you're saying, Greta, we previously referenced that sort of partner agreement, that team teaching agreement, being able to work out those boundaries in advance. But also when it comes to such practices as bringing someone up or asking a provocative question, that also highlights the importance of ground rules, the importance of the groundwork that you lay at the beginning of a session to create the safe space, but also a regulated space where in the event that something gets off the rails, at least you could refer back to your ground rules. But then the exercise also of engaging in that discussion itself engenders in your participants a certain respect for and trust in the process where they can do things like confront you if they feel that their identity hasn't been mentioned.

And then you can safely, if you have the rapport, have the give and take with that. So you all have brought up a lot of great techniques. And I know time is upon us, so I just wanted to offer one last opportunity. We did this in the first podcast, so I'll do a round if you will. Everyone doesn't have to go, but if you have one, we've engaged in a couple of interesting war stories here, and particularly when it comes to gender and race. I don't know if anyone can beat Loretta's County commissioner confessing his monthly practice. However, if anyone else has a challenging experience that they had when it comes to race and gender while facilitating that they'd like to share and then also share either what you did in that moment or what you learned from that moment, or both.

KREMERS: I don't have a specific example. What I have is a very common experience of being challenged on the gender issue, use of pronouns, the idea that we just sort get up there and talk about he did this to her in domestic violence cases or in the sexual assault cases. And shouldn't we be more balanced kind of thing. And I think that's just an ongoing challenge that a facilitator has to be able to respond to.

Keeping in mind that sometimes where it's coming from judges say, hey, we want to be impartial and you're trying to make us be partial and automatically assume that if it's a he, she, he did this to her kind of thing and not even talking about the same sex relationships. And so I think that is just something you have to be upfront about and be prepared to acknowledge that it happens the other way. But it's such a small percentage that we're generally going to talk this way. But then in terms of putting on the training, if you're the facilitator to include examples of other kinds of situations to show that balance. But it's just an ongoing challenge, I think.

POLKEY: Indeed.

FREDERICK: Greta, you got one?

GARDNER: Yeah. The only thing that really comes to mind is I was doing a training on IPV and culturally specific issues of resources and services and a participant [inaudible] me up at the end and she just did not understand why all this emphasis on black survivors, and this is the third diversity training she's been to in the year. And I was like, well, I guess somebody thinks you need to keep coming. And we talked about it afterwards the training and then she caught me later at the hotel and really wanted to talk more about it. And again, it kind of went to that boundary thing. I was like, I was tired, I didn't feel like talking about it anymore. But then she said, "I called my friend from home to talk about this and he is black." And I was like, oh my goodness, I got to talk to her.

And it was like a two hour conversation. So I guess the lesson in that was the learning is continuous. One of the things that I try to impart with funders is that we have to be really careful about when we talk about these hot button issues, race, class, gender, violence, oppression in 90 minute or even a two day conference because for a lot of people, we can leave them in a worse place than when we got them if we don't continue the education or at least put things in place for them to really, really dive into the lifelong learning process because it is hard for some people.

POLKEY: Thank you. Loretta, you gave us a few, so I don't want to...

FREDERICK: Well I have one that will haunt me forever. I don't want to be dramatic about it, but it was one of the enhancing judicial skills institutes on domestic violence. So this is an example of a violation of one of the cardinal rules in my opinion, especially when training judges or legal professionals or court staff or whatever. And that is when you have managed a foment great conversation and people are arguing with each other about what they think about something or what ruling they would make in a certain hypothetical case or a specific social problem. That you reserve some time at the end where you basically give people the idea of what your view is as an individual facilitator or the position of the group that's putting on the training or something you want to leave people with that kind of puts your weight on one particular answer to their big question.

And I violated this rule, but I was doing this piece on civil protection orders and child custody and stuff like that. I had this great conversation and I called on this one judge who was right in the front of the room, right with one minute left to go before the session was to end. And he said, "All I wanted to say is this. Most women who are trying to get protection orders are doing it just to get a leg up in a child custody proceeding in family court." Bomb blowing off in the room, and I have 30 seconds left and it's over. You can't fix that kind of a thing at the last minute. So this is a really common gender based notion about IPV and women and mothers. So you've got to predict that particular view of the world is going to be kind of common in the room. And you got to raise those issues if nobody else does, to get them on the table early enough so that you don't get blown up at the very end with that problem.

POLKEY: Indeed. And when time's running out, make sure as we say in our facilitation training programs, make sure that you always get the last word and don't wrap up with an open ended opportunity so those bombs aren't dropped there toward the end. Well I want to thank you, Loretta, Jeff, and Greta for your participation not only in this podcast but your participation throughout the series. I also want to thank Justice McKeg. Ian McKeg who was with us in our previous two podcasts and the second podcast. I'd like to thank our host for the second podcast, Danielle Pugh. So this was Facilitating Complex Topics With Complex Audiences. I'm Aaron Poque. Thank you.