Publicly Affirm

A few weeks ago, I audited a graduate level class on Cultural Competence focused on raising awareness for students going to the Phillipines and Cuba. The two professors were very well informed and great group leaders, I was so happy to see.  

In the Group Process and Facilitating Skills workshop, we talk about the concept of “publicly affirming”,* which simply means having every person in a group say what he or she thinks or feels about a given topic to at least one other person in the group every time the group meets. We explore several techniques for making sure that happens and talk about the impact on the group as a whole to have all members orally participate. It underscores their commitment to the group, increases learning among participants and helps them sort through their own values around a given topic. Actively participating can propel members towards integrating newfound skills. 

In the Cultural Competence class, I experienced an interesting and effective way to make sure participants speak (publicly affirm) each session. In the first class, one instructor implemented a strategy for everyone to talk at least once each session. She emphasized the importance of oral participation from all students and said ,“I will invite someone to answer a question, share thoughts or give an opinion and that person, after he shared, would then invite someone else in the class to share and after the second person shared, she would invite another in the class to talk” – and on and on until all of us had participated.  

Thankfully, we all had nametags and were straining to read them at first as we were looking around the room for someone to “invite” to share next. This strategy was instrumental in gelling the class as a group and by the end of the semester we had learned a lot from each other and were very close – in fact, one of the students invited us to her home for a potluck dinner to continue our discussions and friendship. 

In quite another context, I ran across a phrase in a novel I was recently reading, Darke by Rick Gekoski, that captures the value, I believe, of publicly affirm. Gekoski wrote, “Telling….helps you right yourself” and I would add, and teaches us as well. 

* I first learned the concept of Publicly Affirming from the Values Clarification authors, Sidney Simon, Howie Kirschenbaum and Merrill Harmin.

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